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We started digging into this episodic adventure series a few weeks back, and this week were tackling Season 1, Episode 2 -- or as Telltale Games official numbering has it, Sam & Max 102: Situation: Comedy.  These early stories werent nearly as intertwined as they would become later on, but they were coming out on schedule, and Steve Purcells crime-fighting dog and rabbit duo and Telltale Games were on a roll as this second game arrived in 2006.


Telltales business model was based in large part on the episodic concept -- the development investment made in Episode 1 was expected to reduce costs for subsequent episodes, as most sets and character models were already built.  This episode solidified the voice casting, with William Kasten taking over as Max for the first time and David Nowlin continuing as Sam, and the writing is stronger than in the first episode; it sounds more like Purcells Sam & Max, and the story and gags work well together.

As always, I encourage interested readers to sample Sam & Max 102 before proceeding here.  The game is great fun and not really difficult, and the humor should really be experienced firsthand.  Its still commercially available from Telltale Games, so Ill try to avoid giving away the best lines and focus on the plot and puzzles here, but be forewarned that there are indubitably...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****

The opening office scene reuses incidental object descriptions from the first game, though Maxs lines are re-voiced by the new actor.  The only significant new item in the office closet is Brady Cultures hair, the blonde afro wig (scalp?) being the first in what will be a growing collection of mementos from the Season 1 cases.

The plot is mentioned at the beginning of the game -- foreshadowed by the conclusion of the previous episode, something bears investigation at a local TV station -- but we dont necessarily have to get the story underway right away.  Sam and Max are free to wander around and see whats going on in the neighborhood.



Down the street, we discover that Sybil has given up psychoanalysis, and is now publisher of the tabloid "Alien Love Triangle Times."  She will change jobs every episode for the first two seasons; this one is very much in keeping with Steve Purcells original comics, and the episode benefits from good, funny dialogue.  It feels like Telltales series is starting to find its footing as Sybil and Sam talk about her new project, and Max jokes about the Indie-Angst Film Festival advertised on a poster outside.  We learn that Sybil is looking for a front-page, local-interest photo of an alien for her next issue.

Up the street, we find Bosco, of Boscos Inconvenience store, dressed up as a British gentleman, sporting a tiny derby hat and monocle. 



Why the disguise?  It seems the local gang of skinbodies (undoubtedly worse than skinheads) are stealing his shaving cream, so hes trying to throw them off his scent.  Its Bosco-brand paranoid conspiracy theorizing at its best.  And in this game, the Lucasarts in-joke as Sam attempts to shop is: "Do you have any fine leather jackets?"

The skinheads, we soon discover, are shaven-bodied rats with Jimmy Two-Teeth in a leadership role -- as Sam tries to grab Boscos last can of shaving cream, they steal it and drive off, firing a gun from their toy car.  We can try to chase them down with the DeSoto, but we cant easily shoot them or run them off the road.  But we can shoot them at the right time to get them to fall into an open manhole.  Max snatches the shaving cream out of the air; as a reward for returning it to Bosco, he gives us... the shaving cream.  Which is what we wanted in the first place, of course, but it somehow seems like a letdown after all of the gunplay.  We do learn that Bosco has a chemically-based voice modulator available... for sale, that is... for one million dollars.  Our dog-and-bunny team are usually broke, so well have to come back to this later.

So its off to the TV station where the trouble reportedly lies; theres a little in-joke here poking fun at the economics of asset reuse -- the Barrelhaven set from Telltales Bone games is stored here (and Fone Bone himself shows up in the official blooper reel.)

We find a TV director standing backstage -- she has a beef with talk show host Myra, and needs new actors for the sitcom "Midtown Cowboys" -- it seems the programs stars appeared on Myras show and havent been seen since.  Sam and Max need to spend some time poking around the studio, so they audition for the roles, leading into a couple of funny and entertaining puzzles. 

The audition is a scene from Old Yeller, so Sam needs to play a rabid dog; the shaving cream should be handy for creating that certain frothiness, it seems... yep.  And the tear gas grenade gun, still in inventory from episode 101, lets Max weep convincingly.  And Max is completely comfortable with shooting Sam (not fatally) to put him down.  Thats that -- Sam and Max are the new stars of "Midtown Cowboys."  We soon learn that its a show about two cowboys trying to raise a herd -- actually just a single cow -- in a Manhattan apartment, while hiding the fact from their landlord, Mr. Featherly, played by a chicken.  (We note here that the cow model is also reused from the Bone games, and that the poker table from Telltale Texas Holdem is seen leaning against a wall behind the Midnight Cowboys set.)


The TV shows taping provides for a really fun puzzle -- we have to find appropriate dialogue options and use available props to "ad-lib" a situation comedy, meeting certain parameters.  Its the type of puzzle that could really only be rendered in the modern animated adventure; doing this in a text adventure would have seemed cumbersome, but with quality voice acting and animation it makes for a very entertaining sequence.  Were permitted to explore the set and discover the available props, by way of preparation, but we cant actually touch anything until taping starts.

If we need some time to ready our improv skills, were free to visit the set next door, where a talent contest show called "Embarrassing Idol" is in production.  The Soda Poppers (aging child stars from Episode 101) return as the shows judges, but big-eyed Peepers wants to compete, so Max agrees to step in as a judge.  There are no other contestants, so it seems like we should see if we can arrange for Sam to win the contest.  Specs likes to hear singers hit high notes, and Whizzer is voting for his brother Peepers no matter what; but we learn he has certain, um, digestive vulnerabilities to tomatoes, so we should look for a way to remove him from the judging lineup.

We can also visit the local Cooking Show, "Cooking Without Looking," and take to the airwaves, assembling random dishes into casserole or cake form, and taking the results with us.  The ingredients on the rack -- Red Dye #2, MSG, Uranium Pellets and many more -- definitely call Steve Purcells original comics to mind, where the backgrounds are always full of bizarre and funny breakfast cereals and such.



And theres also a game show, "Whos Never Going to Be a Millionaire," which is not currently taping.  But we do run into one Hugh Bliss, a Doug Henning-style magician and New Age guru currently scamming people with his Prismatology belief system; hes waiting to appear on Myras show to promote his new book, Emetics.  Bliss demonstrates that he can actually read Sams mind, unlike these kinds of people in the real world, and will turn himself any color Sam thinks of as a fairly impressive magic trick.

We can take advantage of this to get Hugh Bliss to turn himself green, and get our picture taken with him, for Sybils tabloid.  The Director returns to say that the game shows host is stuck in Myras studio, and asks Hugh Bliss to host in his place; Hugh will have to read insults from the cue cards, which he doesnt like, but thats show biz.  The questions are incredibly hard, but we only have to answer one successfully, and while thats pretty much impossible, the questions are not guarded or anything.  We can switch in Peepers lyrics cards from the "Embarrassing Idol" set, making the million-dollar question "Am I blue?"  This is not hard to answer, based on whatever Hugh Bliss current coloration happens to be, leaving our detectives one million dollars richer.



Weve explored most of the TV station now, but while we can try to enter Myras studio, Myra herself tells us the studio is full and only famous people appearing ON the show are getting in now.  She demands we establish an appropriate degree of fame by providing evidence of a recording contract, a clip from our hit TV show, and a scandal.

So: Sybil can go to print with the picture of Sam, Max and a green Hugh Bliss; this gives us the scandal evidence we need for Myra.  (I live in Michigan, USA, so I got an extra kick out of the certificate on Sybils wall -- Max: "Wheres Diploma Mill College?" Sybil: "Its in Battle Creek.") And with our game show winnings we can buy Boscos million-dollar voice modulator -- which turns out be a helium-filled balloon.

Back on "Embarrassing Idol", we can converse with Specs to learn that he will vote for us if we use the helium to hit a high note.  We can give Whizzer a cake for his birthday, but even then he still votes for Peepers.  Hmmmm.  Somethings missing here.  We need to take him out of commission as a judge, it seems.  So where can we get a tomato?  Boscos condiment dispenser has some ketchup, we just need to bring the cake there to dispense it.  Eliminating Whizzer as a judge allows Sam to win the recording contract, as Peepers vows revenge on his turncoat sibling.

Now we need to wrap up the improv on "Midtown Cowboys" so we can get into Myras studio.  This sequence is a lot of fun because the options are non-obvious... most players will have to try some different things, most of which are funny if not completely successful, before hitting on the right bit of "improv."  And Mr. Featherly is a great character -- I should say, Philo Pennyworth, the chicken actor playing him.  Pennyworth clearly has Shakespearean training, a fine sense of comic timing, and little patience with our amateur dog and rabbit heroes.

Max has to find a logical reason to insert the sponsors line, "Better get the serious toothpaste!", and of course we must stick with the shows premise by keeping the landlord from discovering a cow on the premises.  Accordingly, as Mr. Featherly enters, we have to find some way to disguise the cow.  We can put the lampshade on the cows head to pass her off as a french chef, and put the plate under the cowpie shes deposited on the floor.  But Featherly gets distracted by the cows tail, and she moos when he pulls it.  We then have to tell him that she said "Moo Goo Gai Pan," and convince him to sample the plate of cow dung, giving the audience some good old-fashioned gross-out humor (yes, I know birds do this sort of thing in real life, but still!)  Max delivers the key sponsorship line as the capper to this segment, and we have our TV clip. 

Now we can get into Myras studio and onto her show -- once were here, we wont be able to leave, but Telltales design adopts the Lucasarts approach and we cant really get ourselves into a dead-end situation.  So we will just have to work with whatevers available.  It soon becames apparent that Myra herself is being held captive, by a little toy teddy bear with weird hypnotic powers. 



Sam cant shoot the bear, as Myra orders him to put his gun away.  Nor can we do anything with the shaving cream, so we will have to rely mostly on dialogue to find a solution.  We can try to convince Myra that someone else was involved in the "Alien Love Triangle Times" scandal -- if we accuse one of the Soda Poppers, she brings each of them out to deny any involvement.  Peepers is no help, and neither are Whizzer and Specs.  We can summon Bessy the Cow, and Philo Pennyworth advertises his other... predilections... to no major audience reaction.  But we might notice that Myra moves the microphone to different spots on her desk, depending on whos onstage.

Further experimentation establishes that what we have to do is use the vocal modulator to let Sam sing at a high pitch, shattering the water glass on Myras desk, and then call Bessy the Cow in to address the scandal topic.  Myra places the microphone, sparking from overuse, in the puddle on her desk, zapping herself and the teddy bear.  Myras okay and her audience is freed at last -- again, we see some reuse of character models from the Bone games in the crowd.

Im a big fan of Sam & Max, and the adventure games (both the 1990s Lucasarts title and the Telltale series, with 3 seasons under its belt) have been consistently entertaining.  As this episode concludes, the camera cranes down behind Myras desk, and we learn that the teddy bear came from the Toy Mafia... and isnt it suspicious that Sam and Maxs last two cases have involved hypnotic mind control?  The plot thickens in Sam & Max 103: The Mole, The Mob and The Meatball... which well get around to playing sometime soon, Im sure.

This week, were exploring the halls of Bedlam, a text adventure published in 1982 by Radio Shack for the companys TRS-80 Model I/III and Color computers.  It was written by Robert Arnstein, author of Raaka-Tu and Xenos (and reportedly Pyramid 2000, I learned recently, though hes not credited in the manual.)  I first played this game on the TRS-80 Color Computer, having at the time left my Model I behind, but Im re-playing it on the classic TRS-80 here, for the sake of its 80-column text display; its a better platform than the TV-compatible CoCo for text adventures.




Like Arnsteins earlier games, Bedlam uses a simple teletype-style interface -- the game prints a message, the user enters a command, the game responds, and the text just keeps scrolling.  But the parser is quite helpful when it comes to syntax and disambiguation -- if we type EXAMINE DOOR, for example, and the game needs more detail, it will flash EXAMINE ?WHICH? DOOR before letting us edit the command to, say, EXAMINE GREEN DOOR.

Bedlam is an escape-the-insane-asylum adventure, a fairly common theme at the time though it wasnt done to death.  Its most innovative and unusual characteristic is that it has some randomized elements and multiple endings, in that there are several escape routes possible.  I dont remember how I discovered this back in the day, as it certainly wasnt expected -- I think I was on the trail of one solution, and then stumbled across another along the way.

As always, interested readers are encouraged to wander the halls of Bedlam before proceeding with my notes below, and Sean Murphys Bedlam page is highly recommended as supplemental reading. Without further ado, Ill describe my own experience in the following material, so beware that there are certain to be...

***** SPOILERS AHEAD! *****


We begin in a small padded room, with a closed green door on the south wall, as we wake up after a "bad dream" about doctors and padded rooms.  We have nothing in inventory, there are no items here, and we learn nothing new from EXAMINEing the walls, floor or ceiling.  But, contrary to expectations, we can simply OPEN DOOR and leave the room.

We now enter the east-west hallway; a red door on the south wall is locked.  Traveling east leads to an almost identical room, where a green door to the north is unlocked and the red door to the south is locked.

Behind the green door is... Marilyn Chambers!  No, just kidding, its Napoleon Bonaparte!  Or, at least, a short funny looking man who claims he is "THE MIGHTIEST LEADER IN THE WORLD!"  This is ironic, because while we cant TALK to him or ASK him about anything, if we say, NAPOLEON, FOLLOW ME, he readily responds, "OK, LEAD THE WAY."

Hes a little more obstinate if we continue on to the east end of the hall, open the next green door, go into the padded room and say, NAPOLEON, STAY HERE; he responds, "YOU WOULDNT LEAVE ME HERE!" and refuses to stay behind.  So I guess well be stuck with him for now, though eventually his attention will wander off and his person will follow.

Further east is the electroshock therapy room, where a uniformed woman who LOOKS LIKE THE ROLLER DERBY QUEEN assumes "YOU MUST BE HERE FOR TREATMENT" and gestures toward the apparatus.  We can escape by heading W, but if we wanted the GREEN KEY from the electroshock room we would have to stick around.  At the moment, though, we havent run into any locked green doors, so theres no reason to try to retrieve it (assuming this game follows the usual color-coded security conventions typical of doors and keys designated with specific colors.)

Going all the way back to the west end of the hall, we find yet another openable green door and locked red door.  Here, we encounter a pseudo-Merlin, IN A BLACK CLOAK AND POINTED HAT, who believes we are a demon he has summoned to do his bidding.  We can also command MERLIN, FOLLOW ME; most of the characters we will encounter turn out to be fairly compliant, though most of them arent very useful.  They do have their personality quirks, though, and their actions can provide clues -- we happen to see that NAPOLEON IS RUNNING HIS HANDS OVER THE WALLS.  And Merlin is getting impatient, saying, "I CANT UNDERSTAND IT.  I MUST HAVE CONJURED THE WRONG DEMON."

Further west is the dispensary, with exits to the east, west and south.  Theres a blue pill here, and a locked cabinet on the wall with a tiny hole in it.  EXAMINE HOLE reveals a red key inside the cabinet.  Interesting.  We can TAKE PILL and then EAT PILL -- but it seems to have NO EFFECT.

Moving west again brings us to the Maintenance Room, where we find a long-handled window hook and an unsavory-looking doctor -- A SHORT, STOCKY, UNSHAVEN MAN WEARING A BLOODY WHITE SURGICAL GOWN -- who says, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? GO WHERE YOU BELONG!"  We can continue west into an office, but it seems the doctor is following us.  He occasionally lags behind, but if he catches up for more than one turn, he gives us a frontal lobotomy.  We do wake up, with blood on our gown, and can continue playing, but we are now badly confused, and every move we make is complicated by random attempts to navigate immediately following our every command.  So its safer to restore a saved game or start over after this happens, at least until we can find a cure for it.

Merlin keeps insisting that we "REVEAL THE DOOR OF ESCAPE," which may be what Napoleon is feeling around for.  Trying to get the green key from the electroshock room is unsuccessful, as we get subjected to electroshock therapy before we can make off with it, and experimentation establishes that Merlin refuses to pick it up on our behalf.

Hmmmmm.  What about that long handled window hook?  If we go to the east end of the hall, just outside the electroshock room, and try to GET KEY, the parser is smart enough to tell us that YOU CAN NOT REACH THE GREEN KEY FROM OUT HERE.  And we can successfully GET KEY WITH HOOK from this location, without having to enter the electroshock room!  Unfortunately, though, the green key cant unlock the cabinet in the dispensary.  Wandering around and running into the evil doctor again, we can gain independent verification of the medical consensus that getting electroshock treatment does not undo the effects of a frontal lobotomy.  But -- referencing the original manual -- we discover some not-so-subtle hints that the longstanding adventuring magic word PLUGH will undo the confusion, and we need not fear lobotomization any longer.  Magic Words: 1, Medical Science: 0.

What else can we try?  Well, we can EXAMINE ROOM in any location to see NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT THE ROOM, suggesting that this may not always be the case.  And what about that other key?  We cant GET RED KEY from the cabinet, even with the window hook in inventory, or GET RED KEY FROM CABINET, as YOU ARE QUITE INCAPABLE OF REMOVING THE RED KEY, or PUT HOOK IN HOLE, as THE WINDOW HOOK WONT FIT IN THE CABINET -- but these are kind of misleading responses, as we can successfully GET RED KEY WITH HOOK.

Now we can explore the rest of the map and UNLOCK RED DOOR WITH RED KEY as necessary.  The first one we try is empty, at the west end of the east-west hallway, but the one directly south of our starting point houses a man with a very bad French accent, who announces, "EYE AM A GRATE ARTEEST! MAH NAM EEZ PICASSO!"  (despite the fact that Picasso was Spanish.)  This impostor likes to paint doors on the wall, and if memory serves sometimes these can be opened; but in this case, OPEN PAINTED DOOR yields only, "ARE YOU CRAZY? IT IS JUST A PAINTED DOOR!"


Unlocking the third, easternmost red door gets us somewhere new -- the north end of a north-south hallway, opening up the rest of the map.  A blue door on the right-hand side can be freely opened, but the padded room beyond is empty.  Continuing south along the hallway, we can enter a kitchen to the east, with a refrigerator that drops some hamburger meat onto the floor when OPENed.

East of the kitchen is the asylums kennel, where a VICIOUS GUARD DOG blocks the southern exit.  We can PUT PILL IN MEAT, and while the blue pill had no effect on us personally earlier, the dog finds it (or the meat) less appetizing -- THE DOG LOOKS SICK.  HE WEAVES AND FALLS OVER DEAD.  But we cant just exit the asylum to the south -- as we try, some guards throw us into a storage shed and lock the door!  The game isnt over yet, though, as we can still take action -- the shed has a green door on the north wall, so we can UNLOCK GREEN DOOR WITH GREEN KEY, and just walk north to escape to freedom -- and victory!





So thats one solution.  But there are some other aspects of the game I recall that we havent run into yet, so lets explore the map a little more.  Backtracking, we find a dining room south of the kitchen, and returning to the north-south hallway we encounter a man named XRAY JOHNSON ("BUT YOU CAN CALL ME RAY") who claims to have X-ray vision.  Maybe he will be helpful in spotting a different escape route.

Theres also a straitjacketed man who claims to be the real doctor, which were willing to buy given the unsavory nature of the other doctor weve met, but he passes out before we can do anything with him, and we cant WAKE DOCTOR, so this is just a bit of storytelling atmospherics.  In the Recreation Room, we can meet another similarly confined man hanging from the ceiling -- he claims to be Houdini, but he seems unable to get out of his straitjacket.

That was entertaining, but I didnt succeed in finding any different solutions on my backtracking foray, which makes me suspect that each game we start actually makes only one solution available.  So we have to start over, and doing so, we find the characters originating in different, random rooms, though the key puzzles remain the same. 

In this run, as it turns out, EXAMINE ROOM -- in the eastern green-doored padded room -- freely reports, THERE IS A SECRET DOOR HERE... but we are NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO OPEN IT if we try.  Neither is Ray, if asked -- "SORRY, IVE BEEN RATHER ANEMIC LATELY!"  But Napoleon can do it, and were free by an alternate route!



Any other possibilities?  I seem to recall that Picassos painted doors can be opened under some circumstances, and guessing that it may be random, I start a third game.  It takes a few tries before this surreal possibility is selected as the valid solution, but on my sixth game I succeed!



A little online research confirms that weve covered all three ending possibilities, so lets call this one done!

Bedlam is not a very complex adventure -- most of the 16K games limited memory is devoted to presenting its colorful characters, and perhaps as a consequence there are only a few puzzles, and they generally succumb to common sense if we remember that the parser is not limited to two words.  Its not a terrible game, but like many adventures with random elements, its just not quite as satisfying as a well-plotted adventure game can be.  I enjoyed revisiting the halls of Bedlam, but it was mostly for nostalgias sake; I like Mr. Arnsteins other games quite a bit more.