If you live in the UK and ‘Wallace and who…?’ is the question you’re now asking yourself, then please put down the magazine and quietly emigrate. If Nick Park’s affable creations can breach that massive Atlantic culture barrier and reach Telltale games on the far side of the US, then short of being in a coma for the last 20 years, you’ve no excuse for your ignorance.

It’s not the first time that the duo has graced the medium of PC gaming but with the Telltale effect, Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures is going episodic, which is very much in the spirit of the original animated shorts. We spoke to W&G’s design director Dave Grossman who told us why Telltale chose them rather than any other animated comic duo: “Well, Wallace came up with this really great gadget that designs games automatically at the push of a button, and we couldn’t wait to get our hands on it. Unfortunately, somebody poured coffee into it to try to make it work faster and it dismantled half of our office, then exploded. But we’d already agreed to do the games. Fortunately, we really like Wallace and Gromit! There are a large number of fans here in the studio. They’re rich, loveable, very funny characters who offer an interesting variety of possibilities for stories and game play. We also think fans of our other series will enjoy them.” As for the input that Nick Park’s hub of creativity, Aardman Studios, has put into this new series: “Aardman has kindly given us plenty of feedback on how to make things look and feel more like Wallace & Gromit. We’ll send some samples over, and they’ll say ‘that looks great, but try putting thumbprints on the models to make it look more like people have been working with the clay.’ Their films are visually very distinctive and it’s helped us to have their input on a wide variety of topics like character design, movement, lighting, camera work and so on. They also hooked us up with an editor who has been helping us to master the finer points of humour, with a ‘u’ as it is understood in northern England.”

Dave signed off by giving us a flavour for Wallace & Gromit, “These games follow the films and shorts only in the sense that they stay true to the world and the characters. The stories are all brand new, concocted by the talented writers here at Telltale. We’ll be covering a variety of topics over the season, we’ll meet some of the colourful locals, there will be peril and cleverness, relationships will be tested, and in at least one instance, Wallace will get into trouble and Gromit will get him back out again. The great thing is that you, as the player, get to do both!” Sounds like another ‘cracking good’ adventure series from Telltale.