Telltale and GameTap have announced pricing plans for the upcoming Sam and Max episodes.

"Customers' payment options are:

• Download individual Sam & Max episodes for $8.95 each from Telltale.
• Buy the entire season for $34.95 from Telltale.
• Subscribe to GameTap for $9.95/month to get exclusive early access to Sam & Max episodes, along with over 600 other games.

"We want customers to be able to get Sam & Max the way they want it, when they want it," says Telltale CEO Dan Connors. "One of the biggest benefits of the episodic model is the flexibility it provides. We've listened carefully to what this audience wants from an episodic game, and as a result, Sam & Max: Season 1 is the first series with episodes released so frequently and affordably."

Sam & Max aren't your average crime-fighting duo. One's a six-foot tall canine shamus with a love of justice. The other's a hyperkinetic rabbity-thing with a taste for violence. Together, Sam & Max are the Freelance Police, ridding the streets of bottom-feeding sludge one dastardly miscreant at a time. Over the last two decades, Sam & Max have appeared in a number of formats, including independent comics, a graphic adventure game, and a Saturday morning cartoon. Sam & Max: Season 1 marks the duo's triumphant return into the limelight.

Sam & Max: Season 1 is scheduled to kick off in the coming weeks and run through April. The pilot episode, Culture Shock, will debut October 17, 2006 on GameTap, and will become available worldwide on Telltale's website November 1. Episodes 2–6 will follow the same pattern, with each episode debuting on GameTap 15 days before its worldwide release. Beginning with episode 2 in December, the games will be released monthly. Stand-alone machinima "shorts" will be released weekly to bridge the gap between episodes, beginning in December."