Maniac Mansion

Continuing on with the theme of Favorite Games, here’s a hint on the one I’m about to talk about:

Maniac Mansion (NES)

Another cult classic (a theme you’ll see spring up in my posts about old games), Maniac Mansion was an amalgamation of B-Movie horror schlock centered around a group of teenagers led by Dave Miller who venture into a dilapidated mansion to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend. The mansion is inhabited by the quirky yet murderous Edison family: Dr. Fred, an insane scientist who is possessed by an evil meteor from outer space; his wife Edna, a grotesque, sex-starved nurse who is into BDSM; their son Weird Ed, a paranoid paramilitary survivalist; Dead Cousin Ted, a mummy in the bathroom; and their pets, a pair of talking, ambulatory tentacles. Developed and published by Lucasfilm Games (which would go on to later change its name to LucasArts) for the popular computers of the time, the Commodore 64, Apple ][, IBM PC, Amiga, and Atari ST, it was also released, as can be seen above, for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was the first game to utilize the venerable SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) engine, which would go on to be reused in many later LucasArts adventure games being both updated and rewritten several times.

In 1990, Lucasarts began developing NES games, and their first one for the system was a port of Maniac Mansion. Rather than a direct port of the licensed version Jaleco created for the Famicom (which was uncensored but had much simpler graphics and no battery save, instead relying on a password system with codes that could run up to 104 characters long), they decided to create an all new version and created a new customized version of the SCUMM engine for the NES. This version contained a battery save and a custom theme song for each player character (not to mention some of the best music to ever grace the NES).

Maniac Mansion was unique on the NES for its multiple endings, which few games for the system had implemented at the time. It was also unique among the LucasArts adventure games for containing permadeath; it was possible for all three of your kids to be slain during the adventure. Sadly but unsurprisingly, LucasArts had to censor several elements to satisfy Nintendo's then draconian rules. Douglas Crockford, the programmer in charge of producing the NES Maniac Mansion, would later describe the challenges of producing this port in his essay The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System (and gained a measure of internet fame when he posted it to video game message boards). Whatever, it's still my favorite version of the game, even if some of the sexual innuendo and black humor was removed (although not everything was removed, as anyone who has ever roasted Weird Ed's hamster in the microwave can testify).

If I saw bulletin boards like this in college, I would've attended class more often

As you can see on that blurb up there on the box cover, there was also a weekly science fiction/family sitcom that was produced entirely in Toronto, Ontario by Atlantis Films and aired on the Family Channel (which would later become Fox Family Channel and finally its current form as ABC Family).

It was very loosely based (veeeery loosely) on the game and starred the Edisons, a family living in a large mansion in the town of Cedar Springs, headed up by father Fred (Joe Flaherty), an eccentric scientist, his wife Casey (Deborah Theaker), and their children, teenage Tina (Kathleen Robertson), pubescent Ike (Avi Phillips) and toddler Turner (George Buza). Living with the Edisons are Casey’s brother Harry Orca (John Hemphill) and his wife Idella Muckle-Orca (Mary Charlotte-Wilcox). Fred inherited the mansion from his father, also a scientist, as well as the extraterrestrial meteor that was discovered living under the mansion several generations ago. The meteor possesses odd supernatural powers, causing strange things to happen around the house, including mutating toddler Turner into the body of a full-grown man and turning Harry into a tiny human headed fly (ala the movie The Fly). The show was directed by Eugene Levy, former writer and cast member of the Canadian sketch comedy show Second City TV, and several SCTV alumni played parts on the show. Maniac Mansion’s humor was very similar to SCTV in that it was filled with pop culture references and occasional parodies of movies, television shows, and commercials. It also frequently broke the fourth wall, especially Harry, frequently talking directly to the audience about the goings on in the episode.

The show was initially well received by critics, but only lasted three seasons and 66 episodes, most likely due to poor ratings. Many fans of the game don’t like the show, but I enjoyed it. After all, the game’s material could only serve to fill so many episodes as presented, so I can’t fault Levy for trying to go a different direction with it.

But what if he had stuck more closely to the game you ask?

Maniac Mansion also spawned a sequel called Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle. It’s a fun game, but I feel it lets down the original, lacking the humor and freedom present in Maniac Mansion (not to mention Maniac Mansion’s multiple endings) being a more classical adventure game. It stars the geeky coward Bernard Bernoulli (the only returning player character from Maniac Mansion) and his friends Laverne and Hoagie as they use a time machine to stop Purple Tentacle from taking over the world.

Day of the Tentacle

Day of the Tentacle follows the point-and-click two-dimensional adventure game formula, first established by the original Maniac Mansion. Players direct the controllable characters around the game world by clicking with the computer mouse. To interact with the game world, players choose from a set of commands arrayed on the screen and then on an object in the world. This was the last SCUMM game to use the classic interface of having the bottom of the screen being taken up by a verb selection and inventory.

Day of the Tentacle was directed, produced, designed and written by Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer. The story was a cooperative effort between Grossman, Schafer, Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick. The game was originally intended to resemble Maniac Mansion more closely, with the player allowed to choose from among six characters who would have included a male poet named Chester, a female hippie named Moonglow described as “a New Age girl with sandals”, and Razor from the original game. This idea was dropped in preproduction to simplify the project. The art created for the character of Chester was eventually adapted for the characters of the sculptor twins in the final game.

At the 2009 E3 convention, it was revealed that a special edition remake of The Secret of Monkey Island along with a new episodic series of games created by Telltale Games, Tales of Monkey Island, would be released in 2009. Telltale Games CEO, Dan Connors, when asked about the possibility of bringing back other LucasArts adventure titles, noted that an episodic game based on Day of the Tentacle would be “feasible”, seeing it as part of a trilogy of LucasArts adventure games along with Sam & Max and Monkey Island. However, Connors cautioned that such an endeavor would hinge on the sales of the new Monkey Island titles.

Personally, I’d prefer a new Maniac Mansion.

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