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Maniac Mansion

Areala

By Areala
in Retro Video Gaming!

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miketheratguy Explorer

miketheratguy

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Ah, another thread that's been revived from years of decay. Another thread that I'm all-too happy to see!

Maniac Mansion is, without question, one of my top favorite games of all time, on any system. That game had such an impact on my life that I couldn't even recount all my memories of it without writing several dozen paragraphs. I could seriously write a small book about the game - a fitting endeavor since I made a 20-page comic book about it when I was 12 and got the game for Christmas.

I will give a short version of the events though, because this game - and this thread - deserve no less. So it's the fall of 1989 or perhaps the spring of 1990 and I'm 11 years old, going on 12 some months down the line. I'm at my friend Matt Harvey's house and he's showing me some games on his Apple IIe. I LOVED the Apple IIe. It was my introduction to computer gaming and I spent many an hour at the library browsing their catalog and asking to play things like Zork or Stickybear Math. Matt though - Matt had the setup. The computer was presumably meant for the family but he's the only one I saw using it, and he had one of those old floppy disk containers that housed like 100 disks. You know the things I'm talking about, right? Everyone here is old enough to be familiar with those things? They were those little -

Here, one of these things. Ignore the fact that some millennial hipster is using them for CDs.

5_25-cd-container.jpg

And don't let wordpress know that I stole their photo. They seem to want to make sure that everyone knows where it came from.

So anyway Matt's got one of those things and I swear he had dozens upon dozens of disks. It blew my mind that there could be that many games in one place. And there were MULTIPLE games per disk! Very few were official store-bought floppies; Matt had an older brother and he'd apparently copied a bunch of games from his friends. "Copied"??? You can COPY computer games too? It was overwhelming.

So Matt shows me a few games. Aliens, Montezuma's Revenge, a hilarious indie parody game called "Dino Smurf" in which you controlled "Smurfbutcher Bob" and had him traveling through time to kill Smurfs. If that doesn't date this memory then nothing will. So anyway he's showing me the games and one title really sticks out - "Maniac Mansion". How could a game with a title like that NOT be rad? I thought that it would be some kind of haunted house game but what I got was oh so much better. I'll never forget the amazement that I felt at being able to choose a party of characters that all had unique personality traits and skills. I'll never forget how incredible it felt to actually interact with the characters' environment, whether it was making them open doors or making them take items from a shelf. The game was one of the first and most prominent in my history of gaming discovery. You know the feeling: That special game that makes you stop and think "holy shit, this game is presenting me with a level of depth, content, complexity and / or fun that I never thought possible before".

I loved the game fully, and immediately. It took my heart and never looked back and I'm perfectly okay with that. Once I got the controls and figured out what I was doing (and, again: once I allowed my mind to think outside the box of what I considered possible for a game to that point) I was able to plunge deeper into the game, to the point that I didn't want to stop and hang out with my friend. It actually went so far that there were times when I asked to go over to his house, secretly doing it only so I could play the game again!

I played it every time I went to his house. I forced myself to watch the shitty TV show that was not even slightly loosely based on the game. I had fits of ecstasy (not THAT kind. I was 12 years old, you drunken pedo) when I read the Nintendo Power "Pak Watch" preview that announced the game's impending arrival on the NES. I wrote comics. I drew pictures. I typed stories. I begged for the game as my number one Christmas wish and I tape-recorded the music right off of the tv so I could listen to the soundtrack. I bought every gaming magazine that covered it. I showed it to both of my parents and every one of my friends. And yes - ohhh, yes - you better believe that I still have that very same 1990 first edition NES copy to this day.

Maniac Mansion, I salute you. In recognition of your rabid awesomeness, I can only offer this equally awesome tribute in return.

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miketheratguy Explorer

miketheratguy

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After taking a closer look at the ad, I wonder if anyone here has that official hint book that Lucasarts published. That would be a fun addition to the archives. :)

Almost forgot! I myself did not have the hint book that came with the game (it was $7 bucks I think, and I just talked myself out of trying to convince my parents to write a check for a $7 dollar hint book for a game that I'd already beaten) but the guy who ran "The Power House", one of the two most prominent rental places in town, had a copy. It was actually really cool: It was set up in a straightforward question and answer format and because the answers were anaglyphs you couldn't read them unless you used the 3d filter insert that came with the booklet. This was an awesome idea because it prevented you from accidentally seeing the answer that you didn't yet want revealed.

I believe that somewhere I DO still have the poster that came with the game. It was great - an in-universe bulletin board that seemed to be hanging in the halls of whatever school the protagonists attended and which was full of all kinds of little clues for the game. Probably the coolest pack-in freebie this side of the infamous "Startropics letter".

I think that I've got the hint book in digital form (though if I recall it's useless as anything more than a curiosity because one can't read the anaglyph print) and the bulletin board poster can be found online.

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  • 3 months later...
kitsunebi Proficient

kitsunebi

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Maybe I need to dig out the emulator......

 

 

If you aren't averse to playing the game with a mouse as was intended, you can play this excellent fan-made remake for free:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/401/

 

The only reason to play the NES version is for the awesome soundtrack.  It's inferior in pretty much every other regard (though admittedly, that soundtrack IS pretty sweet.)

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giorgaras Newbie

giorgaras

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I loved this game.  I sold all my NES stuff at a yard sale in high school, and only got back into the system a few years ago.  Still need to get this one back.  I recently have purchased Deja Vu and Shadowgate, which I guess are sort of similar.

We all have stories like that of selling off stuff only to seriously regret it.

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