Sam & Max

Steve Purcell's freelance police are a dog detective and a rabbity thing of pure id, and the franchise built around them has always run on dialogue rather than action. It started as the LucasArts point-and-click classic Sam & Max Hit the Road in 1993, jumped to a Saturday-morning cartoon with The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police in 1997, then found its truest home in Telltale's episodic revival across Beyond Time and Space and the five-part The Devil's Playhouse.

What holds it together is comic voice, not continuity. The Poker Night crossovers borrow the duo as guest stars, Save the World remasters the early Telltale seasons, and every entry trades on the same deadpan-and-chaos chemistry. This is a property that proved adventure-game comedy could survive the genre's commercial death, carried almost entirely by writing.

The Sam & Max franchise spans 1 series, 8 games in the CrossBinge catalog.