Telltale Games

From Monkey Island wiki

Telltale Games
Type	Private
Genre	Adventure Games
Founded	San Rafael, 2004
Headquarters	California
Key People	Dan Connors, CEO Kevin Bruner, CTO
Homepage	Telltale Games

Telltale Games is a videogame developer that was founded in San Rafael in June 2004, by Dan Connors and Kevin Brunner. When LucasArts cancelled their upcoming game Sam & Max Freelance Police, many LucasArts employees, such as Dave Grossman and Mike Stemmle quit and joined Telltale Games. Due to the background of the developers, many of them had worked on classic LucasArts games such as Grim Fandango, Sam & Max and the Monkey Island series. Making PC games, their products are delivered through digital distribution, though are also available on disc, and most games are delivered in an episodic format.

Their first released game was a poker game, Telltale Texas hold 'Em and was released February 11th 2005. It was announced later in the month that Telltale had acquired the rights to create an adventure game based on the Bone comic book series. Two games were created due to this, with the first being Bone: Out from Boneville which was released in September 2005.The second Bone game, Bone: The Great Cow Race was released in April 2006.

During the time between the Bone games, Telltale also released CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder which was based on the CSI television series and was released in March 2006. A second CSI game, CSI: Hard Evidence was released in 2007.

Many of the developers at Telltale had worked on LucasArts adventure games, including a cancelled Sam and Max game. In late 2005 Telltale announced that they had acquired the rights to the Sam & Max series. The game was said to be episodic, shorter than the Bone games, but more frequent and in late 2006 the first episode of Sam and Max: Season One was released. 6 episodes were released, leading into 2007 and the game was positively received, achieving a score of around 80% in reviews. ^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]
In late 2008 a Wii version was released, achieving an average score of 74%.^[7]

Sam and Max: Season 2 was then developed, and released in 2007-2008. There were 5 episodes, with each receiving a rating of around 80% on metacritic.^[8]^[9]^[10]^[11]^[12]

In April 2008 a new episodic game series was announced,called Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. Between August and December 2008, 5 episodes were released for the PC and WiiWare, a download serivce available through the Wii. It achived positive ratings, and the first episode holds an average score of 76% on metacritic.^[13]

On July 24th 2008 Telltale announced that they had acquired the rights to develop a Wallace & Gromit episodic game series. Released on Xbox Live Arcade and on Windows computers through the Steam service, the first episode of Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures was released on March 24th 2009. The second episode was released in May, with the final two episodes following in June and July.

On June 1st 2009, Telltale confirmed that they were working on a new Monkey Island game. In collaboration with LucasArts, Telltale Games announced that they were working on Tales of Monkey Island, an episodic game. The first chapter, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal was released on July 7th 2009. The second chapter, The Siege of Spinner Cay was released on August 20, 2009 . The third episode, Lair of the Leviathan was released on the 29th of September, and the fourth episode of the series on the 30th of October. The season came to a close on December 8, 2009 with the release of the fifth and final episode, Rise of the Pirate God. ^[14]

Current and Future Telltale Games

On May 28 2009, Telltale confirmed that they were working on the third season of Sam & Max. They also confirmed that the season would not be point and click like the previous season, but will use cursorless controls. ^[15] On December 8, 2009, at the end of the final episode of Tales of Monkey Island, a website was revealed called Sam & Max 2010 which contained concept art and a narrator giving some veiled details of the upcoming game.^[16]