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"...

With E3 going on, it's possible that the Big Download staff has spent more time watching videos of upcoming games than playing current ones. But the weekend is finally here, and we're looking forward to getting some time that's hands-on instead of just eyes-on with our favorite hobby. Lead blogger David Craddock will be taking a break from almost single-handedly holding the site together while John Callaham has been at E3 to play Final DOOM (a classic!) on his PC and Civilization Revolution on his Xbox 360. James Murff will be taking a break from his usual indie fare to play Team Fortress 2 and Company of Heroes with his buddies. When they're not around, he'll be laying the SMACdown with Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Eli Shayotovich is going to be lopping off limbs in Age of Conan. Lastly, I'm in the middle of moving halfway across the continent, and I had to ship my desktop via UPS ground, so only my notebook is gonna be accessible over the next few days. Therefore low spec games are the flavor of the weekend -- Sam & Max Episode 4 and Fallout. I'm also going to be playing a bit of Rule of Rose on the PS2 (well, technically PS3). But that's us. How about you? What aRe yoU Playing?...

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....