Maniac Mansion (1988)

Maniac Mansion (1988) created by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, developed and published by Lucasfilm Games

Maniac Mansion wasn't the first game Lucasfilm Games developed, but it might have been the game that placed them on the map, at least as far as adventure gamers were concerned. Not only was it a good game in its own right, but it also brought in a more varied gameplay in terms of having 7 characters you could choose among 6 to accompany the hero Dave on his quest to rescue his girlfriend Sandy from the clutches of demented Dr. Fred and the purple meteor that is keeping him on his evil grasp. This possibility to play as different characters brought in alternative ways of completing the game, thus expanding the gameplay further than what typical adventure games could offer.

Then there's the rather snappy mouse-controlled UI with a verb menu, which meant, that you didn't have to try and guess what words the game devs wanted you to type in. Now, Maniac Mansion wasn't the first mouse-driven adventure game ever made, I do believe there were a handful of Apple computer games before it, but I do suspect it did bring this new control method to the eyes of a wider audience before Sierra managed to create their own iteration of it a couple of years later.

 

The story of Maniac Mansion is pretty simple. Sandy, Dave's girlfriend has gone missing and he has to gather a group of teens to the rescue. The other characters are the nerd Bernard (the only kid that found his way to the sequel, Day of the Tentacle), Sydney, and Razor, who both are musicians, an aspiring writer Wendy and a photographer Michael. Their interests are significant, as this has an effect on how you solve puzzles in the game. It should be possible to solve the game with all the combinations, but some might be a bit harder than others.

So, the kids enter the mansion with a simple goal in mind, to rescue Sandy. But the Edison family is not the only obstacle on their way, there's the evil purple meteor as well as the mutant tentacles (which also ended up in the Day of the Tentacle) that guard the mansion.

The main bulk of the puzzles are the same for any combo, but the methods for getting rid of the meteor and rescuing Sandy vary quite a bit from getting the meteor a book deal to informing the space police of its location. All in all, there should be at least 5 possible endings, depending on what you did and with whom you played. And it all is presented in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, as this is a b-horror movie parody after all.

Unlike in most other Lucasfilm adventure games, it's possible to die in Maniac Mansion. You can also lose the game if you take too much time rescuing Sandy. Yes, the game does run on a timer, but it's not tremendously strict or panic-inducing. There are a lot of timed events during the game as well, which means you do have to keep an eye on them. But again, I'm not sure if you can end up in a truly unwinnable situation. It might be possible if you end up with more than one kid dead.

As far as puzzles go, Maniac Mansion is on the harder side of Lucasfilm's adventures. It's not as unforgiving and moon logic-relying as Sierra games were, but it does take time and effort for first-time players. And, when you know the strengths of the characters, it's easy to find puzzles that could have been solved with some other characters you didn't choose. I do remember re-starting the game multiple times with different parties when I originally played it many, many years ago.

Maniac Mansion is one of those occasions, where it feels like that the creators hit a home run from the get-go. It might not be 100% perfect, but it is close. It really re-defined the whole adventure genre the same way Roberta and Ken Williams did in 1980 when they released the game that built Sierra, Mystery House. It paved the way for the games like Monkey Island, which brought in more leisurely gameplay, that didn't feel like it was actively fighting against the player the whole way through.

It's no wonder, that many people consider Maniac Mansion one of the most important games in the history of adventure games. It innovated a lot and improved upon many things that had come before it. And to top of it, it's also a very good game.

There's really a lot to love about Maniac Mansion. The setting, the humor, the visuals, the gameplay, the puzzles, the re-play value. Even with the sparse writing, there is, the characters manage to come out as something of individuals, who need to help each other out from the debacle they are in. And, on top of it, it gave the name for Lucasfilm's adventure game engine SCUMM, which stands for Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion.

It's a shame, there's no remastered version of Maniac Mansion. I mean an official one. There's a fan-made Deluxe version, that shifts the game into a more colorful environment, but I'd love to see a remaster, where the game art would be based on the fantastic box art by Ken Macklin. A bit of expanded story wouldn't hurt either with added voice acting and a higher-quality soundtrack. 

But anyhow, the game really is worth playing even as it is. While it is harder than most modern adventure games, it's not as hard as the worst offenders of the era it was made in. It does play more like a modern adventure, but it still is rooted in the time it was made, so it's by no means a cakewalk.

Maniac Mansion can be run on ScummVM (no surprise there), so if you already own it, you can play it with that. Or if you prefer getting a digital copy, you could grab one from GOG or Steam. Oh, and there's actually a TV series based on Maniac Mansion as well. I've never seen it myself, but I just thought it an interesting little factoid.