Serious Sam

Serious Sam is a video game series created and primarily developed by Croteam. It consists predominantly of first-person shooters. The series follows the advances of mercenary Sam "Serious" Stone against Mental, an extraterrestrial overlord who attempts to destroy humanity at various points in time. The first game, Serious Sam: The First Encounter, was released for Microsoft Windows in March 2001. Several spin-offs were developed by other developers, such as a Palm OS conversion of The First Encounter by InterActive Vision, Serious Sam: Next Encounter (on GameCube and PlayStation 2) by Climax Solent, and Serious Sam Advance (on Game Boy Advance) by Climax London. All three were published by Global Star Software.

This article is about the video game series. For the first entry, see Serious Sam: The First Encounter. For the Game Boy Advance game, see Serious Sam Advance.

Serious Sam
The "Serious Bomb" logo since Serious Sam 4
Genre(s)First-person shooter
Developer(s)Croteam[lower-alpha 1]
Publisher(s)
Platform(s)
List
First releaseSerious Sam: The First Encounter
21 March 2001
Latest releaseSerious Sam: Tormental
8 April 2022

Development

Croteam created a proprietary engine for use in both Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. At the time Croteam was making Serious Sam, licensing other engines was costly (upwards of US$1 million), so they made their own from scratch, following the feature set of the first Doom engine, which simulated 3D spaces in 2D, and did not include up or down targeting. As they were creating their own, both Duke Nukem 3D (which added up-and-down freelook) and Quake (a fully 3D rendered environment) were released, requiring Croteam to incorporate these features into their engine for their game to be competitive. Development was further complicated when the first 3D accelerators were released, forcing Croteam to develop for hardware rendering over software.[1] Recognizing they needed to bring something new to what other games were pushing at that time, Croteam decided that they would make their Serious Engine support extremely large environments, with virtual view distances of over a kilometre, physics support, and capable of rendering up to a hundred enemies on screen at a time, and do this on the processing power of what current low-end computers using the original Pentium CPUs could handle.[1] The team devised ways of doing object path caching so that they only had to perform collision detection with environmental features every few seconds rather than every cycle. Collision detection was also sped up by approximating the environment with spheres rather than boxes. This also enabled them to have multidirection gravity which was used for some of the game's secret areas.[1]

Serious Engine 1 is available as open-source software.[2] A more powerful iteration of the Serious Engine was developed for use in Serious Sam 2 and is known as Serious Engine 2. It supports many features of modern GPUs such as pixel and vertex shaders, HDR, bloom and parallax mapping. Serious Engine 3 was used in Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter and Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter. It includes detailed shading, and enemies are re-modelled to look more realistic. This engine is also being developed to harness the full capacity of HDR and high definition mapping. An updated version, Serious Engine 3.5, is used in Serious Sam 3.

Serious Sam is voiced by John Dick.[3]

After the release of both HD remakes of the original Serious Sam episodes, Devolver Digital re-released both classic encounters in 2010 and Serious Sam 2 in 2011.[4]

Games

Main series
Title Details
Serious Sam: The First Encounter

Original release date:
  • WW: 21 March 2001[5]
 Release years by system:
2001 – Windows
2001 – Palm OS
2002 – Xbox

HD Version
2009 – Windows
2010 – Xbox 360
2017 – Linux
2020 – Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Notes:
  • First-person shooter
  • Published by Gathering of Developers
  • The Xbox version of the game is published by Gotham Games, which combines The First Encounter and The Second Encounter into one game
  • In 2003, both The First Encounter and The Second Encounter were compiled into one single collection titled Serious Sam: Gold
  • On 24 November 2009, The First Encounter was re-released with high-definition graphics titled Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter[6]
  • On 31 March 2017, The First Encounter was re-released with virtual reality support titled Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter[7]
  • A bundle containing both of the original games, titled Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, was developed by Alligator Pit and was in early access from 2014 until its full release in 2019[8]
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

Original release date:
  • WW: 5 February 2002[9]
 Release years by system:
2002 – Windows, Xbox

HD Version
2010 – Windows, Xbox 360
2017 – Linux
2020 – Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Notes:
  • First-person shooter
  • Published by Gathering of Developers
  • The Xbox version of the game is published by Gotham Games, which combines The Second Encounter and The First Encounter into one game
  • In 2003, both The First Encounter and The Second Encounter were compiled into one single collection titled Serious Sam: Gold
  • On 28 April 2010, The Second Encounter was re-released with high-definition graphics titled Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter[10]
  • On 4 April 2017, The Second Encounter was re-released with virtual reality support titled Serious Sam VR: The Second Encounter[11]
  • A bundle containing both of the original games, titled Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, was developed by Alligator Pit and was in early access from 2014 until its full release in 2019[8]
Serious Sam 2

Original release date:
  • WW: 11 October 2005[12]
 Release years by system:
2005 – Windows, Xbox
Notes:
Serious Sam 3: BFE

Original release date:
  • WW: 22 November 2011[13]
 Release years by system:
2011 – Windows
2012 – Mac OS X, Xbox 360, Linux
2014 – PlayStation 3
2020 – Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Notes:
  • Developed by Croteam and published by Devolver Digital
  • Prequel to Serious Sam
  • On 10 November 2017, Serious Sam 3: BFE was re-released with virtual reality support titled Serious Sam 3 VR: BFE
Serious Sam 4

Original release date:
  • WW: 24 September 2020
 Release years by system:
2020 – Windows, Stadia
2021 – PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
Notes:
Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem

Original release date:
  • WW: 25 January 2022
 Release years by system:
2022 – Windows, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
Notes:

Spin-offs
Title Details
Serious Sam: Next Encounter

Original release dates:
  • NA: 14 April 2004
  • EU: 30 April 2004
 Release years by system:
2004 – GameCube, PlayStation 2
Notes:
Serious Sam Advance

Original release dates:
  • NA: 14 April 2004
  • EU: 30 April 2004
 Release years by system:
2004 – Game Boy Advance
Notes:
Serious Sam Double D

Original release date:
  • WW: 30 August 2011
 Release years by system:
2011 – Windows
2013 – Xbox 360 (XXL)
Notes:
  • Developed by Mommy's Best Games and published by Devolver Digital
  • An expanded version, Serious Sam Double D XXL, was released for the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade in February 2013, introducing a local cooperative multiplayer mode. The Windows version followed as a free update for the original game
Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack!

Original release date:
  • WW: 15 September 2011
 Release years by system:
2011 – Android, iOS
2012 – Windows
Notes:
Serious Sam: The Random Encounter

Original release date:
  • WW: 24 October 2011
 Release years by system:
2011 – Windows
Notes:
Serious Sam: The Greek Encounter

Original release date:
  • WW: 24 January 2012
 Release years by system:
2012 – Windows
Notes:
Serious Sam's Bogus Detour

Original release date:
  • WW: 20 June 2017
 Release years by system:
2017 – Windows, Linux
Notes:
Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope

Original release date:
  • WW: 20 September 2017
 Release years by system:
2017 – Windows
Notes:
I Hate Running Backwards

Original release date:
  • WW: 22 May 2018
 Release years by system:
2018 – Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Notes:
Serious Sam: Tormental

Original release date:
  • WW: 8 April 2022
 Release years by system:
2022 – Windows
Notes:
  • Developed by Gungrounds
  • Published by Devolver Digital
  • Formerly in early access from 2 April 2019

Notes
  1. Croteam is the series' creator and primary developer. Other developers that worked on Serious Sam games are InterActive Vision, Climax London, Climax Solent, Mommy's Best Games, Be-Rad Entertainment, Vlambeer, Eric Ruth Games, Crackshell, Croteam VR, Binx Interactive, Timelock Studio, and Gungrounds.

References
  1. Mosettig, Nikola; Manansala, Lee (3 October 2018). "War Stories: Serious Sam almost didn't happen—until crates saved the day". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 3 October 2018. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  2. "Serious Sam's Serious Engine source code released". Croteam. 11 March 2016. Archived from the original on 12 March 2016. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
  3. Martin, Joe (12 August 2009). "Serious Sam voice actor for hire to fans". Bit-Tech. Archived from the original on 12 August 2020. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  4. "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter HD Review". BitTech. Retrieved 7 March 2023.
  5. "Serious Sam: The First Encounter". GameSpot. 26 October 2019. Archived from the original on 8 June 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  6. "Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter". Steam. Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  7. "Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter". Steam. Archived from the original on 20 April 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  8. "Serious Sam Classics: Revolution". Steam. Archived from the original on 7 June 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  9. "15th anniversary of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter". Croteam. 6 February 2017. Archived from the original on 16 June 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  10. "Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter". Steam. Archived from the original on 10 May 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  11. "Serious Sam VR: The Second Encounter". Steam. Archived from the original on 21 June 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  12. "Serious Sam 2". Croteam. Archived from the original on 16 May 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  13. "Serious Sam 3: BFE". Croteam. Archived from the original on 13 May 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  14. O'Connor, Alice (10 January 2022). "Serious Sam shoots through Siberia in a standalone expansion this month". Rock Paper Shotgun. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  15. "Serious Sam's Bogus Detour on Steam". store.steampowered.com. Archived from the original on 6 August 2020. Retrieved 15 July 2020.
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