Steve Purcell, an artist, was an employee of LucasArts throughout the 1990s. For the 1993 LucasArts video game Star Wars: Rebel Assault, Purcell's filmed image was layered onto existing footage from Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back. This created the visual representation of the commander stationed at Gamma Base.
The face of a Rebel commander (on the left) was provided by Purcell Purcell is most famous for creating the Sam & Max comic series. This series first achieved commercial recognition as a complete comic series in 1987. Purcell later joined LucasArts as an animator and started writing Sam & Max: Freelance Police comics for The Adventurer, the quarterly magazine published by LucasArts. These comics sometimes included parodies of Star Wars. In 1993, LucasArts launched the initial Sam & Max video game, titled Sam & Max Hit the Road, which Purcell assisted in designing.
The duo is composed of Sam, a dog with sentience, and Max, a ferocious and deranged rabbit. During Purcell's tenure at LucasArts, they made easter egg appearances in several LucasArts games, such as Star Wars: Dark Forces, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, and Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. Max also made a distinct appearance as a non-playable character in that particular game, and his canonicity was mentioned in other sources.
Purcell is married to Collette Michaud, a former artist and game designer at LucasArts and Lucas Learning. Michaud's appearance served as the inspiration for Ru Murleen in Star Wars: Rebel Assault.