Pajama Sam
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The Pajama Sam series is a collection of children's adventure and puzzle games created by Humongous Entertainment. They primarily involve clicking to get to a destination, although some sub-quests and mini-games involve the keyboard. Pajama Sam is helped throughout the series by an array of normally inanimate objects that are alive in the various worlds he visits. The Pajama Sam series features a gentle humor and a good natured hero (Sam) which is well suited for its target audience of younger children.
Sam idolizes a comic book hero (invented for the series) named Pajama-Man (which is why Sam calls himself Pajama Sam when he goes off on an adventure). In the second game, the developers included a mini-comic book featuring the adventures of Pajama-Man. The games also include a collectible item - socks in the first, puzzle pieces in the second, boxtops in the third, and trading cards in the fourth.
There are currently four adventures in the series and several arcade/puzzle games:
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[edit] Main Adventure Games
- Pajama Sam [1] in "No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside" (PC, Macintosh) (1996)
- Pajama Sam, frustrated with his fear of the dark, enters the "Land of Darkness" through his closet hoping to capture Darkness, who has been anthropomorphized into an actual character. The land of darkness itself is littered with items that one would find in a basement or closet - socks, washing machines, etc. and is full of whimsical or surreal situations. Sam searches for his lost possessions (his "Pajama Sam mask", his lunch-box, and his flashlight) which have been confiscated in a customs inspection at the beginning of the adventure. The entire adventure occurs at night, overshadowed by fact that Darkness' name appears in most locations in the game. Sam meets the characters King, the mine car and Otto, the rowboat who appear in Pajama Sam's Lost and Found.
- Pajama Sam 2: Thunder and Lightning Aren't so Frightening (PC, Macintosh) (1998)
- Pajama Sam, this time frustrated with his fear of thunderstorms and lightning, travels up into the clouds through his attic to confront Thunder and Lightning, who are actual characters in the same sense that Darkness was in Pajama Sam 1. Unfortunately, Sam accidentally causes a malfunction of the "weather machine" (which controls the weather of the entire world) while in its control room, causing a mess-up of weather around the globe. The adventure finds Sam searching for the pieces missing from the weather machine to restore correct weather to the world before Mother Nature arrives. Sam must help the Wingnut, the "Y" pipe, the Velocimometer and the Snowflake inspector.
- Pajama Sam 3: You Are What You Eat From Your Head To Your Feet (PC, Macintosh, PlayStation) (2000): Sam finds and helps save food representatives. Sam must find and help Chuck Chedder, Cheese of Adventure, Granny Smythe (an apple), Bean 47 and Pierre Le Pain (a French baguette). Along the way Sam finds the perfect sandwich and helps a sad-sack stand-up comedian tell funny jokes, in addition to a host of other activities, such as taking etiquette lessons or skiing.
- Pajama Sam [4]: Life is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff! (PC) (2003): Sam wants to go to the shopping mall so that Pajama Man can autograph his favorite comic book.
[edit] Puzzle Games
Both of these games were originally released as Junior Arcade games for ages 3-8.
- Pajama Sam Sock Works (PC, Macintosh) (1997):
- As he is getting ready for bed, Sam's mother asks him to sort his socks. Before doing this, though, he begins to dream about having a machine to do it for him. The game consists of helping Sam guide the socks through the machine into the correct sorting bins.
- Pajama Sam's Lost & Found (PC, Macintosh) (1998):
- Sam, trying to find his misplaced belongings, travels through various lands within his room. In each level, he is riding on a particular character (some from his previous adventures, some not).
[edit] Other programs
- Pajama Sam's One Stop Fun Shop (PC, Macintosh) (2000):
- A printing program that lets children make and print their own creations with the Pajama Sam characters.
- "Pajama Sams Games to play on any day" (PC, Macintosh) (2001):
- Pajama Sam is bored on a rainy day so he decides to play a board game and his favorite game is on the top. Sam climbs up the shelf and gets the game but falls into a pile of other board games. When he lands he is in a world where he can play 8 classic games and 2 puzzle games.
[edit] Trivia
- The Pajama Sam games can be played on other platforms by using ScummVM.
- The series has many characters that make cameos in the sequel to their debut game, most notably a Carrot X, a mask-wearing carrot-superhero who is an undercover activist for carrot rights. In the first adventure, this carrot claims to be a member of the 'salad liberation front,' working toward the rights of carrots to be the main course of the meal, not just part of a salad. In the second adventure, he is seen stuck as the nose of a snowman, until Sam manages to replace him. Later in the adventure, Sam leaves him at the board meeting, where it is possible to hear his dialogue with the other members (and in which he presumably continues his fight for carrot rights).
- For unknown reasons, no other human characters are shown in this franchise, although Sam's mom can be heard at the beginning some of the games, all of the other characters are anthropomorphized objects, such as knives, carrots, snowmen, and so forth. However, other family members are sometimes mentioned, such as Mark, Sam's elder brother.
- In the first game, a line of the poem Jabberwocky is quoted ("Beware the JubJub bird, and shun the frumious bandersnatch!") to Sam's confusion ("What is this?")
