For almost a year little news about Freelance Police came to light; still, adventure lovers waited in eager anticipation, hoping for a worthy successor to a classic title. Finally in February 2004, some exciting information was revealed: The game was going to be fully 3D, and it would be point-and-click, a welcome return to a control style abandoned in Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island. These tidbits only further increased fans' excitement about the project.

Then, in early March, LucasArts issued a press release announcing abruptly that Freelance Police was canceled, basically because the management didn't think adventure games could sell. The company's actions indicated it was abandoning the genre entirely, despite the fact that for over 15 years it had given birth to many of the greatest adventures in existence. Fans were left shocked and angry at the decision, and believed this signaled the death knell of LEC's visionary spirit from years past. Even Steve Purcell, creator of Sam & Max, was stunned, saying that production on Freelance Police had been going well:

LucasArts' sudden decision to stop production on Sam & Max is mystifying. Sam & Max was on schedule and coming together beautifully.

I couldn't have been more pleased with the quality of the writing, gameplay, hilarious animation and the gorgeous 3D world that Mike Stemmle's team has created. The rug has been pulled out from under this brilliant team who've so expertly retooled Sam & Max for the 21st century.

I'm extremely frustrated and disappointed especially for the team who have devoted so much effort and creativity to Sam & Max. It's a shame to think that their accomplishments, as well as the goodwill that has been growing in the gaming press toward this project, will all go to waste due to this shortsighted decision.

Thanks everyone, for continuing to make your feelings known.

--Steve Purcell

Even for a canceled title, notably little was known about the game aside from some general descriptions, which is especially weird for game that was in production for so long. Considering all the April previews and a second-hand Stemmle report that a new trailer was on the way, it seems possible that the axe was dropped not long before the hype machine was supposed to kick into high gear - it also supports the theory that the game's cancellation was as sudden internally as it seemed to be from the fans' point of view.

We do know that the game was comprised of six separate cases for Sam and Max to solve that also tied into a "thrilling uber-plot," which makes it sound very similar in structure to Telltale's seasonal approach. In fact, rumors circulating back when Freelance Police was announced that it was considered for downloadable episodic releases have since been confirmed. It seems the team favored online distribution (evidently for good reason) while LucasArts management preferred it to be traditional, retail adventure game...which they apparently changed their minds about. Some form of digital distribution remained hinted at even late in the game's life - check out this interesting quote from the February '04 PC Gamer magazine:

We're planning to have several types of new content available shortly after we ship the boxed version. Bonus content will include everything from new power-ups to new mini-games...and maybe even entirely new interactive Sam & Max cases you can download. Our fans will just have to wait and see what we have in store for them...

--Mike Stemmle

In December of 2003 LucasArts posted an online survey with an emphasis on Sam & Max that included questions about customers' feelings toward buying downloadable content, which would agree with the above information.

As the E3 2002 trailer suggested, Freelance Police would have featured the return of Bill Farmer and Nick Jameson as the voices of Sam and Max, and it is known that at least some of the in-game voice work had been completed before production was unceremoniously halted. As a result of the game's technical nonexistence, every voiced incarnation of Sam & Max - Hit the Road, the animated series, and the episodes that Telltale makes - has different voices for the duo, all of which were given Purcell's blessing. Just as an interesting side note, to date Sam has been voiced by three different actors, and Max five - not bad for semi-obscure comic strip characters.

We also know that the there were going to be a whopping 19 minigames throughout the cases (some woven into the story, some not) that promised to be "ten times more insane" than those in Hit the Road including (And all this is lifted directly from various interviews):

• Jump, Jive, and Flail - Applying everything movies have ever taught them about gangs, Sam and Max challenge a street gang of unruly teens to a dance-off in this rhythmn game.
  
• Rink-a-Dink-a-Doom - During the climax of a case, Sam and Max face off against a honked-off beauty contestant (and her hired flunkies) in an ice-themed destruction derby called Rink-a-Dink-a-Doom.
  
• Back-a-Rat - An "indescribably weird" mini-game that is a sort of sequel to Hit the Road's Whack-a-Rat.
  
• An unknown minigame in the space station case that involved shaking a genetically altered lab rat.

Stealing from the same interview, it was also revealed that most of the mini-games, once unlocked, would be replayable via the Gytgo, a techno-organic monstrosity that has nested in Sam's pocket (and which can be seen in some of the released screenshots). The Gytgo is a hypercute sentient handheld gaming organism that gave the player the ability to replay the mini-games encountered by Sam and Max, complete with new levels and power-ups.

When the first in-game screenshots reached fans in the form of blurry magazine scans, there was some minor debate about whether the graphics were pre-rendered or completely 3D (as official sources had previously suggested). Mike Stemmle, a mere weeks before the bombshell, clarified the game's tech to quell what could only be described as an almost barely notable fan brawl:

Actually, it?s full motion video with a toon shader; you just can?t tell from those scanned screenshots you?ve been seeing. What?s missing from those shots is the surround smell technology and the motion-captured animation of a naked midget in a rabbit costume.

Kidding.

For the record, Sam & Max Freelance Police uses an honest-to-George real-time 3D renderer. Its ?so-pretty-it-must-be-pre-rendered? look is achieved via a precarious balance of shaders, bump maps, lightmaps, and a little thing we like to call sweet, sweet lovin.

--Mike Stemmle

A few vague story threads for some of the cases are also known. In one case, Sam and Max visit a space station built by the third-rate countries of the world, and do battle with a rogue artificial intelligence made out of tortilla chips. In another, Sam and Max pose as members of a street gang to put the kibosh on an unexpected outbreak of gang warfare at a high-school dance (which leads into the "Jump, Jive, and Flail" mini-game). Another took place at the Burning Max festival with naked hippies roaming around with their crotches blurred out and pugel-stick fighting on the moving ears of the enormous wicker Max. And here's what some team members had to say when questioned about the game's production:

One thing I can tell you is that Mike Stemmle had the ability to launch into random show tunes at any given time on the project. It was one of the more interesting aspects of our team meetings. You never knew when it was going to hit.

--Graham Annable

My favorite part of the game was the third episode where Sam and Max confront the arch nemeses they never realized they had. These nemeses were two humans who were also an imitation of Sam and Max. Anyway we were casting for the voice parts and Stemmle had the brilliant idea to cast the Sam and Max from the cartoon series to play the arch nemeses. Well unfortunately budget restraints kept us from actually hiring those guys but that would have been so cool. What we did do was have Nick Jameson and Bill Farmer play the arch nemeses but have them switch parts which was funny as well.

Oh and Max['s voice actor, Nick Jameson] was once in the band FogHat.

--Dan Connors

I once successfully shot a basketball over eight cubicles and through a series of ceiling pipes. True story.

-- Jon Sgro

Speaking of the team members, many of them went on to form or join Telltale Games. Here's the list of the Freelance Police teamsters we're aware of and their relationship to Telltale's ongoing Sam & Max series, though note that Telltale also includes many former LucasArts developers who did not happen to work on Freelance Police:

Director: Michael Stemmle

Was a good friend of the company before finally joining it in 2008 as a designer, including on the Sam & Max games.

Designer/Programmer/Writer: Brendan Ferguson

He is a designer/writer at Telltale and is on the team of the Sam & Max episodes in that capacity.

Lead Programmer: Kevin Bruner

He is a founder and the CTO of Telltale, and is largely responsible for the tech that powers all of Telltale's games, including the Sam & Max episodes, for which he also serves as an Executive Producer.

Lead Animator: Graham Annable

He was an early employee of Telltale and served as Creative Director and animator before leaving, and he remains a friend of the company. He did some animation work for at least the first Sam & Max episode.

Programmer: Randy Tudor

Now a programmer at Telltale, and he serves as lead programmers on their Sam & Max series.

Environment Artist: Kim Lyons

Now an environment artist at Telltale. Her work includes the Sam & Max episodes.

Unknown: Jon Sgro

He is Telltale's Technical Director and works on the Sam & Max episodes in that capacity. It's likely that his role on Freelance Police was similar.

Modeler: Steven Chen

Composer: Mark Griskey

Sound Designer: Nick Peck

Producer: Dan Connors

A founder and the CEO of Telltale. He is an Executive Producer on the Sam & Max episodes.

Lead Tester: David Felton

A producer at Telltale. He is listed under special thanks in the Sam & Max episodes.

Steve Purcell himself was also closely involved, consulting on the game after his day job at Pixar, which is the same thing we hear about his involvement with Telltale's version. Sean Clark, the other project leader of Hit the Road and longtime collaborator with Stemmle, was still at LucasArts but was not on the project because he had been assigned to lead Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels by the notorious Randy Breen. Breen was the Head of Production at the time and was somewhat responsible for ending Full Throttle: Payback, the previous, more adventure-y attempt at a Full Throttle sequel. In the opinion of Bill Tiller, who was not a fan of Breen (nor were other LucasArts employees, it would seem), the decision was misguided and was a major factor in why he chose to leave the company:

I left Lucas because I didn't care for the Head of Production at the time, Randy Breen. Though I loved Simon! He was great Lucas Prez! Randy basically scuttled a version of Full Throttle that I was working on for no good reason other than to put his 'own guy' in charge of it, Sean Clark. Now I like Sean for the most part, having worked with for two years on The Dig, but Full Throttle II was not a project he should have been leading. He should have re-teamed up with Mike Stemmle on Sam and Max 2 right away. So I was mad (I get mad too often for my own good) and very sad about that. I felt if the head of Lucas Arts production was going to make dumb decisions like that we were in big trouble, and it was time to jump ship. Plus I had nothing else to work on, except Bounty Hunter. I like the guys on the team, John Knolls and Clint Young, but it wasn?t a project I was too excited about. To his credit, Simon asked me to rejoin Lucas Arts when they started work on Monkey Island 5. I said I?d do it in a heart beat. Simon is great guy! And as far as I know they never started work on Monkey Island 5.

-Bill Tiller

Despite indicating in the cancellation press release that there were no plans to reduce staff, LucasArts indeed began a series of massive layoffs beginning in April 2004 as part of a major restructuring of the company. The casualties of the first round reportedly included much of the Freelance Police team, Sean Clark, and Randy Breen among 29 employees. Stemmle was part of another large group that was let go in August, and after spending a few years working at Perpetual Entertainment as Lead Writer for Star Trek Online, he finally joined a number of fellow LucasArts vets and the Sam & Max license at Telltale Games.

Telltale's backstory: Shortly after the cancellation, three of the key members of the Freelance Police left LucasArts to form their own company, Telltale Games, which develops episodic adventure games. The team of Telltale has accrued several more ex-LucasArts developers since its inception, and it has granted Sam & Max its comeback by developing and publishing episodic games featuring the duo.

The demise of Freelance Police marked the end of an era for LucasArts, which was at the time suffering from several commercial flops, all of which were original titles. These include Gladius, Wrath Unleashed, RTX: Red Rock, and Armed & Dangerous. With the exceptions of Armed & Dangerous (which in a much criticized decision was rushed out in the Christmas season of 2003 where it stood no chance of success against higher profile titles) and Gladius (which received positive press but poor sales), these games were critically reviled in addition to being huge flops. The failure of these games as well as the cancellation of Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels, which simply amounted to a waste of a year's worth of development money, is speculated to be a major reason why LucasArts, who by contrast found fail-safe success with their mass-produced Star Wars titles, cancelled Sam & Max 2. Many fans blame an incompetent marketing department and gross mismanagement for the low quality of LucasArts original games from this time period, as well as for their poor performances once released.

In addition to being in a financial hole, the company had been without a president since October 2003, when Simon Jeffery left under vague circumstances (the timing of which in retrospect begs some questions), leaving the management as the active decision-makers. When Lucasfilm Senior VP Jim Ward was finally appointed president in May 2004, a new direction for the company came with him. Focusing exclusively on fewer, low risk titles, LucasArts has since reached the financial stability that it lacked at the time the axed was dropped on Sam & Max 2, though it seems the graphic adventures that played such a large part in the company's legacy don't have much of a role in its future.

The fan reaction the cancellation was overwhelmingly passionate to a degree that surprised the community itself. (And may be described by some as a mite excessive.) LEC Hate Sites and Save Sam & Max movements sprung up overnight, and many an internet petition was fruitlessly signed. Countless emails were sent by livid fans to the LucasArts PR address, and even a good bit of snail mail was apparently dispatched in the direction of the company. While the efforts were inevitably all for naught, it wouldn't be far-fetched to suggest that they may have gotten the attention of a few people:

Of course it was disappointing [for LucasArts to cancel Freelance Police]. It came as a big surprise but I never had the chance to react because the fans did it for me. The outrage and solidarity that they showed was an amazing thing to behold. I'd never want to cross those folks.

--Steve Purcell, in a post-cancellation interview

Since Freelance Police was really the only game LucasArts was making that this web site cared to cover with any sincere excitement, the direction of Mojo shifted much like the company it once idolized. If Mojo was once a site devoted to all things LucasArts with an emphasis on its classic adventures, it's now a site dedicated to the LucasArts adventure legacy found both in that company's past games as well as in the current games developed by its story-driven spinoffs: Double Fine Productions, Telltale Games, Autumn Moon Entertainment, and Crackpot Entertainment among their number.

At some point in late 2004 a German based adventure game developer/publisher named Bad Brain Entertainment was created overnight by a man named Wolfgang Kierdorf, its CEO. Despite having no games in development at the time, and by the sounds of things no employees either, Kierdorf was very vocal to the adventure community about his intentions for the company to revitalize the adventure genre. Bad Brain was first brought to public attention when it announced that it would be publishing Bill Tiller's A Vampyre Story, and in his first public interview Kierdorf heavily and enthusiastically implied that he was trying to negotiate a deal with LucasArts to purchase and finish Sam & Max: Freelance Police. Despite the suspiciousness of Kierdorf's claims, especially the fact that he was all but publicly revealing this supposed negotiation after signing an NDA with LucasArts, repeatedly burned Sam & Max fans placed their faith with this new hope. Eventually it was revealed, unsurprisingly, that LucasArts had cut off negotiations with Bad Brain, and that the extent of Bad Brain's "negotiations" was Kierdorf making a phone call or e-mail without any reasonable monetary offer, and thus he led fans to believe that the agreement was all but made when in fact nothing substantive had actually happened. (It should be said that Keirdorf would continuously flaunt the fact that he would be "saving" Sam & Max, thus gaining lots of attention from riled up adventure fans.) Furthermore, Kierdorf confessed that nearly the entire company's game line-up (which was "revealed" during a fan-hosted chat event) was made up on the spot just to give the impression that the company had products in the pipeline. Soon after the Sam & Max fuss was over, it was announced that Bad Brain would not be publishing Autumn Moon's A Vampyre Story after all, the reason most likely being that the company was without any real funds to support a developer. Eventually, Bad Brain shut down and it never released a game. The company and especially the exceedingly unprofessional Kierdorf have become official objects of mockery on Mojo for the aforementioned events, which may help explain some lame jokes in our news posts that flew over your head.

Since a whole lot of game existed before it was killed (it's estimated that been two thirds and three fourths of the game was completed) and members of the team have let slip on occasion, it's possible that a few more tiny bits of vague information will surface in the future. Oh, and before you leave be sure to check out some short animation test clips recovered from animator Joe White's web site below. For further reading we also recommend this May '03 preview by Adventure Gamers, this preview by CGW, and this article by Telltale Games.

- Max shaves his butt with the paper shredder
- Sam and Max participate in a dance-off
- A dame walks in Sam and Max's neighborhood
- A black and white animation of Max walking

We're reprinting below the original text of this database entry, written before the infamous press release, to show you how high our hopes were before corporate suits crushed them.

"After years of making strange cameos in LucasArts games and the quarterly "Adventurer" magazine, Sam & Max (a six-foot dog in a suit and three-foot hyperkinetic rabbity thing who fight crime) finally got a game of their own in 1993. Then, years passed. And continued to pass. Finally, out of the middle of nowhere, game developers Infinite Machine announced in September 2001 they were starting production on a new Sam & Max action/adventure for consoles, set in space. The mere announcement excited pretty much everyone ever, but it was not to be.

Infinite Machine's previous game, New Legends sold poorly and the company went out of business sometime in early 2002. Their Sam & Max game was cancelled, scrapped forever. Did cancellation spell the end for Sam & Max? Fortunately, no.

The depression and general fuming was just finally starting to wear off, when LucasArts surprised everyone ever with the August 2002 announcement that they were going to make a new Sam & Max adventure game, for the PC. A game led by Mike Stemmle (one of the project leads of the first game), a game that would have nothing in common with Infinite Machine's scrapped design. Now, over a decade after the first game's release, it looks like Sam & Max will finally be making a return to PC gaming. Here's hoping it's a good game."

They say: They used to say: Spring 2004 marks the return of interactive entertainment's most freakishly adored dog and bunny tag team, as LucasArts unleashes Sam & Max Freelance Police onto an unsuspecting Windows PC game buying public. The long-rumored follow up to the critically acclaimed adventure classic Sam & Max Hit the Road plunges Sam & Max into a whimsical miasma of fur-flying action, hare-pulling puzzles, and unnerving cross-species jocularity.

Now they say: After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC.