Telltale Games' second episodic game series, Strong Bad's Cool Games for Attractive People, got off to a good start earlier this month with the release of the first chapter. Now comes word on the first details and screenshots for the second chapter, to be titled Strong Badia The Free.Here's their description of the episode (due for release this September) "When Strong Bad fails to obey the King of Town's totally unfair email tax, he's placed under house arrest. Once freed from his wrongful imprisonment, Strong Bad goes on a mission to unite the local warring factions under the Strong Badian flag. Is Free Country USA ready for such an awesome ruler?". By the way, Telltale will be attending Penny Arcade Expo this weekend where they will show off a preview of the new episode....

"Hey," my brother-in-law, Tony, whispered to my brother, Daniel, and myself as we sat, bored, at the "kids" card table during Thanksgiving 2003. "You guys wanna watch some Homestar?""Yeah," Daniel whispered back."What's Homestar?" I asked."Something awesome," Daniel replied, as Tony nodded and said, "Come with me."After looking around to make sure the rest of our apparently more adult relatives sitting at the "adult table" were too busy refilling their plates or groaning and holding their bellies, we snuck out of the kitchen-dining room and into the adjacent computer room. Tony sat in the office chair and punched in a web address as Daniel and I gathered behind him."So what is this?" I asked again as a pasty cartoon character wearing a red shirt and blue propeller-topped hat appeared on the monitor."Trust us," Daniel said as Tony navigated to a screen where a squat character wearing boxing gloves and apro wrestling lucha libre mask sat in front of a computer monitor of his own. "You'll love this." ...

The wait is over, and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People has finally premiered, ready to grace our screens. Download the first episode demo, entitled Homestar Ruiner, today! The demo let's you play through the tutorial and the first parts of the game.Download the SBCG4AP: Homestar Ruiner Demo...

We've been waiting a little while for news on the release of Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People and today developer Telltale Games has announced that the first chapter of the multi-part adventure game will be made available for download on Monday, August 11. The first chapter's title is called Homestar Ruiner and is of course a play on word on Homestar Runner, the name of the web site that first launched the Strong Bad character.Pre-orders for the game are being taken now on Telltale's web site for $8.95 or you can buy all five chapters for $34.95. The first chapter will see, " . . . Strong Bad's plans to beat the snot out of his rival Homestar Runner backfire, and he ends up with an unwanted houseguest cramping his style. Now he needs to get life back to normal, by any means possible." New chapters will run monthly through December....

Telltale Games reveals a first look at its new upcoming series of upcoming episodic games, Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures. The trailer doesn't show much besides the fact that the series will be based on the successful British animated series that features a whacky inventor and his extremely intelligent dog. Although we can't tell what gameplay will be like, or what kind of of adventure the two will find themselves in, the art style and humor is very faithful to the series.Telltale has yet to reveal a release date for the game series.Download Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventure HD Teaser Trailer...

Episodic game developer Telltale Games promised to reveal a new game project this week at the San Diego Comic Con and they didn't dissapoint. The Associated Press reports that Tellltale has secured the rights to do a new episodic game series based on Wallace and Gromit, the Academy Award winning animated film series from Aardman Animations.The new series is titled Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures and will allow the player to control both wacky inventor Wallace and his understanding dog Gromit. While the animated series has been adapted for video games before, Telltale hopes this new series will be closer in spirit to the film series. A release date for the game series has not been announced....

If you haven't downloaded the five-chapter "Season 2" of Telltale Games' Sam and Max episodic adventure series, you can now get all five chapters plus a ton of extra content in a newly announced DVD collection. Telltale has announced that the Sam and Max Season 2 DVD set will be released in August directly from the developer's web site.In addition to the five games, the DVD collection will have hours of video that can be played on any DVD player or PC with a DVD drive. Those videos include game footage with commentary from the Telltale dev team, the 20-minute holiday video feature "Sam & Max Nearly Save Christmas, promo trailers, outtakes, concept art, desktop wallpapers, and an MP3 soundtrack sampler. The DVD collection costs $34.95 with shipping and handling; people who have already purchased all five downloadable chapters can get the DVD for free with just the shipping and handling costs. Telltale has also released new Sam and Max merchandise at their web site as well.including the full Season 2 soundtrack, a new poster and a "limited edition case file stuffed with "evidence" from each Season Two episode"...

Earlier this week we reported on the first gaming panel programming that was announced for the first day (Thursday) for the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con on July 25-28. Now the convention's web site has revealed the panel programming for the rest of the show and Friday and Saturday seem to be packed with game and game related events (Sunday seems to be free of gaming related panels).On Friday convention attendees can go to panels about Midway's fighting game Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe, the upcoming MMOs Stargate Worlds and DC Universe Online, and the upcoming Ghostbusters game (with actors Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson scheduled to attend). There will also be a World of Warcraft panel and the big Star Wars panel will have segments on the upcoming LucasArts Clone Wars and The Force Unleashed game titles. Capcom will hold a panel on how to break into the game industry and there will also be a Penny Arcade panel. There will also be a panel on the upcoming movie adaptation of Prince of Persia (with the game's original creator Jordan Mechner scheduled to attend) and a panel on the upcoming CGI movie Resident Evil: Degeneration.On Saturday, Comic-Con will hosts a Telltale Games panel where the creators will announce plans for a third episodic game series to join their Sam and Max and Strong Bad series. A Warhammer Online panel will also be held and THQ will host a panel on Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II and Deadly Creatures. Cliff Bleszinski and Peter Molyneux will attend a panel to talk about Gears of War 2 and Fable 2, respectively. EA will host a Dead Space panel and Capcom will also host a Bionic Commando panel at the show.If you haven't bought your tickets for Comic-Con yet, you are out of luck if you want the four-day pass or one-day passes for Friday and Saturday. Some tickets for Thursday and Sunday are still available for purchase....

When you have completed two "seasons" worth of an acclaimed episodic adventure game series, what do you do for an encore? Thankfully we have a perfect example in Telltale Games. Their well received Sam and Max series got them a lot of attention and later this month they will follow it up with Strong Bad's Coll Game For Attractive People. The multi-part game with the long title is based on characters in the cult hit Homerunner.com animated web series and will be released via download for both the PC and for Nintendo's Wii console via their WiiWare service.So what will make this game different than Sam and Max. Big Download got some answers from one of Strong Bad's writers and designers Chuck Jordan with some additional output from Telltale's web marketing coordinator Emily Morganti who also gives some hints about Telltale's future plans....

Telltale Games has announced a weighty addition to Valve's Steam service in the form of the Telltale Everything Pack. For only $69.99, adventure gamers can overdose on the first two seasons of Sam & Max, as well as Bone Episode 1 and Episode 2. Rounding out the package is Telltale Texas Hold'em, an outlandish take on the popular card game that has you competing "against four characters of such lethal absurdity, you'll either die laughing or die trying."If $69.99 seems a steep price, consider the $59.99 price tag of Sam & Max Complete, which contains the first two seasons of Telltale's adventure series. Ten bucks more net you three extra games, which is quite a deal indeed.Telltale Everything Pack is a fitting addition to Steam, which is quickly becoming a hot spot for revered game compilations. The id Super Pack, containing all of id Software's Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, and Commander Keen titles, is also available for $69.99. Eidos Everything, a diverse omnibus of Hitman, Thief, Deus Ex, Commandos, and Tomb Raider titles, sits at $99.99. The Complete PopCap Collection, featuring the casual gaming juggernaut's most popular hits, is also priced at $99.99.Offering such a rich catalog of games bundled at affordable prices made us ponder collections we'd love to see available via Valve's virtual vault. A Sierra adventure pack containing all King's Quest, Gabriel Knight, Space Quest, and Police Quest titles would be fantastic.What compilations would you like to see available on Steam, or any other digital distribution service?...

His game may only be for attractive people, but as Strong Bad said in the debut trailer for Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive people, you can play it, too! We're pretty sure the same rule applies for the game's trailers, as well.The newest trailer for Strong Bad's upcoming adventure shows the genre's prerequisite point-and-click action, cameos from Bubs and The Stick, and Strong Bad running his mouth as usual. We love that guy!Download the HD Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People trailer #2 from Big Download.[Embedded video courtesy of Daily Motion]...

According to Telltale Games' Emily Morganti, Sam & Max would love to find a home on Mac but porting the series proves to be a problem."Porting any of our other games to the Mac would have required starting again from scratch," Morganti told the BBPS when responding to Telltale's Mac absence since the release of Bone: Out of Boneville. Developer Vanbrio was brought on to port the Bone series to the Mac platform but found the process problematic because updating could not be done using Telltale's own development tools."I'm not going to say we'll never do Mac games," Morganti assured Mac fans. "We do want to get our games out on as many platforms as possible, but getting onto the consoles has been a bigger priority."In the interview Morganti confirmed Sam & Max: Season 3 is set for release in early 2009, likely due to the developers current work on the PC/Wii episodic series, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.[via Joystiq]...

Valve continues to add games to its popular Steam download service and this weekend Steam users can check out and purchase a number of new titles. The highlight this weekend is the the addition of Season 2 of Sam and Max, the acclaimed episodic adventure game from developer Telltale Games (and based on the comic book series created by Steve Purcell). All five episodes are now available for download and for one week both season one and two of Sam and Max are available on Steam for 10 percent off their normal price.Other new additions include four budget priced Activision games (Soldier of Fortune: Payback, Monster Jam, Historic Channel: Battle for the Pacific, and Cabala's Trophy Bucks) and Sega's Iron Man movie game. Also, for this weekend only, the price for Ubisoft's best selling PC port of Assassin's Creed is available for $10 off its regular price....

When Telltale Games first revealed their plans to release a game based on the Strong Bad animated series at Homerunner.com we wondered how the game will actually look while running. Well, wonder no more as Telltale recently released the first gameplay video from Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. As promised it looks like a true extension of the animated series so anyone who was worried about things being lost in translation won't have much to worry about.We have some new screenshots of the game you can check out and if you want to see the game in motion all you have to do is download the video right here at Big DownloadDownload the Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People gameplay video from Big Download right now...

Telltale Games seems to have gotten the hang of this episodic game genre. After a somewhat failed start with Bone, the developer hit pay dirt with their revival of LucasArts's Sam and Max adventure series with two "seasons" worth of games. Now the developer is branching out with a new adventure game with the super-long title Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.The game is based on the animated series on Homestarrunner.com by Matt and Mike Chapman and the press release announces that the game version, due out in June for both the PC and Nintendo's new WiiWare service, will feel like an extended version of the cartoon with you taking on the role of Strong Bad. Look for mini-games, "time wasters" like checking emails and prank phone calls, and interactive puzzles. Pricing for the five episode series will be revealed later; the game itself will start its "season" in June with new chapters every month....