Skunkape
@skunkapegames
A handful of early Telltale developers, now the owners and caretakers of the episodic Sam & Max adventure games! For video games: For support:
Perhaps as a nod to that late-night collaboration, the second Easter egg in Dispatch’s coffee-making sequence is Jake Rodkin’s Very Good Whiskey.
Q: SDN mugs feature prominently in the opening sequence of Dispatch's final episode. This sequence includes TWO Telltale-adjacent Easter eggs. What are they? A: Banang (at 0:01) and Jake Rodkin’s Very Good Whiskey (at 0:31).
As explained by the Host as he leads you down the stairs at the beginning of the game, the Inventory was founded in 1919 in response to an early draft of the 18th Amendment that threatened to outlaw games and amusements in addition to alcohol. What a tragedy that would have been.
Q: The Inventory was created in response to which US Amendment? A: The 18th Amendment
Q: What’s the name of Dispatch protagonist Robert Robertson’s dog? A: Beef! (And he’s naked)
Q: What early Telltale game inspired Poker Night at the Inventory? A: Telltale Texas Hold’em
In Dispatch, you play as Robert Robertson (AKA Mecha Man), who works at SDN as a superhero dispatcher. In charge of rehabilitating a group of ex-supervillains, you must manage your roster while navigating office relationships and rebuilding your destroyed mech-suit.
Q: Which Dispatch team member worked on the 2010 release of Poker Night at the Inventory? A: Nick Herman!
Our Poker Night at the Dispatch trivia contest with @adhocstudio.com is over, with 1,863 entries and 8,200 correct answers! From this pool, we drew 5 winners: Dioxid3Chlorine, Tyler, Justin_Le1, @blax03.bsky.social & Haliburd7. Congrats! 🎉 How many questions did you get right? Find out below. 🧵👇
To make it easy for you, here are the store pages for both games on sale: Poker Night ❤️ Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/3897800/... ♠️ PlayStation: store.playstation.com/en-us/concep... Dispatch 🦸 Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/2592160/... 🦹 PlayStation: www.playstation.com/en-us/games/...
And if you’d rather hang out with superheroes (we’ll try not to take it personally), you can grab Dispatch for 20% off on PlayStation: store.playstation.com/en-us/produc...
Btw, if you’re in the mood to play Texas hold’em with Max, Strong Bad, Tycho, and The Heavy, the Poker Night remaster is on sale for the first time: ♠️ Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/3897800/... ♦️ PlayStation: store.playstation.com/en-us/concep... (Switch players, we’ll get you next time!)
This Easter egg is a nod to Dispatch, the superhero game made by our friends at @adhocstudio.com. Our team and some of their team worked together at Telltale back in the day — including on Poker Night at the Inventory. And now we’re teaming up on a contest!
🚨🚨HEY KIDS, IT’S CONTEST TIME!!🚨🚨 Eagle-eyed players have spotted a bunch of new Easter eggs in our Poker Night at the Inventory remaster, including this unassuming mug with an SDN logo on it. (Max isn’t holding it in the game — you’ll have to find it yourself!) 🧵👇
For the remaster, we used a little bit of the concept art on the newly-expanded "history of the Inventory" wall you see when entering the club at the start of the game. (Along with Kent Games & Amusements kitsch and a bunch of definitely-accurate historic photos from the early days of the Inventory)
(Also some Telltale-era shoutouts to "the neighborhood bars where you could hide upstairs and play board games all night" Hobson's Choice and The Bitter End, and "the bars with carpeted floors and too many funky lights where you could play board games all night" Little Shamrock and Yancy's Saloon.)
As a space, the team wanted The Inventory to feel like a cathedral dedicated to the feeling of hanging out in a bar playing games with your friends. We looked at our favorite San Francisco bars (like House of Shields) and elevated them to cathedral status with a giant library and vaulted ceiling.
The Inventory was meant to be a space dedicated to gaming, packed full of detail. We didn't really pack it that full in the end, but we had some classics like everyone's favorite objects - crates! d20s! - as well as an homage to the Sims' plumbob, as different light sources around the club.
Telltale concept artist Jesse Maccabe painted a series of small moody pieces and these detail studies for what the Inventory could look like. We wanted the space to feel secluded, intimate and comfortably shabby, but also a little unsettling in how imposing and old it was, and Jesse captured that.
When Poker Night at the Inventory first shipped in late 2010, we never shared much concept art from the game's production, because there just wasn't much! It was a tiny game made by a tiny team, even by Telltale standards, so there's never been much concept art to share, but here's a little bit! 🧵
Want to feel even more ancient (maybe the same amount of ancient, really)? The first trailer for Sam & Max Season One debuted at E3 on May 10, 2006... 20 years ago today!
And then there was Jurgen's Blutwurst recipe -- always a crowd-pleaser. 🧛♂️
Around the launch of Ice Station Santa, we featured this gingerbread recipe attributed to Santa (but that actually came from Jon Sgro's mom). We asked people to send in pictures if they tried the recipe. As far as we remember, no one ever did. 😂
Order Up! was an opportunity for us to share some of our favorite family recipes in the voice of a game character. Lord Rumplebottom's Thoroughly English Muffins were contributed by Ian Dallas, who was a writing intern on the Sam & Max team at the time.
Unfortunately most of the Interlopers we've been able to find on the Internet Archive and in our old emails are missing the graphics, but here's what the column would have looked like when it landed in your inbox.