Maniac Mansion
Encyclopedia
Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure game
developed and published by Lucasfilm Games
. It was Lucasfilm's first published video game, and it was initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II. A comedy horror
parody of B movie
s, it follows teenager Dave Miller as he ventures into a mansion and attempts to rescue his girlfriend from an evil mad scientist
. The player uses a point-and-click
control system to guide Dave and two of his friends through the mansion, avoiding its dangerous inhabitants and solving puzzles. The game was conceived in 1985 by Ron Gilbert
and Gary Winnick, and they based the story on horror film and B movie clichés with humorous elements. They based the characters on people they knew as well as on characters from movies, comics, and horror magazines.
The game's point-and-click interface was born out of the designers' desire to improve on contemporary text parser-based
graphical adventure game
s seen in most Sierra Entertainment
adventure titles. Gilbert implemented a game engine
named SCUMM
to reduce the effort required for the envisioned game. The engine and its accompanying scripting language
have been later re-used for many other games
. The developers reduced the game's size to 64 KB
to fit within the Commodore 64's size limitations. Maniac Mansion was ported
to several other platforms; its Nintendo Entertainment System
(NES) version had to be considerably modified to follow Nintendo of America's content policies, which barred material deemed inappropriate for children.
Regarded as a seminal adventure title, Maniac Mansion received critical acclaim across all ports; reviewers lauded its graphics, cutscenes, animation, and humor. Its point-and-click interface has been regarded as revolutionary by reviewers and other developers, and has served as a template for future Lucasfilm titles. The game influenced numerous other titles, has been placed on several "hall of fame" lists, and has received fan remakes with enhanced visuals. A TV series
was created in 1990, which Eugene Levy
created and which starred comedian Joe Flaherty
as the mad scientist Dr. Fred; the series lasted for three seasons, filming 66 episodes. Lucasfilm Games released the sequel Day of the Tentacle
in 1993, which also received critical acclaim.
shows that a meteor crashed near the mansion 20 years earlier. The sentient
meteor took control of the family and caused Dr. Fred to start sucking out human brains for use in experiments – something in which the rest of his family has supported and encouraged. One day, main protagonist Dave Miller's cheerleader
girlfriend, Sandy Pantz, disappears without a trace, and he suspects that Dr. Fred has kidnapped her. After the game's introduction, Dave and his two companions prepare to enter the mansion to rescue Sandy; the game starts with a prompt for the player to select two of six characters to accompany Dave.
Maniac Mansion is a graphic adventure game
in which the player uses a point-and-click
interface to guide characters through a two-dimensional
(2D) game world and to solve puzzles. Players can select among fifteen different commands with this scheme; they include "Walk to", to move the characters; "New kid", to switch between the three characters; and "Pick up", to collect objects. Each character possesses unique abilities; for example, Syd and Razor can play musical instruments, while Bernard can repair appliances. The game may be completed with any character combination, but, because many puzzles can be solved only with specific skills, there are different ways to finish the game, depending on the characters the player has chosen.
The gameplay is regularly interrupted by cutscene
s (a term coined by Ron Gilbert) that advance the story and inform the player about non-player character
s' actions. Aside from the green tentacle, most of the mansion's inhabitants pose a threat and will throw the player character
s into the dungeon – or, in some situations, kill them – if they see them. If one character dies, a replacement must be chosen from those that were not selected at the game's start; the game ends
if all the characters die. Maniac Mansion has five possible successful endings, depending on which characters the player uses, which ones survive, and what they do.
and Gary Winnick the task of creating an original game. Gilbert had been recently hired at Lucasfilm Games by Noah Falstein
on a three-month contract to program Koronis Rift
, which Falstein was the lead developer. At the same time, Winnick was working on Labyrinth: The Computer Game, and it was then in which both Gilbert and Winnick found that they shared similar tastes in humor, movies, and television programs. Eventually, Gilbert would he hired full-time. As with earlier Lucasfilm titles, the company's management provided little oversight in the development process, which Gilbert credited the success of many of its earlier games.
Gilbert and Winnick were co-writers and lead designers of Maniac Mansion, but they worked separately on programming and art, respectively. Together, they brainstormed story ideas and, based on their love of B horror films
, decided to create a comedy–horror title set in a haunted house. They drew inspiration on the game's main ideas over what Winnick said was "a ridiculous teen horror movie" they have watched, which the teens were in a house and got slaughtered one by one, not once thinking about leaving the house. They compared this film to clichés in other popular horror films such as Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street
, and used them to come up with the game's setting. Early development involved experimentation and was organic; according to Gilbert: "Very little was written down. Gary and I just talked and laughed a lot, and out it came." After development had begun, Lucasfilm Games relocated its office to the Stable House at Skywalker Ranch
. The ranch's Main House inspired Winnick's design of the game's mansion, leading him to create the concept art for it. He recreated several rooms in the Main House for the game, such as a library with a spiral staircase and a media room with a big screen TV and grand piano. The various rooms at the ranch inspired the design of other rooms in the mansion.
The pair prioritized the story and characters and wanted to maintain a balance between a "sense of peril and sense of humor". The first character concepts were a set of siblings and their friends, which gradually evolved into the final characters. Gilbert and Winnick based the characters both on stereotypes and people they knew; for example, Winnick's girlfriend Ray inspired Razor, and while Gilbert's mother apparently served as the basis for Nurse Edna, Gilbert has denied the connection. Dave and Wendy were based on Gilbert and a fellow employee named Wendy, respectively. According to Winnick, the Edison family were based on various movie characters and elements from EC Comics
and Warren Publishing
magazines. They sought to give each playable character unique abilities. However, several characters had to be excluded due to size limitations. To parody the horror genre, they inserted many clichés into the story, drawing inspiration for several in-game elements from horror films. A segment of the 1982 anthology film
Creepshow
titled "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" was the inspiration for the meteor that takes control of Dr. Fred. The designers included a man-eating plant similar to the antagonist of the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors.
The pair struggled to choose a gameplay genre; Gilbert described their early ideas as "disconnected". While visiting relatives for Christmas, Gilbert saw his cousin playing King's Quest: Quest for the Crown. He was an adventure games fan and decided that the ideas he and Winnick had conceived would work well with the genre. His first exposure to a text adventure with graphics, Gilbert spent the holiday playing the game to familiarize himself with the format.
Gilbert and Winnick created Maniac Mansions basic structure and story prior to programming; its earliest version was a simple board game, which was playable on paper. The mansion's floor plan served as the game board, and cards represented events and characters. Lines connected the rooms to illustrate pathways characters could travel. The designers used layers of cellulose acetate
to map out the game's puzzles by tracking which items worked together when used by certain characters. Impressed with the map's complexity, Winnick included it in the game as a poster in one of the mansion's rooms. Because each character contributed different skills and resources, they spent months working on the event combinations that could occur; this extended the game's production time beyond that of Lucasfilm Games' previous titles, which almost resulted in Gilbert's termination. Though they had outlined the game's events, the dialog was not written until after programming had started; the dialog would be provided by David Fox. Maniac Mansion would be one of the first games to feature alternate endings.
memory. They used scrolling
to show objects and characters in rooms during cutscenes. The designers also used the technique to force players to explore the mansion's larger rooms by hiding elements off-screen. However, generating the individual screens for the bitmap
scrolling required 16 KB, which Gilbert considered too large. Instead, he used the computer's programmable character set to generate the game's visuals with limited memory, reducing the necessary file size per screen to around 1 KB. The set uses 8 × 8 pixel tiles
. However, the computer could store only 256 tiles, which limited the level of detail Winnick could design into the graphics. To circumvent this, Gilbert created a program to generate the tiles from Winnick's pixel art
. To comply with the tile limit, the program compared similar tiles and created approximations that could replace multiple tiles. Winnick inspected the results for visual errors and then repeated the process. To make the characters easily recognizable, Winnick made the heads relatively large. Because the Commodore 64 restricted sprites
to 24 pixels horizontally, the characters' animations never extend outside this width.
for the 6502 microprocessor
. However, he soon determined that it would have taken him far too long to realize the ambitious game concept with this approach, and he concluded that he needed to build in support for an abstract scripting language
. Gilbert initially considered basing this language on LISP but ultimately chose a syntax that more closely resembles that of the C programming language
. He discussed the problem with fellow Lucasfilm employee Chip Morningstar, who helped him build a foundation for the game engine
, which Gilbert then extended. In designing the engine and language, Gilbert developed a "system that could be used on many adventure games, cutting down the time it took to make them". He logged considerable overtime with the goal of creating an adventure game superior to those of Lucasfilm's competitors. Gilbert designed the engine to allow for multitasking
so that designers could isolate and manipulate specific game objects independently. Most of the first six to nine months of Maniac Mansions development involved building the engine.
A primary development goal was to create a control system that not only retained the structure of classic text adventures, but also dispensed with the typing. The two lead designers were frustrated with the text parser
s and the inevitable player character deaths that were prominent in the genre. While in college, Gilbert had enjoyed Colossal Cave Adventure
and Infocom
's games but had "really wanted to see graphics". He felt that the visual element Sierra Entertainment
added for its games was "a big improvement", but he disliked the games' use of text parsers. While playing Kings Quest, Gilbert found guessing what terms the designer had programmed it to recognize aggravating because he could see the object he wanted to interact with on the screen, but he had to figure out the correct commands. Gilbert reasoned that if he could view the graphic, then he should be able to click on it with a cursor; by extension, the player should also be able to click on verb commands. Gilbert devised a new and simpler interface "because I'm lazy and don't like to type. I hated playing adventure games where I had to type everything in, and I hated playing the 'second guess the parser' game so I figure everything should be point-and-click
."
The team originally envisioned 40 verb commands, but they whittled the number down to the 12 they felt were essential. The commands were then integrated into the scripting language in a similar fashion Sierra did with its Adventure Game Interpreter
(AGI) and Sierra's Creative Interpreter
(SCI). Gilbert believed that a complex game did not need a text parser, but rather an innovative use of the interactions between in-game objects. He showed the team a demonstration of Sierra games and then led a discussion about their user interface
and gameplay issues. Gilbert finished the engine – which he later named "Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion" (SCUMM
) – after around a year of development. It freed the developers from having to code the details in low-level language
. Though the game had been designed with the Commodore 64 in mind, the SCUMM engine enabled easy port
ing of Maniac Mansion to other platforms. Lucasfilm developers Aric Wilmunder and Brad Taylor would assist in the PC port of the script.
Gilbert wanted players to enjoy Maniac Mansion and not be punished for applying real world logic. In one adventure game, for example, the character could bleed to death by picking up a piece of glass. Fox asserted that "I know that in the real world I can successfully pick up a broken piece of mirror without dying" and characterized such game design as "sadistic". The team wanted to avoid illogical "surprise deaths" to spare players from having to regularly reload the game from a previous save state. As a result, the group created a number of possibilities to give the player more freedom. While scripting the game, however, the designers realized that the number of characters resulted in a very complex game with a number of flaws, particularly dead ends that prevented the player from completing the game. To address these issues, they often revised the puzzles. In retrospect, Gilbert acknowledged that the fact that Lucasfilm Games had only one tester allowed many errors to go undetected.
After around 18 to 24 months of development, the game debuted at the 1987 Consumer Electronics Show
in Chicago
. The game was initially released for the Commodore 64 in October 1987. After a Toys "R" Us customer complained about the word "lust" on the back cover, the toy store pulled the game from its shelves until Lucasfilm Games altered the box. Soon after the initial release, Lucasfilm released the Apple II
port, which featured more detailed graphics and a larger display resolution. Ports
for the Atari ST
, Amiga
, Macintosh
, and NES
eventually followed.
in September 1990, Maniac Mansion was Lucasfilm Games' first NES release. The developer was unable to properly focus on the project due to a large workload, so Douglas Crockford
volunteered to manage it. The studio used a modified version of the SCUMM engine titled "NES SCUMM" for the port. Crockford commented that "one of the main differences between the NES and PCs is that the NES can do certain things much faster". Developer Tim Schafer
, who would go on to develop other Lucasfilm games, such as the sequel Day of the Tentacle
, play-tested the port; this was Schafer's first professional credit. The studio first changed the game's graphics to conform with the NES's display resolution
and modified the content for a younger audience. Lucasfilm Games had censored profanity in Maniac Mansions content during development – Dave Miller's opening line of "Don't be a tuna head" was originally penned as "Don't be a shit head" – but the designers removed extra content for the NES release. Jaleco employee Howie Rubin advised Crockford about what content Nintendo might object to. For example, the staff removed the word "kill" from the game at his suggestion. However, reading the NES Game Standards Policy led Crockford to believe that other elements might also conflict with the policy, so he sent a list of questionable content to Jaleco. Its staff believed that the content was reasonable, and Lucasfilm Games submitted Maniac Mansion to Nintendo.
A month later, Nintendo of America sent Lucasfilm Games a report that outlined on-screen text it called offensive and nude graphics that it wanted removed. Crockford further modified the content to comply, while trying to maintain the game's essential aspects. For example, graffiti in a room provided players with hints on how to activate a story event. Unable to remove it, the designers shortened the message. Nintendo also listed objectionable dialog lines. Many of Nurse Edna's lines were originally sexually suggestive and were changed. Based on a phrase ("sucked out") that censors had deemed too graphic, the staff changed similar text on posters. The nudity Nintendo outlined encompassed a poster of a mummy in a playmate pose, a swimsuit calendar, and a classical statue of reclining woman. The studio removed the poster and calendar, but fought to keep the statue, claiming that it was modeled after a Michelangelo
sculpture. The censors suggested an alteration, but Lucasfilm Games ultimately removed the object. Nintendo of America also objected to the phrase "NES SCUMM" in the end credits. Crockford removed the phrase, but questioned why the censors had overlooked more offensive content. In retrospect, Crockford felt that such standards resulted in "bland" products and called Nintendo a "jealous god".
After implementing the changes, Lucasfilm Games re-submitted Maniac Mansion to Nintendo, which then manufactured 250,000 cartridges. The NES cartridge features a battery back-up to save data, and a prototype NES cartridge with the original content is rumored to exist. In early 1990, Nintendo announced the port in its official magazine
and provided further coverage later in the year. The ability to microwave a hamster remained in the game, which Crockford cited as an example of the censors' confusing criteria. However, Nintendo later noticed it and had it removed from the European release. After the first batch of cartridges was sold, Nintendo made Jaleco remove the content in future releases. The Japanese release omitted some graphical and musical elements, featured flip-screen
scrolling, and had alterations to the characters' appearances. Maniac Mansion was one of four games in the NES library – along with Shadowgate
, F-15 Strike Eagle, and Déjà Vu – that featured a Swedish
translation.
s Bill Scolding and Zzap!64
s three reviewers – Paul Summer, Julian Rignall
, and Steve Jarratt
– compared it to The Rocky Horror Picture Show
. Other comparisons were drawn to Psycho, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
, the The Addams Family
, and Scooby-Doo
. COMPUTE!'s Gazette
s Keith Farrell cited its similarity to films, particularly with its use of cutscenes to add "information or urgency". He lauded its high level of detail along with its graphics and animation, writing, "Each of the teenagers is fully realized, with features and wardrobe that are wholly in character." Commodore Magazines Russ Ceccola praised its cutscenes as creative and high-quality. He called its ending "unforgettable" and praised the game's audio-visuals; he noted that the "characters are distinctively Lucasfilm's, bringing facial expressions and personality to each individual character". He ended by recommending readers to buy Maniac Mansion, as it would please fans of the genre.
Zzap!64s reviewers praised the game's humor and called its point-and-click control "tremendous"; they concluded by describing the game as "innovative and polished". ACE
magazine's reviewer enjoyed the game's animation, multi-character gameplay, and depth, and called it "one of the better pics n' action games on the market". The reviewer enjoyed the game but commented that "traditional adventurers" wouldn't as much. Scolding noted its "flash graphics and black humour" and finished by calling the game one of the best of its kind. German magazine Happy-Computer compared the cinematic cutscene usage to earlier Lucasfilm titles Koronis Rift and Labyrinth: The Computer Game, and the menu system to ICOM Simulations
' Uninvited. The reviewers highly lauded the game's user-friendly menu system, graphics, originality, and overall enjoyability; one of the reviewers called it the best adventure title at the time. The magazine later reported that it was West Germany
's highest-selling video game for three straight months.
In more recent reviews, Eurogamer
s Kristan Reed praised the game's "ambitious" design, citing the cast of characters, "elegant" interface, and writing. Game designer Sheri Graner Ray
listed Maniac Mansion as an example of a game that challenged the "damsel in distress
" concept by including female protagonists. However, writer Mark Dery
commented that rescuing the kidnapped cheerleader was an example of an element that reinforced negative gender role
s. In choosing the top ten all-time games for the Commodore 64, Retro Gamer
stated that Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken were equally good, but it selected the latter because of Maniac Mansions prominence. In another issue, editor Ashley Day listed the game as having his favorite ending – the mansion's explosion upon pressing an unexpected button. In 2009, IGN
named Maniac Mansion one of the ten best LucasArts adventure game. Richard Cobbett of PC Gamer
called it "one of the most intricate and important adventure games ever made", citing the SCUMM
interface and establishing a legacy for Lucasfilm Games during this time.
's title Tass Times in Tonetown
. Addams concluded by writing that Maniac Mansion was Lucasfilm's best title released and that it is a good buy for Commodore 64 and Apple II users who were unable to play games with better visuals such as from Sierra Entertainment
. Computer Gaming World
s Charles Ardai praised the game's pacing, cutscenes, and humor, calling that it "strikes the necessary and precarious balance between laughs and suspense that so many comic horror films and novels lack". Despite faulting its small number of commands, he hailed its control system as "one of the most comfortable ever devised". However, Ardai disliked the game's small quantity of sound effects and music. Ardai finished by calling it "a clever and imaginative game[, ... and] a successful stylistic experiment".
In other multi-format reviews, The Deseret News called it "wonderful fun" and noted that the "art and animation are gorgeous". The writers considered the game's audio as "the best we've heard". Reviewing the PC and Atari ST
ports, a reviewer from The Games Machine
called Maniac Mansion "an enjoyable romp" with a structure superior to subsequent LucasArts adventure games
. However, the magazine writer noted the game's poor pathfinding
and stated that "the lack of sound effects reduces atmosphere". Of the two versions, the reviewer believed that the Atari ST audiovisuals were better. Comparing the PC version to Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
, reviewers from French magazine Génération 4 praised the game's story, interface, and humor, stating that it was "beautifully done"; however, one reviewer commented that the developers ripped the graphics from Indiana Jones. VideoGames & Computer Entertainment called Maniac Mansion "perhaps the most popular haunted-house adventure" and "a genuine cult classic with a large audience on both sides of the Atlantic"; while it found the plot and setup the same as most other horror-themed games, it praised the game's interface and execution.
The game's Amiga
version received a fair amount of praise, despite graphical shortcomings. In a 1993 review, The One Amiga
s Simon Byron noted that the game retained its "charm and humour" six years after its first release. However, he believed that its art direction had become "tacky" compared to more recent games. Byron ended by writing that "if you fancy a cheap edge-of-the-seat challenge then you couldn't really do much better". Amiga Format
reviewer Stephen Bradly found the game derivative, but he noted that it featured "loads of visual humour"; he added, "Strangely, it's quite compelling after a while." German magazine Power Play wrote that the Amiga version "played like a poem" and just as well as the other ports. Another German magazine, Amiga Joker, stated it was one of the best adventure games released for the computer, and while it wrote there were minor graphical flaws, such as a lack of variety in colors, it stated that the gameplay made up for those shortcomings. Sweden-based Datormagazins Ingela Palmér stated that the Amiga version differed little from the Commodore 64 one, and that those who already have the latter need not get the Amiga version. She added that, while the graphics and gameplay were not the best, the game remained highly enjoyable and easy. Palmér recommended that people new to the genre play this game first.
Reviewers well-received Maniac Mansions NES version. Based on the computer release's success, Game Players
writers speculated that the NES port would be one of 1990's better titles. UK-based Mean Machines
lauded the game for its presentation, playability, and replay value, while it criticized the blocky graphics and "ear-bashing tunes". Reviewer Edward Laurence wrote that little from the NES version had changed from the Commodore 64 version except for minor graphical and sound improvements. Julian Rignall compared the game to Shadowgate but noted differences between the two; he commented how Maniac Mansion had easy controls and that it lacked Shadowgates "death-without-warning situations". Despite his criticism of the audiovisuals, he wrote, "Maniac Mansions excellent, thoroughly rewarding and genuinely funny gameplay more than makes up for its deficiencies, and the end result is a highly original and very addictive adventure that no Nintendo owner should be without." Video Games magazine reviewed the translated German version, and the reviewers labeled the game as a "Video Games Classic". Co-reviewer Heinrich Lenhardt said that Maniac Mansion was unique and that no similar NES adventure game has since been released. He wrote that it was just as fun as the computer versions with good controls, but he noted that the graphics could be misleading at times. Co-reviewer Winnie Forster wrote that the game was "one of the most original representatives of the [adventure game] genre" and that it has been one of Lucasfilm's more successful games. In recent commentary, Edge magazine
staff described the port as more conservative than the original version, calling it "somewhat neutered". GamesTM
magazine writers referred to the NES version as "infamous" and heavily censored.
Maniac Mansion was featured often in the magazine Nintendo Power
. The game debuted on the magazine's Top 30 list at number 19 in February 1991, peaking at number 16 in August 1991. The magazine reviewed it again in its February 1993 issue, as part of a staff overview on overlooked or otherwise undersold NES games. The editors felt that the popular RPG Final Fantasy
overshadowed its September 1990 feature and drew more people to that game instead. Seven years after its release, in its 100th issue in September 1997, the magazine ranked the NES version the 61st best game, calling it a "brilliant adventure". In its 20th anniversary issue, the magazine listed Maniac Mansion as the 16th best NES title, praising the game for its clever and funny writing and for being unlike any other game on the system. In its November 2010 issue, as part of the NES' 25th anniversary, Chris Hoffman described the game as "unlike anything else out there – a point-and-click adventure with an awesome sense of humor and multiple solutions to almost every puzzle." Nintendo Power also commented on the ability to microwave a hamster; in its 25th anniversary retrospective, the staff stated that "it's hard to mention Maniac Mansion without it".
, had inaugurated a "new era of humor-based adventure games". Reed seconded the statement, stating that the game "set in motion a captivating chapter in the history of gaming" that encompassed wit, invention, and style. GameSpy
's Christopher Buecheler credited the game's success with making its genre commercially and critically viable. It was also one of the first video games to feature product placement
, as the game featured Pepsi
brands; other games, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (featuring Pizza Hut
), Zool
(featuring Chupa Chups
), and Tapper
(featuring Budweiser
), followed suit. Retro Gamers Stuart Hunt said in a September 2011 issue that "Maniac Mansion proved that videogames could capture the essence of an entirely different medium and opened our eyes to the wonderful things that happened when they placed their interactive stamp on them". The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle developer Dave Grossman said that Maniac Mansion revolutionized the adventure game genre, also noting the fact that the game was only 64 KB large and that the music was good, especially for PCs.
Reed described SCUMM as "revolutionary". Lucasfilm Games used the SCUMM engine to develop eleven other games in the following decade, and competitors eventually adopted similar systems; GamesTM attributed this change to a desire to streamline production and produce fun games. The developers improved the engine with each subsequent game. Following his departure from LucasArts (Lucasfilm Games had been combined under this name with ILM and Skywalker Sound
in 1990) in 1992, Gilbert used the SCUMM technology to create adventure games and Backyard Sports
games at Humongous Entertainment
. The designers built on their experience developing Maniac Mansion and expanded the process and their ambition in subsequent titles. In retrospect, Gilbert commented that he made a number of mistakes in designing Maniac Mansion (for instance, the dead-end situations that arise if certain items are used incorrectly) and applied the lessons to future games. In cut scenes, Gilbert had used a timer rather than a specific event to trigger the scene, which occasionally resulted in awkward scene changes. The designer aimed to avoid these flaws in the Monkey Island series of games. However, Gilbert commented that Maniac Mansion is his favorite because of its imperfections.
and Tales of Monkey Island
. According to Gilbert, Steve Arnold, the LucasFilm
general manager at the time, had a long running joke in which he continually requested game designers to add a character named Chuck to their game. Gilbert and Winnick were the first to humor Steve's request in Maniac Mansion. Because there was no room for an extra character name in the game, the name was given to the plant. In the game's NES version, a broken record titled The Soundtrack Of Loom references to another Lucasfilm title Loom. David Fox included a gasoline item for a nonexistent chainsaw in his game Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders as a parody of the chainsaw that required nonexistent gasoline in Maniac Mansion. Enthusiasts have created fan art
depicting the characters, participated in cosplay
based on the tentacle characters, and produced a trailer
of a fictitious live action film.
Various fanmade enhanced remakes of Maniac Mansion have appeared over the years. One German fan, Sascha Borisow, created a remake titled Maniac Mansion Deluxe with enhanced audio and visuals. He used Adventure Game Studio
freeware to develop the game, and distributed it free on the internet. The remake had over 200,000 downloads by the end of 2004. German developer Vampyr Games created a remake with 3D computer graphics
titled Meteor Mess 3D, which began as a learning tool for Gamestudio
. A group of German gamers called Edison Interactive is developing another remake, titled Night of the Meteor, which combines Maniac Mansions features with Day of the Tentacles graphics. Fans also created an episodic series of games based on Maniac Mansion. An uncensored unofficial NES version is also known to exist on Frank Cifaldi's website LostLevels.org. Gilbert stated that he would like to see an official remake resemble the gameplay and graphics from Tales of Monkey Island, but he balked, citing George Lucas
' enhanced remakes of the original Star Wars
trilogy as a reason to keep the flaws in the original game.
debuted in September 1990. It aired on YTV in Canada and The Family Channel in the United States. Partially based on the video game, the show, focused on the Edison family's life, featured Joe Flaherty
as Dr. Fred. Eugene Levy
headed the writing staff. The program was a collaboration between Lucasfilm
, The Family Channel, and Atlantis Films. In retrospect, Gilbert commented that the premise gradually changed during production to something that differed greatly from the game's original plot. Upon its debut, the show was well-received by critics; Time magazine
named it one of the best new shows of the year. However, other reviewers, such as Entertainment Weekly
s Ken Tucker
, questioned how the show made it on The Family Channel, given Flaherty's usage of SCTV
-like humor. PC Gamers Richard Cobbett, in a retrospective on the series, criticized its generic storylines and lack of relevance to the game. The series lasted for three seasons, filming 66 episodes.
In the early 1990s, LucasArts asked Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer
, who had both worked with Gilbert on the Monkey Island games, to design a sequel to Maniac Mansion, eventually titled Day of the Tentacle
. Winnick and Gilbert initially assisted with the writing. Grossman and Schafer were able to include the voices and the improved visuals Gilbert had originally envisioned for Maniac Mansion. The game discarded the character selection and branching story lines in favor of a simpler format, and introduced time travel as the main puzzle element. The developers retained the Edison family and Bernard characters, but changed the art style to more closely resemble Chuck Jones
' works. As an homage to Maniac Mansion, the designers included a puzzle that involves freezing a hamster; according to Grossman, he gave a happier outcome for the hamster as a response to Gilbert's grim ending for the hamster in Maniac Mansion. They also made the full original game playable on an in-game computer, which Grossman attributed to a software bug
. LucasArts released Day of the Tentacle in 1993 to critical acclaim.
Graphic adventure game
A graphic adventure game is a form of adventure game. They are distinct from text adventures. Whereas a player must actively observe using commands such as "look" in a text-based adventure, graphic adventures revolutionized gameplay by making use of natural human perception...
developed and published by Lucasfilm Games
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
. It was Lucasfilm's first published video game, and it was initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II. A comedy horror
Comedy horror
Comedy horror, also known as horror comedy, is a literary and film genre, combining elements of comedy and horror fiction. The comedy horror genre almost always inevitably crosses over with the black comedy genre; and in some respects could be considered a subset of it.The short story "The Legend...
parody of B movie
B movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
s, it follows teenager Dave Miller as he ventures into a mansion and attempts to rescue his girlfriend from an evil mad scientist
Mad scientist
A mad scientist is a stock character of popular fiction, specifically science fiction. The mad scientist may be villainous or antagonistic, benign or neutral, and whether insane, eccentric, or simply bumbling, mad scientists often work with fictional technology in order to forward their schemes, if...
. The player uses a point-and-click
Point-and-click
Point-and-click is the action of a computer user moving a cursor to a certain location on a screen and then pressing a mouse button, usually the left button , or other pointing device...
control system to guide Dave and two of his friends through the mansion, avoiding its dangerous inhabitants and solving puzzles. The game was conceived in 1985 by Ron Gilbert
Ron Gilbert
Ron Gilbert is an American computer game designer, programmer, and producer, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. Gilbert was also co-founder of Humongous Entertainment and its sister company Cavedog...
and Gary Winnick, and they based the story on horror film and B movie clichés with humorous elements. They based the characters on people they knew as well as on characters from movies, comics, and horror magazines.
The game's point-and-click interface was born out of the designers' desire to improve on contemporary text parser-based
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
graphical adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
s seen in most Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
adventure titles. Gilbert implemented a game engine
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
named SCUMM
SCUMM
Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion is a scripting language developed at LucasArts to ease development of the graphical adventure game Maniac Mansion....
to reduce the effort required for the envisioned game. The engine and its accompanying scripting language
Scripting language
A scripting language, script language, or extension language is a programming language that allows control of one or more applications. "Scripts" are distinct from the core code of the application, as they are usually written in a different language and are often created or at least modified by the...
have been later re-used for many other games
LucasArts adventure games
From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, LucasArts was well known for their point-and-click graphic adventure games, nearly all of which received high scoring reviews at the time of their release. Their style tended towards the humorous, often irreverent or slapstick humour, with a few exceptions...
. The developers reduced the game's size to 64 KB
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
to fit within the Commodore 64's size limitations. Maniac Mansion was ported
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
to several other platforms; its Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
(NES) version had to be considerably modified to follow Nintendo of America's content policies, which barred material deemed inappropriate for children.
Regarded as a seminal adventure title, Maniac Mansion received critical acclaim across all ports; reviewers lauded its graphics, cutscenes, animation, and humor. Its point-and-click interface has been regarded as revolutionary by reviewers and other developers, and has served as a template for future Lucasfilm titles. The game influenced numerous other titles, has been placed on several "hall of fame" lists, and has received fan remakes with enhanced visuals. A TV series
Maniac Mansion (TV Series)
Maniac Mansion is a Canadian science fiction/family sitcom very loosely based on the LucasArts video game of the same name.The series, filmed entirely in Toronto, Ontario, was produced by Atlantis Films for The Family Channel in the United States and YTV in Canada, and aired for three complete...
was created in 1990, which Eugene Levy
Eugene Levy
Eugene Levy, CM is a Canadian actor, comedian, television director, producer, musician, and writer. He is known for his work in Canadian television series, American movies, and television movies. He is the only actor to have appeared in all eight of the American Pie films, as Noah Levenstein...
created and which starred comedian Joe Flaherty
Joe Flaherty
Joe Flaherty is an American-Canadian actor and comedian. He is best known for his work on the Canadian sketch comedy SCTV, from 1976 to 1984, and as Harold Weir on Freaks and Geeks...
as the mad scientist Dr. Fred; the series lasted for three seasons, filming 66 episodes. Lucasfilm Games released the sequel Day of the Tentacle
Day of the Tentacle
Day of the Tentacle, also known as Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle, is a 1993 graphic adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to the 1987 game Maniac Mansion...
in 1993, which also received critical acclaim.
Overview
Maniac Mansion takes place in the mansion of the Edison family: Dr. Fred, Nurse Edna, and their son Weird Ed. Living with the Edisons are two large, disembodied tentacles – one purple and the other green. The intro sequenceIntro sequence
An intro sequence is a non-interactive introductory sequence for a computer or video game. Previously, intro sequences were very often prerendered, hand drawn, or otherwise outside the main game engine...
shows that a meteor crashed near the mansion 20 years earlier. The sentient
Sentience
Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think from the ability to feel . In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences...
meteor took control of the family and caused Dr. Fred to start sucking out human brains for use in experiments – something in which the rest of his family has supported and encouraged. One day, main protagonist Dave Miller's cheerleader
Cheerleading
Cheerleading is a physical activity, sometimes a competitive sport, based on organized routines, usually ranging from one to three minutes, which contain the components of tumbling, dance, jumps, cheers, and stunting to direct spectators of events to cheer on sports teams at games or to participate...
girlfriend, Sandy Pantz, disappears without a trace, and he suspects that Dr. Fred has kidnapped her. After the game's introduction, Dave and his two companions prepare to enter the mansion to rescue Sandy; the game starts with a prompt for the player to select two of six characters to accompany Dave.
Maniac Mansion is a graphic adventure game
Graphic adventure game
A graphic adventure game is a form of adventure game. They are distinct from text adventures. Whereas a player must actively observe using commands such as "look" in a text-based adventure, graphic adventures revolutionized gameplay by making use of natural human perception...
in which the player uses a point-and-click
Point-and-click
Point-and-click is the action of a computer user moving a cursor to a certain location on a screen and then pressing a mouse button, usually the left button , or other pointing device...
interface to guide characters through a two-dimensional
2D computer graphics
2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models and by techniques specific to them...
(2D) game world and to solve puzzles. Players can select among fifteen different commands with this scheme; they include "Walk to", to move the characters; "New kid", to switch between the three characters; and "Pick up", to collect objects. Each character possesses unique abilities; for example, Syd and Razor can play musical instruments, while Bernard can repair appliances. The game may be completed with any character combination, but, because many puzzles can be solved only with specific skills, there are different ways to finish the game, depending on the characters the player has chosen.
The gameplay is regularly interrupted by cutscene
Cutscene
A cutscene is a sequence in a video game over which the player has no or only limited control, breaking up the gameplay and used to advance the plot, strengthen the main character's development, introduces enemy characters, and provide background information, atmosphere, dialogue, and clues...
s (a term coined by Ron Gilbert) that advance the story and inform the player about non-player character
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
s' actions. Aside from the green tentacle, most of the mansion's inhabitants pose a threat and will throw the player character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
s into the dungeon – or, in some situations, kill them – if they see them. If one character dies, a replacement must be chosen from those that were not selected at the game's start; the game ends
Game over
Game Over is a message in video games which signals that the game has ended, often due to a negative outcome - although the phrase sometimes follows the end credits after successful completion of a game...
if all the characters die. Maniac Mansion has five possible successful endings, depending on which characters the player uses, which ones survive, and what they do.
Conception
Maniac Mansion was first conceived in 1985, when Lucasfilm Games assigned employees Ron GilbertRon Gilbert
Ron Gilbert is an American computer game designer, programmer, and producer, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. Gilbert was also co-founder of Humongous Entertainment and its sister company Cavedog...
and Gary Winnick the task of creating an original game. Gilbert had been recently hired at Lucasfilm Games by Noah Falstein
Noah Falstein
Noah Falstein is a freelance game designer and producer who has been in the video game industry since 1980. He was one of the first 10 employees at Lucasfilm Games , DreamWorks Interactive , and The 3DO Company...
on a three-month contract to program Koronis Rift
Koronis Rift
Koronis Rift is a December 1985 computer game from Lucasfilm Games. It was produced and designed by Noah Falstein.The game was supplied on a flippy disk. One side had the Atari version, the other side had the Commodore 64 version...
, which Falstein was the lead developer. At the same time, Winnick was working on Labyrinth: The Computer Game, and it was then in which both Gilbert and Winnick found that they shared similar tastes in humor, movies, and television programs. Eventually, Gilbert would he hired full-time. As with earlier Lucasfilm titles, the company's management provided little oversight in the development process, which Gilbert credited the success of many of its earlier games.
Gilbert and Winnick were co-writers and lead designers of Maniac Mansion, but they worked separately on programming and art, respectively. Together, they brainstormed story ideas and, based on their love of B horror films
B movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
, decided to create a comedy–horror title set in a haunted house. They drew inspiration on the game's main ideas over what Winnick said was "a ridiculous teen horror movie" they have watched, which the teens were in a house and got slaughtered one by one, not once thinking about leaving the house. They compared this film to clichés in other popular horror films such as Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American slasher film directed and written by Wes Craven, and the first film of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The film features Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Robert Englund, and Johnny Depp in his feature film...
, and used them to come up with the game's setting. Early development involved experimentation and was organic; according to Gilbert: "Very little was written down. Gary and I just talked and laughed a lot, and out it came." After development had begun, Lucasfilm Games relocated its office to the Stable House at Skywalker Ranch
Skywalker Ranch
Skywalker Ranch is the name of the workplace of film director and producer George Lucas. It is located in a secluded, but open area near Nicasio, California, in Marin County. The ranch is located on Lucas Valley Road, although Lucas is not related to the road's namesake, who was a...
. The ranch's Main House inspired Winnick's design of the game's mansion, leading him to create the concept art for it. He recreated several rooms in the Main House for the game, such as a library with a spiral staircase and a media room with a big screen TV and grand piano. The various rooms at the ranch inspired the design of other rooms in the mansion.
The pair prioritized the story and characters and wanted to maintain a balance between a "sense of peril and sense of humor". The first character concepts were a set of siblings and their friends, which gradually evolved into the final characters. Gilbert and Winnick based the characters both on stereotypes and people they knew; for example, Winnick's girlfriend Ray inspired Razor, and while Gilbert's mother apparently served as the basis for Nurse Edna, Gilbert has denied the connection. Dave and Wendy were based on Gilbert and a fellow employee named Wendy, respectively. According to Winnick, the Edison family were based on various movie characters and elements from EC Comics
EC Comics
Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books specializing in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series...
and Warren Publishing
Warren Publishing
Warren Publishing was an American magazine company founded by James Warren, who published his first magazines in 1957 and continued in the business for decades...
magazines. They sought to give each playable character unique abilities. However, several characters had to be excluded due to size limitations. To parody the horror genre, they inserted many clichés into the story, drawing inspiration for several in-game elements from horror films. A segment of the 1982 anthology film
Anthology film
An anthology film is a feature film consisting of several different short films, often tied together by only a single theme, premise, or brief interlocking event . Sometimes each one is directed by a different director...
Creepshow
Creepshow
Creepshow is a 1982 American horror anthology film directed by George A. Romero and written by Stephen King. The film's ensemble cast included Ted Danson, Leslie Nielsen, Hal Holbrook, E.G...
titled "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" was the inspiration for the meteor that takes control of Dr. Fred. The designers included a man-eating plant similar to the antagonist of the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors.
The pair struggled to choose a gameplay genre; Gilbert described their early ideas as "disconnected". While visiting relatives for Christmas, Gilbert saw his cousin playing King's Quest: Quest for the Crown. He was an adventure games fan and decided that the ideas he and Winnick had conceived would work well with the genre. His first exposure to a text adventure with graphics, Gilbert spent the holiday playing the game to familiarize himself with the format.
Gilbert and Winnick created Maniac Mansions basic structure and story prior to programming; its earliest version was a simple board game, which was playable on paper. The mansion's floor plan served as the game board, and cards represented events and characters. Lines connected the rooms to illustrate pathways characters could travel. The designers used layers of cellulose acetate
Cellulose acetate
Cellulose acetate , first prepared in 1865, is the acetate ester of cellulose. Cellulose acetate is used as a film base in photography, as a component in some adhesives, and as a frame material for eyeglasses; it is also used as a synthetic fiber and in the manufacture of cigarette filters and...
to map out the game's puzzles by tracking which items worked together when used by certain characters. Impressed with the map's complexity, Winnick included it in the game as a poster in one of the mansion's rooms. Because each character contributed different skills and resources, they spent months working on the event combinations that could occur; this extended the game's production time beyond that of Lucasfilm Games' previous titles, which almost resulted in Gilbert's termination. Though they had outlined the game's events, the dialog was not written until after programming had started; the dialog would be provided by David Fox. Maniac Mansion would be one of the first games to feature alternate endings.
Commodore 64 limitations
Development focused on the Commodore 64 platform. To accommodate the system, the staff tried to make the game small enough to fit into the computer's 64 KBKilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
memory. They used scrolling
Scrolling
In computer graphics, filmmaking, television production, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display. "Scrolling", as such, does not change the layout of the text or pictures, or but incrementally moves the user's view across what is...
to show objects and characters in rooms during cutscenes. The designers also used the technique to force players to explore the mansion's larger rooms by hiding elements off-screen. However, generating the individual screens for the bitmap
Bitmap
In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
scrolling required 16 KB, which Gilbert considered too large. Instead, he used the computer's programmable character set to generate the game's visuals with limited memory, reducing the necessary file size per screen to around 1 KB. The set uses 8 × 8 pixel tiles
Tile-based video game
A tile-based video game is a type of video or computer game where the playing area consists of small rectangular, square, or hexagonal graphic images, referred to as tiles. The complete set of tiles available for use in a playing area is called a tileset...
. However, the computer could store only 256 tiles, which limited the level of detail Winnick could design into the graphics. To circumvent this, Gilbert created a program to generate the tiles from Winnick's pixel art
Pixel art
Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.- History :The term pixel art was first...
. To comply with the tile limit, the program compared similar tiles and created approximations that could replace multiple tiles. Winnick inspected the results for visual errors and then repeated the process. To make the characters easily recognizable, Winnick made the heads relatively large. Because the Commodore 64 restricted sprites
Sprite (computer graphics)
In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene...
to 24 pixels horizontally, the characters' animations never extend outside this width.
SCUMM: game engine and scripting language
Gilbert started programming the game in assembly languageAssembly language
An assembly language is a low-level programming language for computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other programmable devices. It implements a symbolic representation of the machine codes and other constants needed to program a given CPU architecture...
for the 6502 microprocessor
MOS Technology 6502
The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of...
. However, he soon determined that it would have taken him far too long to realize the ambitious game concept with this approach, and he concluded that he needed to build in support for an abstract scripting language
Scripting language
A scripting language, script language, or extension language is a programming language that allows control of one or more applications. "Scripts" are distinct from the core code of the application, as they are usually written in a different language and are often created or at least modified by the...
. Gilbert initially considered basing this language on LISP but ultimately chose a syntax that more closely resembles that of the C programming language
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
. He discussed the problem with fellow Lucasfilm employee Chip Morningstar, who helped him build a foundation for the game engine
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
, which Gilbert then extended. In designing the engine and language, Gilbert developed a "system that could be used on many adventure games, cutting down the time it took to make them". He logged considerable overtime with the goal of creating an adventure game superior to those of Lucasfilm's competitors. Gilbert designed the engine to allow for multitasking
Computer multitasking
In computing, multitasking is a method where multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions for...
so that designers could isolate and manipulate specific game objects independently. Most of the first six to nine months of Maniac Mansions development involved building the engine.
A primary development goal was to create a control system that not only retained the structure of classic text adventures, but also dispensed with the typing. The two lead designers were frustrated with the text parser
Text parser
In an adventure game, a text parser takes typed input from the player and simplifies it to something the game can understand. Usually, words with the same meaning are turned into the same word and certain filler words are dropped .The parser makes it easier for the game's author to react on input...
s and the inevitable player character deaths that were prominent in the genre. While in college, Gilbert had enjoyed Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...
and Infocom
Infocom
Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone....
's games but had "really wanted to see graphics". He felt that the visual element Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
added for its games was "a big improvement", but he disliked the games' use of text parsers. While playing Kings Quest, Gilbert found guessing what terms the designer had programmed it to recognize aggravating because he could see the object he wanted to interact with on the screen, but he had to figure out the correct commands. Gilbert reasoned that if he could view the graphic, then he should be able to click on it with a cursor; by extension, the player should also be able to click on verb commands. Gilbert devised a new and simpler interface "because I'm lazy and don't like to type. I hated playing adventure games where I had to type everything in, and I hated playing the 'second guess the parser' game so I figure everything should be point-and-click
Point-and-click
Point-and-click is the action of a computer user moving a cursor to a certain location on a screen and then pressing a mouse button, usually the left button , or other pointing device...
."
The team originally envisioned 40 verb commands, but they whittled the number down to the 12 they felt were essential. The commands were then integrated into the scripting language in a similar fashion Sierra did with its Adventure Game Interpreter
Adventure Game Interpreter
The Adventure Game Interpreter is a game engine which Sierra On-Line used through most of the 1980s to create and run animated, color adventure games...
(AGI) and Sierra's Creative Interpreter
Sierra's Creative Interpreter
Sierra's Creative Interpreter is the scripting language created by Jeff Stephenson of Sierra On-Line for its adventure games after the older AGI, and the runtime environment for such adventure games....
(SCI). Gilbert believed that a complex game did not need a text parser, but rather an innovative use of the interactions between in-game objects. He showed the team a demonstration of Sierra games and then led a discussion about their user interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
and gameplay issues. Gilbert finished the engine – which he later named "Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion" (SCUMM
SCUMM
Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion is a scripting language developed at LucasArts to ease development of the graphical adventure game Maniac Mansion....
) – after around a year of development. It freed the developers from having to code the details in low-level language
Low-level programming language
In computer science, a low-level programming language is a programming language that provides little or no abstraction from a computer's instruction set architecture. Generally this refers to either machine code or assembly language...
. Though the game had been designed with the Commodore 64 in mind, the SCUMM engine enabled easy port
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
ing of Maniac Mansion to other platforms. Lucasfilm developers Aric Wilmunder and Brad Taylor would assist in the PC port of the script.
Scripting and testing
At Gilbert's request, David Fox, who had previously worked on Labyrinth: The Computer Game, assisted with Maniac Mansions scripting. Fox was between projects and planned to do a month's work on the game; however, he stayed on the project for roughly six months. He would discuss the game's events with Gilbert and Winnick, and use that information to create the rooms with the script. The developers added designated areas or "walk-boxes" that characters could traverse. Gilbert and Fox wrote the characters' dialog and choreographed the action. Fox expanded the game based on ideas he got from Winnick's concept art, such as allowing players to place a hamster in the kitchen microwave.Gilbert wanted players to enjoy Maniac Mansion and not be punished for applying real world logic. In one adventure game, for example, the character could bleed to death by picking up a piece of glass. Fox asserted that "I know that in the real world I can successfully pick up a broken piece of mirror without dying" and characterized such game design as "sadistic". The team wanted to avoid illogical "surprise deaths" to spare players from having to regularly reload the game from a previous save state. As a result, the group created a number of possibilities to give the player more freedom. While scripting the game, however, the designers realized that the number of characters resulted in a very complex game with a number of flaws, particularly dead ends that prevented the player from completing the game. To address these issues, they often revised the puzzles. In retrospect, Gilbert acknowledged that the fact that Lucasfilm Games had only one tester allowed many errors to go undetected.
Release
In contrast to its previous games, where Lucasfilm Games had been only the developer and had used external publishers, the company started taking on the role of publisher with Maniac Mansion. Lucasfilm Games hired Ken Macklin, whom Winnick knew, to design the packaging's artwork. Gilbert and Winnick collaborated with the marketing department to design the back cover. The two also created an insert that includes hints, backstory, and jokes. Maniac Mansion would become the first title that Lucasfilm Games published.After around 18 to 24 months of development, the game debuted at the 1987 Consumer Electronics Show
Consumer Electronics Show
The International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...
in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. The game was initially released for the Commodore 64 in October 1987. After a Toys "R" Us customer complained about the word "lust" on the back cover, the toy store pulled the game from its shelves until Lucasfilm Games altered the box. Soon after the initial release, Lucasfilm released the Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
port, which featured more detailed graphics and a larger display resolution. Ports
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
for the Atari ST
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
, Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
, Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
, and NES
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
eventually followed.
Nintendo Entertainment System version
Published by JalecoJaleco
is a Japanese video game publisher and developer established in 2006.The original Jaleco Ltd was founded in 1974. In 2006, it decided to become a pure holding company by renaming itself Jaleco Holding and splitting its video game operations into a newly created subsdiary that took its former name...
in September 1990, Maniac Mansion was Lucasfilm Games' first NES release. The developer was unable to properly focus on the project due to a large workload, so Douglas Crockford
Douglas Crockford
Douglas Crockford is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur, best known for his ongoing involvement in the development of the JavaScript language, and for having popularized the data format JSON , and for developing JSLint...
volunteered to manage it. The studio used a modified version of the SCUMM engine titled "NES SCUMM" for the port. Crockford commented that "one of the main differences between the NES and PCs is that the NES can do certain things much faster". Developer Tim Schafer
Tim Schafer
Timothy Schafer is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in January 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts...
, who would go on to develop other Lucasfilm games, such as the sequel Day of the Tentacle
Day of the Tentacle
Day of the Tentacle, also known as Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle, is a 1993 graphic adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to the 1987 game Maniac Mansion...
, play-tested the port; this was Schafer's first professional credit. The studio first changed the game's graphics to conform with the NES's display resolution
Display resolution
The display resolution of a digital television or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is controlled by all different factors in cathode ray tube , flat panel or projection...
and modified the content for a younger audience. Lucasfilm Games had censored profanity in Maniac Mansions content during development – Dave Miller's opening line of "Don't be a tuna head" was originally penned as "Don't be a shit head" – but the designers removed extra content for the NES release. Jaleco employee Howie Rubin advised Crockford about what content Nintendo might object to. For example, the staff removed the word "kill" from the game at his suggestion. However, reading the NES Game Standards Policy led Crockford to believe that other elements might also conflict with the policy, so he sent a list of questionable content to Jaleco. Its staff believed that the content was reasonable, and Lucasfilm Games submitted Maniac Mansion to Nintendo.
A month later, Nintendo of America sent Lucasfilm Games a report that outlined on-screen text it called offensive and nude graphics that it wanted removed. Crockford further modified the content to comply, while trying to maintain the game's essential aspects. For example, graffiti in a room provided players with hints on how to activate a story event. Unable to remove it, the designers shortened the message. Nintendo also listed objectionable dialog lines. Many of Nurse Edna's lines were originally sexually suggestive and were changed. Based on a phrase ("sucked out") that censors had deemed too graphic, the staff changed similar text on posters. The nudity Nintendo outlined encompassed a poster of a mummy in a playmate pose, a swimsuit calendar, and a classical statue of reclining woman. The studio removed the poster and calendar, but fought to keep the statue, claiming that it was modeled after a Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
sculpture. The censors suggested an alteration, but Lucasfilm Games ultimately removed the object. Nintendo of America also objected to the phrase "NES SCUMM" in the end credits. Crockford removed the phrase, but questioned why the censors had overlooked more offensive content. In retrospect, Crockford felt that such standards resulted in "bland" products and called Nintendo a "jealous god".
After implementing the changes, Lucasfilm Games re-submitted Maniac Mansion to Nintendo, which then manufactured 250,000 cartridges. The NES cartridge features a battery back-up to save data, and a prototype NES cartridge with the original content is rumored to exist. In early 1990, Nintendo announced the port in its official magazine
Nintendo Power
Nintendo Power magazine is a monthly news and strategy magazine formerly published in-house by Nintendo of America, but now run independently. As of issue #222 , Nintendo contracted publishing duties to Future US, the U.S. subsidiary of British publisher Future.The first issue published was...
and provided further coverage later in the year. The ability to microwave a hamster remained in the game, which Crockford cited as an example of the censors' confusing criteria. However, Nintendo later noticed it and had it removed from the European release. After the first batch of cartridges was sold, Nintendo made Jaleco remove the content in future releases. The Japanese release omitted some graphical and musical elements, featured flip-screen
Flip-screen
In video games, flip-screen is a principle whereby the playing environment is divided into single-screen portions...
scrolling, and had alterations to the characters' appearances. Maniac Mansion was one of four games in the NES library – along with Shadowgate
Shadowgate
Shadowgate is a 1987 "point-and-click" adventure video game originally for the Apple Macintosh and is the most popular in the MacVenture series. It was also ported to the Atari ST home computer and was also released in 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, where it garnered mild success. The...
, F-15 Strike Eagle, and Déjà Vu – that featured a Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
translation.
Reception
Maniac Mansion was well received by critics, and several reviewers likened the game to films. Commodore UserCommodore User
Commodore User, known to the readers as the abbreviated CU, was one of the oldest British Commodore magazines. A publishing history spanning over 15 years, mixing content with technical and games features...
s Bill Scolding and Zzap!64
Zzap!64
Zzap!64 was a computer games magazine covering games on the Commodore International series of computers, especially the Commodore 64 . It was published in the UK by Newsfield Publications Ltd and later by Europress Impact....
s three reviewers – Paul Summer, Julian Rignall
Julian Rignall
Julian "Muppet" Rignall is a longterm publishing veteran with experience launching and managing numerous video game magazines and websites...
, and Steve Jarratt
Steve Jarratt
Steve Jarratt is a long-time videogames journalist and magazine editor. He has launched a large number of magazines for Future Publishing, many of which are still published. Magazines he has worked for include:...
– compared it to The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the 1975 film adaptation of the British rock musical stageplay, The Rocky Horror Show, written by Richard O'Brien. The film is a parody of B-movie, science fiction and horror films of the late 1940s through early 1970s. Director Jim Sharman collaborated on the...
. Other comparisons were drawn to Psycho, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a 1974 American independent horror film directed and produced by Tobe Hooper, who cowrote it with Kim Henkel. It stars Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, and Gunnar Hansen, who respectively portray Sally Hardesty, Franklin Hardesty, the...
, the The Addams Family
The Addams Family
The Addams Family is a group of fictional characters created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. As named by Charles Addams, the Addams Family characters include Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Lurch, Grandmama, Wednesday, Pugsley, and Thing....
, and Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo is an American media franchise based around several animated television series and related works produced from 1969 to the present day. The original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, was created for Hanna-Barbera Productions by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears in 1969...
. COMPUTE!'s Gazette
COMPUTE!'s Gazette
COMPUTE!'s Gazette was a computer magazine of the 1980s, directed at users of Commodore's 8-bit home computers. Publishing its first issue in July 1983, the Gazette was a Commodore-only daughter magazine of the computer hobbyist magazine COMPUTE!....
s Keith Farrell cited its similarity to films, particularly with its use of cutscenes to add "information or urgency". He lauded its high level of detail along with its graphics and animation, writing, "Each of the teenagers is fully realized, with features and wardrobe that are wholly in character." Commodore Magazines Russ Ceccola praised its cutscenes as creative and high-quality. He called its ending "unforgettable" and praised the game's audio-visuals; he noted that the "characters are distinctively Lucasfilm's, bringing facial expressions and personality to each individual character". He ended by recommending readers to buy Maniac Mansion, as it would please fans of the genre.
Zzap!64s reviewers praised the game's humor and called its point-and-click control "tremendous"; they concluded by describing the game as "innovative and polished". ACE
ACE (games magazine)
ACE was a multi-format computer and video game magazine first published in the United Kingdom by Future Publishing and later acquired by EMAP.-History:...
magazine's reviewer enjoyed the game's animation, multi-character gameplay, and depth, and called it "one of the better pics n' action games on the market". The reviewer enjoyed the game but commented that "traditional adventurers" wouldn't as much. Scolding noted its "flash graphics and black humour" and finished by calling the game one of the best of its kind. German magazine Happy-Computer compared the cinematic cutscene usage to earlier Lucasfilm titles Koronis Rift and Labyrinth: The Computer Game, and the menu system to ICOM Simulations
ICOM Simulations
ICOM Simulations was a software company based in Wheeling, Illinois. It is best known for creating the MacVenture series of adventure games including Shadowgate.Following the foundation in 1983 a number of game titles for the Panasonic JR-200 were produced...
' Uninvited. The reviewers highly lauded the game's user-friendly menu system, graphics, originality, and overall enjoyability; one of the reviewers called it the best adventure title at the time. The magazine later reported that it was West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
's highest-selling video game for three straight months.
In more recent reviews, Eurogamer
Eurogamer
Eurogamer is a Brighton-based website focused on video games news, reviews, previews and interviews. It is operated by Eurogamer Network Ltd., which was formed in 1999 by brothers Rupert and Nick Loman. Eurogamer has grown to become one of the most important European-based websites focused on...
s Kristan Reed praised the game's "ambitious" design, citing the cast of characters, "elegant" interface, and writing. Game designer Sheri Graner Ray
Sheri graner ray
Sheri Graner Ray has been making computer games since 1990. She has worked for such companies as Electronic Arts, Origin Systems, Sony Online Entertainment, and Cartoon Network, and has worked on such licenses as Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima, and Nancy Drew...
listed Maniac Mansion as an example of a game that challenged the "damsel in distress
Damsel in distress
The subject of the damsel in distress, or persecuted maiden, is a classic theme in world literature, art, and film. She is usually a beautiful young woman placed in a dire predicament by a villain or monster and who requires a hero to achieve her rescue. She has become a stock character of fiction,...
" concept by including female protagonists. However, writer Mark Dery
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about "media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture" From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University...
commented that rescuing the kidnapped cheerleader was an example of an element that reinforced negative gender role
Gender role
Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
s. In choosing the top ten all-time games for the Commodore 64, Retro Gamer
Retro Gamer
Retro Gamer is a British magazine, published worldwide, covering retro video games. It was the first commercial magazine to be devoted entirely to the subject. Although launched as a quarterly publication, Retro Gamers soon became a monthly...
stated that Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken were equally good, but it selected the latter because of Maniac Mansions prominence. In another issue, editor Ashley Day listed the game as having his favorite ending – the mansion's explosion upon pressing an unexpected button. In 2009, IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
named Maniac Mansion one of the ten best LucasArts adventure game. Richard Cobbett of PC Gamer
PC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
called it "one of the most intricate and important adventure games ever made", citing the SCUMM
SCUMM
Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion is a scripting language developed at LucasArts to ease development of the graphical adventure game Maniac Mansion....
interface and establishing a legacy for Lucasfilm Games during this time.
Reception of ports
Maniac Mansion was also well-received in multi-format reviews, including the Commodore 64, Apple II, and PC versions. Questbusters: The Adventurer's Newsletter editor Shay Addams called the game a parody of horror movies. He wrote that SCUMM worked better than the wheel used in Labyrinth: The Computer Game and called it an improvement from InterplayInterplay Entertainment
Interplay Entertainment Corporation is an American video game developer and publisher, founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by Brian Fargo. The company had been a quality developer until they started publishing their own games in 1988, like Neuromancer and Battle Chess. The company was renamed...
's title Tass Times in Tonetown
Tass Times in Tonetown
Tass Times in Tonetown is a 1986 adventure-themed computer game by Activision for multiple computer platforms. It was written by veteran Infocom designer Michael Berlyn and his long-time collaborator Muffy McClung Berlyn, and programmed by Bill Heineman of Interplay Productions, in cooperation with...
. Addams concluded by writing that Maniac Mansion was Lucasfilm's best title released and that it is a good buy for Commodore 64 and Apple II users who were unable to play games with better visuals such as from Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
. Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World was a computer game magazine founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe as a bimonthly publication. Early issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings , Dan Bunten , and Chris Crawford...
s Charles Ardai praised the game's pacing, cutscenes, and humor, calling that it "strikes the necessary and precarious balance between laughs and suspense that so many comic horror films and novels lack". Despite faulting its small number of commands, he hailed its control system as "one of the most comfortable ever devised". However, Ardai disliked the game's small quantity of sound effects and music. Ardai finished by calling it "a clever and imaginative game[, ... and] a successful stylistic experiment".
In other multi-format reviews, The Deseret News called it "wonderful fun" and noted that the "art and animation are gorgeous". The writers considered the game's audio as "the best we've heard". Reviewing the PC and Atari ST
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
ports, a reviewer from The Games Machine
The Games Machine
The Games Machine was a video game magazine that was published from 1987 until 1990 in the United Kingdom by Newsfield, which also published CRASH, Zzap!64, Amtix! and other magazines.-History:...
called Maniac Mansion "an enjoyable romp" with a structure superior to subsequent LucasArts adventure games
LucasArts adventure games
From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, LucasArts was well known for their point-and-click graphic adventure games, nearly all of which received high scoring reviews at the time of their release. Their style tended towards the humorous, often irreverent or slapstick humour, with a few exceptions...
. However, the magazine writer noted the game's poor pathfinding
Pathfinding
Pathfinding generally refers to the plotting, by a computer application, of the shortest route between two points. It is a more practical variant on solving mazes...
and stated that "the lack of sound effects reduces atmosphere". Of the two versions, the reviewer believed that the Atari ST audiovisuals were better. Comparing the PC version to Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is a graphical adventure game, originally released in October 1988 , published by LucasArts . It was the second game to use the SCUMM engine, after Maniac Mansion...
and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure is a graphical adventure game, originally released in 1989 , published by Lucasfilm Games . It was the third game to use the SCUMM engine.-Plot:The plot closely follows, and expands upon, the film of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade...
, reviewers from French magazine Génération 4 praised the game's story, interface, and humor, stating that it was "beautifully done"; however, one reviewer commented that the developers ripped the graphics from Indiana Jones. VideoGames & Computer Entertainment called Maniac Mansion "perhaps the most popular haunted-house adventure" and "a genuine cult classic with a large audience on both sides of the Atlantic"; while it found the plot and setup the same as most other horror-themed games, it praised the game's interface and execution.
The game's Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
version received a fair amount of praise, despite graphical shortcomings. In a 1993 review, The One Amiga
The One (magazine)
The One was a video game magazine in the United Kingdom which covered 16-bit home gaming during the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was first published by EMAP in October 1988 and initially covered computer games aimed at the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, and IBM PC markets.Like many similar magazines,...
s Simon Byron noted that the game retained its "charm and humour" six years after its first release. However, he believed that its art direction had become "tacky" compared to more recent games. Byron ended by writing that "if you fancy a cheap edge-of-the-seat challenge then you couldn't really do much better". Amiga Format
Amiga Format
Amiga Format was a British computer magazine for Amiga computers, published by Future Publishing. The magazine lasted 136 issues from 1989 to 2000. The magazine was formed when, in the wake of selling ACE to EMAP, Future split the dual-format title ST/Amiga Format into two separate publications...
reviewer Stephen Bradly found the game derivative, but he noted that it featured "loads of visual humour"; he added, "Strangely, it's quite compelling after a while." German magazine Power Play wrote that the Amiga version "played like a poem" and just as well as the other ports. Another German magazine, Amiga Joker, stated it was one of the best adventure games released for the computer, and while it wrote there were minor graphical flaws, such as a lack of variety in colors, it stated that the gameplay made up for those shortcomings. Sweden-based Datormagazins Ingela Palmér stated that the Amiga version differed little from the Commodore 64 one, and that those who already have the latter need not get the Amiga version. She added that, while the graphics and gameplay were not the best, the game remained highly enjoyable and easy. Palmér recommended that people new to the genre play this game first.
Reviewers well-received Maniac Mansions NES version. Based on the computer release's success, Game Players
Game Players
Game Players was a monthly video game magazine founded by Robert C. Lock and published by Signal Research, in Greensboro, North Carolina. The original publication was titled Game Players Strategy to Nintendo Games...
writers speculated that the NES port would be one of 1990's better titles. UK-based Mean Machines
Mean Machines
Mean Machines was a market-leading multi-format gaming magazine released between 1990 and 1992 in the United Kingdom. Its style was popular with gamers of the time for its irreverent humor, anarchic editorial tone and style, and its sometimes outrageously outspoken reviews.- Origins :In the late...
lauded the game for its presentation, playability, and replay value, while it criticized the blocky graphics and "ear-bashing tunes". Reviewer Edward Laurence wrote that little from the NES version had changed from the Commodore 64 version except for minor graphical and sound improvements. Julian Rignall compared the game to Shadowgate but noted differences between the two; he commented how Maniac Mansion had easy controls and that it lacked Shadowgates "death-without-warning situations". Despite his criticism of the audiovisuals, he wrote, "Maniac Mansions excellent, thoroughly rewarding and genuinely funny gameplay more than makes up for its deficiencies, and the end result is a highly original and very addictive adventure that no Nintendo owner should be without." Video Games magazine reviewed the translated German version, and the reviewers labeled the game as a "Video Games Classic". Co-reviewer Heinrich Lenhardt said that Maniac Mansion was unique and that no similar NES adventure game has since been released. He wrote that it was just as fun as the computer versions with good controls, but he noted that the graphics could be misleading at times. Co-reviewer Winnie Forster wrote that the game was "one of the most original representatives of the [adventure game] genre" and that it has been one of Lucasfilm's more successful games. In recent commentary, Edge magazine
Edge (magazine)
Edge is a multi-format computer and video game magazine published by Future Publishing in the United Kingdom. It is known for its industry contacts, editorial stance, distinctive anonymous third-person writing style, yearly awards and longevity....
staff described the port as more conservative than the original version, calling it "somewhat neutered". GamesTM
GamesTM
GamesTM is a UK-based, multi-format video games magazine, covering many video game platforms including PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, GameCube, Xbox, PlayStation 2, PC games, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS and Arcade machines...
magazine writers referred to the NES version as "infamous" and heavily censored.
Maniac Mansion was featured often in the magazine Nintendo Power
Nintendo Power
Nintendo Power magazine is a monthly news and strategy magazine formerly published in-house by Nintendo of America, but now run independently. As of issue #222 , Nintendo contracted publishing duties to Future US, the U.S. subsidiary of British publisher Future.The first issue published was...
. The game debuted on the magazine's Top 30 list at number 19 in February 1991, peaking at number 16 in August 1991. The magazine reviewed it again in its February 1993 issue, as part of a staff overview on overlooked or otherwise undersold NES games. The editors felt that the popular RPG Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy (video game)
is a fantasy role-playing video game created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, developed and first published in Japan by Square in 1987. It is the first game in Square's Final Fantasy series...
overshadowed its September 1990 feature and drew more people to that game instead. Seven years after its release, in its 100th issue in September 1997, the magazine ranked the NES version the 61st best game, calling it a "brilliant adventure". In its 20th anniversary issue, the magazine listed Maniac Mansion as the 16th best NES title, praising the game for its clever and funny writing and for being unlike any other game on the system. In its November 2010 issue, as part of the NES' 25th anniversary, Chris Hoffman described the game as "unlike anything else out there – a point-and-click adventure with an awesome sense of humor and multiple solutions to almost every puzzle." Nintendo Power also commented on the ability to microwave a hamster; in its 25th anniversary retrospective, the staff stated that "it's hard to mention Maniac Mansion without it".
Impact and legacy
Referring to Maniac Mansion as a "seminal" title, GamesTM staff credited it with reinventing the graphical adventures' gameplay. The writer stated that not having to guess input verbs allowed players to focus more on the story and puzzles, resulting in less frustration and more enjoyment. Reed made similar comments, writing that the design freed players from the "guessing-game frustration", and made "the whole process infinitely more elegant and intuitive." However, Connie Veugen and Felipe Quérette noted that the determining the game's vocabulary was an enjoyable aspect of the genre. GamesTM magazine further commented that Maniac Mansion had solidified Lucasfilm Games as a leader in the graphic adventure genre. Authors Mike and Sandie Morrison commented that the studio had brought "serious competition" to the graphic adventure genre in the form of Maniac Mansion. Authors Rusel DeMaria and Johnny Wilson echoed their sentiments, calling it a "landmark title" for the company. They also stated that the game, along with Space Quest and Leisure Suit LarryLeisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards is the alliterative title to an adventure computer game first released in 1987, the first part of the Leisure Suit Larry series. It was a completely graphical adventure game with 16 color EGA graphics. It utilizes the Adventure Game Interpreter ...
, had inaugurated a "new era of humor-based adventure games". Reed seconded the statement, stating that the game "set in motion a captivating chapter in the history of gaming" that encompassed wit, invention, and style. GameSpy
GameSpy
GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...
's Christopher Buecheler credited the game's success with making its genre commercially and critically viable. It was also one of the first video games to feature product placement
Product placement
Product placement, or embedded marketing, is a form of advertisement, where branded goods or services are placed in a context usually devoid of ads, such as movies, music videos, the story line of television shows, or news programs. The product placement is often not disclosed at the time that the...
, as the game featured Pepsi
Pepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo...
brands; other games, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (featuring Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut is an American restaurant chain and international franchise that offers different styles of pizza along with side dishes including pasta, buffalo wings, breadsticks, and garlic bread....
), Zool
Zool
Zool is a video game originally produced for the Amiga by Gremlin Graphics in 1992.Zool was intended as a rival to Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog. It was heavily hyped upon its initial release, including being bundled with the newly launched Amiga 1200, although not the AGA version with enhanced...
(featuring Chupa Chups
Chupa Chups
Chupa Chups is a lollipop company founded by the Catalan Enric Bernat in 1958, and currently owned by the Dutch-Italian multinational corporation Perfetti Van Melle. The name of the brand comes from the Spanish verb chupar, meaning "to suck."- History :...
), and Tapper
Tapper
Tapper, also known as Root Beer Tapper, is a 1983 arcade game released by Bally Midway. The goal of the game is to serve beer and collect empty mugs and tips.-Overview:...
(featuring Budweiser
Budweiser
Budweiser is a German adjective describing something or someone from the city of České Budějovice in Southern Bohemia, Czech Republic.Beer brewing in České Budějovice dates back to the 13th century...
), followed suit. Retro Gamers Stuart Hunt said in a September 2011 issue that "Maniac Mansion proved that videogames could capture the essence of an entirely different medium and opened our eyes to the wonderful things that happened when they placed their interactive stamp on them". The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle developer Dave Grossman said that Maniac Mansion revolutionized the adventure game genre, also noting the fact that the game was only 64 KB large and that the music was good, especially for PCs.
Reed described SCUMM as "revolutionary". Lucasfilm Games used the SCUMM engine to develop eleven other games in the following decade, and competitors eventually adopted similar systems; GamesTM attributed this change to a desire to streamline production and produce fun games. The developers improved the engine with each subsequent game. Following his departure from LucasArts (Lucasfilm Games had been combined under this name with ILM and Skywalker Sound
Skywalker Sound
Skywalker Sound is the sound effects, sound editing, sound design, sound mixing and music recording division of George Lucas' Lucas Digital motion picture group. Its main facilities are located in Lucas Valley, near Nicasio, California...
in 1990) in 1992, Gilbert used the SCUMM technology to create adventure games and Backyard Sports
Backyard Sports series
Backyard Sports is a series of video games that play on both consoles and computers. The series is best known for starring kid-sized versions of popular professional sports stars, such as Albert Pujols, Paul Pierce, Barry Bonds, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Tom Brady, Alex Rodriguez, Joe Thornton and...
games at Humongous Entertainment
Humongous (game developer)
Humongous Inc. is an American video game developer. The company is known for its line of educational games for children. Atari now owns Humongous Inc.-History:...
. The designers built on their experience developing Maniac Mansion and expanded the process and their ambition in subsequent titles. In retrospect, Gilbert commented that he made a number of mistakes in designing Maniac Mansion (for instance, the dead-end situations that arise if certain items are used incorrectly) and applied the lessons to future games. In cut scenes, Gilbert had used a timer rather than a specific event to trigger the scene, which occasionally resulted in awkward scene changes. The designer aimed to avoid these flaws in the Monkey Island series of games. However, Gilbert commented that Maniac Mansion is his favorite because of its imperfections.
In popular culture
Elements of Maniac Mansion have appeared elsewhere in popular culture, especially in other Lucasfilm games. An in-game object called "Chuck the Plant" reappeared in other Lucas adventure titles like Indiana Jones and the Last CrusadeIndiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a 1989 American adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, from a story co-written by executive producer George Lucas. It is the third film in the Indiana Jones franchise. Harrison Ford reprises the title role and Sean Connery plays Indiana's father, Henry...
and Tales of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island is a 2009 graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games and LucasArts. It is the fifth game in the Monkey Island series, released nearly a decade after the previous installment, Escape from Monkey Island. Developed for Windows and the Wii console, the game was...
. According to Gilbert, Steve Arnold, the LucasFilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
general manager at the time, had a long running joke in which he continually requested game designers to add a character named Chuck to their game. Gilbert and Winnick were the first to humor Steve's request in Maniac Mansion. Because there was no room for an extra character name in the game, the name was given to the plant. In the game's NES version, a broken record titled The Soundtrack Of Loom references to another Lucasfilm title Loom. David Fox included a gasoline item for a nonexistent chainsaw in his game Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders as a parody of the chainsaw that required nonexistent gasoline in Maniac Mansion. Enthusiasts have created fan art
Fan art
Fan art or fanart is artwork that is based on a character, costume, collage, item, or story that was created by someone other than the artist, such as a fan, from which the word is derived from. The term, while it can apply to art done by fans of characters from books, is usually used to refer to...
depicting the characters, participated in cosplay
Cosplay
, short for "costume play", is a type of performance art in which participants don costumes and accessories to represent a specific character or idea. Characters are often drawn from popular fiction in Japan, but recent trends have included American cartoons and science fiction...
based on the tentacle characters, and produced a trailer
Trailer (film)
A trailer or preview is an advertisement or a commercial for a feature film that will be exhibited in the future at a cinema. The term "trailer" comes from their having originally been shown at the end of a feature film screening. That practice did not last long, because patrons tended to leave the...
of a fictitious live action film.
Various fanmade enhanced remakes of Maniac Mansion have appeared over the years. One German fan, Sascha Borisow, created a remake titled Maniac Mansion Deluxe with enhanced audio and visuals. He used Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio is a free software development tool that is primarily used to create graphical adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an Integrated development environment for setting up most aspects of the game with a scripting language to process...
freeware to develop the game, and distributed it free on the internet. The remake had over 200,000 downloads by the end of 2004. German developer Vampyr Games created a remake with 3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
titled Meteor Mess 3D, which began as a learning tool for Gamestudio
Gamestudio
3D GameStudio or 3DGS is a commercial 3D computer game development system which allows the users to create 3D games and other virtual reality applications, and publish them royalty-free...
. A group of German gamers called Edison Interactive is developing another remake, titled Night of the Meteor, which combines Maniac Mansions features with Day of the Tentacles graphics. Fans also created an episodic series of games based on Maniac Mansion. An uncensored unofficial NES version is also known to exist on Frank Cifaldi's website LostLevels.org. Gilbert stated that he would like to see an official remake resemble the gameplay and graphics from Tales of Monkey Island, but he balked, citing George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
' enhanced remakes of the original Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
trilogy as a reason to keep the flaws in the original game.
TV adaptation and game sequel
Lucasfilm had conceived the idea for a television adaptation, which The Family Channel purchased in 1990. A sitcom named after the gameManiac Mansion (TV Series)
Maniac Mansion is a Canadian science fiction/family sitcom very loosely based on the LucasArts video game of the same name.The series, filmed entirely in Toronto, Ontario, was produced by Atlantis Films for The Family Channel in the United States and YTV in Canada, and aired for three complete...
debuted in September 1990. It aired on YTV in Canada and The Family Channel in the United States. Partially based on the video game, the show, focused on the Edison family's life, featured Joe Flaherty
Joe Flaherty
Joe Flaherty is an American-Canadian actor and comedian. He is best known for his work on the Canadian sketch comedy SCTV, from 1976 to 1984, and as Harold Weir on Freaks and Geeks...
as Dr. Fred. Eugene Levy
Eugene Levy
Eugene Levy, CM is a Canadian actor, comedian, television director, producer, musician, and writer. He is known for his work in Canadian television series, American movies, and television movies. He is the only actor to have appeared in all eight of the American Pie films, as Noah Levenstein...
headed the writing staff. The program was a collaboration between Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
, The Family Channel, and Atlantis Films. In retrospect, Gilbert commented that the premise gradually changed during production to something that differed greatly from the game's original plot. Upon its debut, the show was well-received by critics; Time magazine
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
named it one of the best new shows of the year. However, other reviewers, such as Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
s Ken Tucker
Ken Tucker
Ken Tucker was an English footballer who played as a left winger....
, questioned how the show made it on The Family Channel, given Flaherty's usage of SCTV
Second City Television
Second City Television is a Canadian television sketch comedy show offshoot from Toronto's The Second City troupe that ran between 1976 and 1984.- Premise :...
-like humor. PC Gamers Richard Cobbett, in a retrospective on the series, criticized its generic storylines and lack of relevance to the game. The series lasted for three seasons, filming 66 episodes.
In the early 1990s, LucasArts asked Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer
Tim Schafer
Timothy Schafer is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in January 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts...
, who had both worked with Gilbert on the Monkey Island games, to design a sequel to Maniac Mansion, eventually titled Day of the Tentacle
Day of the Tentacle
Day of the Tentacle, also known as Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle, is a 1993 graphic adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to the 1987 game Maniac Mansion...
. Winnick and Gilbert initially assisted with the writing. Grossman and Schafer were able to include the voices and the improved visuals Gilbert had originally envisioned for Maniac Mansion. The game discarded the character selection and branching story lines in favor of a simpler format, and introduced time travel as the main puzzle element. The developers retained the Edison family and Bernard characters, but changed the art style to more closely resemble Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
' works. As an homage to Maniac Mansion, the designers included a puzzle that involves freezing a hamster; according to Grossman, he gave a happier outcome for the hamster as a response to Gilbert's grim ending for the hamster in Maniac Mansion. They also made the full original game playable on an in-game computer, which Grossman attributed to a software bug
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
. LucasArts released Day of the Tentacle in 1993 to critical acclaim.