Steve Purcell’s Sam & Max: Freelance Police is the definition of underrated. They started out as an underrated indie comic. Then they became an underrated LucasArts point-and-click graphic adventure (a criminally underrated genre). Then they became an underrated Fox Kids cartoon. Then they became an underrated episodic video game series by Telltale Games that, thankfully, is still going strong on Gametap.

Now the first “season” is being ported to the Nintendo Wii, due for release on November 3rd.

It never occurred to me before, but the Wii, with its point-and-shoot interface, is perfect for the graphic adventure genre. I played the last Monkey Island game on the PS2 and it just wasn’t the same. These games were made for a mouse, not the average video game controller (which is also why I had so much trouble playing Grim Fandango on the PC).

The graphic adventure is a deceptively difficult genre. While only need to point and click to move your character around, the games require that you almost exclusively use your brains to figure out how to use acquired items to advance the story, which is something that most console games don’t stress in favor of the blissful simplicity of punching/kicking/shooting/jumping on top of the bad guys to win. To complicate matters, most of these games are comedic, which means that the items and solutions are often unconventional, silly, and sometimes even nonsensical. The reward isn’t the gameplay, but the engrossing and often hilarious story that ensues.

What does that mean for the Wii? Well, considering that the biggest criticism of the Wii coming from the hardcore gamer crowd is the kid-oriented fare, a bit of advanced problem solving will do the console (and its players) good.

That is, if they have the patience.

With any luck, the hopeful success of Sam & Max on the Wii will help get the fifth and final Monkey Island game greenlit.

Please?

Written for thewiitards.com by Danny Djeljosevic