Comments on: LucasArts Time Machine: Maniac Mansion

By: LucasArts Time Machine: Sam & Max Hit The Road | The Scientific Gamer

LucasArts Time Machine: Sam & Max Hit The Road | The Scientific Gamer — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 11:01:18 +0000

[…] you have been following these posts for a while, you’ll know that I started with Maniac Mansion, which was the first adventure game to move to a mouse-driven interface by putting its action verbs […]

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 10:52:58 +0000

I really wouldn’t recommend it. The useful thing Maniac Mansion rammed home for me was realising just what a quantum leap Monkey Island was over their previous games — LucasArts didn’t just start out knowing how to make good adventure games and needed several goes to get it right. But playing Maniac Mansion for its own sake? I don’t think you’d get much out of it.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 10:41:14 +0000

Well, I’ll go over this in a little more detail when I get to them, but for a long time I would have said it was DOTT. The further away we get from 1997, though, the more I find that Curse Of Monkey Island is aging spectacularly well – incredible art, incredible music, and some fantastic jokes that are actually written to be voice acted. The only weak link is that the puzzles are a little more scattershot than DOTTs. I didn’t like Curse all that much at the time, but subsequent replays have really rammed home that it was the pinnacle of the 2D adventure game in terms of LucasArts’ mastery of the craft, which is ironic because it was also the last one LucasArts made.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 02:18:19 +0000

Hey there, long time, first time. Just wondering, you mention that DOTT is the second- or third-best adventure game ever. What’s your number one? Adventure games are rarely reviewed on this site and are what got me into gaming way back in the day, so I’m kind of curious. Thanks!

By: Stuart

Stuart — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 15:38:17 +0000

I was one of those kids that Day Of The Tentacle was my entry point to LucasArts adventure games, and I played Monkey Island shortly thereafter. I remember when I stumbled upon Maniac Manson on Ed Edison’s computer in the game, I tried for hours to figure out how to play it. And that is always the dilemma as you brought up in your introduction: there are some great old games with great old ideas, but there are also the later building and improvement of those ideas. At some threshold, the struggle required to enjoy a game just isn’t worth it anymore. Which always saddens me to admit as someone to determined to enjoy every game in every great game series. Something keeps drawing me back to wanting to beat my head against Maniac Mansion, maybe one day I’ll consult a guide to get through it.