Sam & Max Plunge Through Space (lost build of cancelled Xbox adventure sequel game; 2001-2002)

Concept art.

Status: Lost

Sam & Max Plunge Through Space was a planned sequel to the 1993 video game Sam & Max Hit the Road, announced in 2001. It was to be developed by the Infinite Machine, a small company consisting of former LucasArts employees; however, Infinite Machine went bankrupt in 2002, and the project was cancelled.^[1] LucasArts then bought the rights to Sam & Max and attempted to develop its own sequel, Sam & Max: Freelance Police, which was also abandoned later.

Premise and Gameplay

In the words of the lead developer Steve Purcell:^[1]

"It was actually based on a story I had written years before called Sam & Max Plunge Through Space. Sam & Max have to recover the stolen Statue of Liberty which they find parked in another galaxy and being used as a casino called Green Mama's. Then they are pulled into interplanetary intrigue with an evil despot and a mysterious hidden world where everyone resembles Max. We were breaking it down into an action/exploration/adventure game and I was pleased with where it was going."

"It was a lot heavier on "adventure" than "action". It was intended to be more of a hybrid, giving you the story and characters of a point-and-click adventure, but with the pacing of a 3D platformer. You'd have controlled Sam directly, moving around environments about the size of an FPS level, solving item-based puzzles and getting into dialogue exchanges. Enemies would wander the level, so you could always go back and shoot and/or beat them up. (I remember that we spent a good bit of time trying to figure out how to do shooting without over-complicating the targeting interface, before we remembered that it's Sam & Max, and accuracy is kind of irrelevant.) We were hoping to have a platformer without shallow characters or annoying jumping puzzles, and an adventure game without the feeling that nothing happens when you get stuck. The best part of having a pitch go unpublished is that I can say that we solved every problem, and it would've worked perfectly, if only it had gotten made."

Availability

Though concept art of the game has been made available online, no beta images or prototypes of the game have ever been released, and it's unknown how far in production the game got before being cancelled.

Gallery

DeSoto remodeled into a spaceship; according to Purcell, every keyboard button was going to have a DeSoto control function (though some of these functions would be ridiculous).
Mena.
Slippy, some kind of alien DJ.
A giant cockroach bouncer at the entrance of Green Mama's.
A mole miner enslaved by other moles to extract the yummy nougat from the center of his planet.
Parking Lot Jackal, one of a threatening pack that patrol the enormous multi-level parking structure near Green Mama's.
A city floating in space.
Span'qee, the tyrannical leader of a children's play area underneath Green Mama's (the kids have been waiting for their parents so long that they developed their own civilization).