Reply To: Maniac Mansion


Pix
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#4130

There is also a fan remake, Maniac Mansion Deluxe for Windows which is probably the best version of the game (albeit not running in DOS). There is another fan remake in the works as well at https://meteormess.de/

I know DOTT inside out already but never really spent much time on it’s predecessor so I thought I’d have a good go on Maniac Mansion this month. Had two playthroughs with different characters so far, one on the EGA enhanced version and one on Deluxe.

There is surprisingly little story in this first game, beyond a few cutscenes. It’s more of a pure puzzler. I tried Lucasfilms first adventure game Labyrinth a year or two back and it feels like a halfway house between that and their later games.

There are some pretty tricky puzzles and numerous potential dead ends to make life difficult. It’s certainly more intimidating than their later games. That said, the house isn’t too big and you can replay the game very quickly once you start learning your way around. I’ve noticed there are multiple solutions some of the time which is pretty neat. The idea of having different characters is cool as well but it only seems to make a limited amount of difference in the game. Without giving anything away I’ve only found one difference for each character where their skills can be used to solve a particular puzzle. It does give a bit of replayability that isn’t typical of adventure games. The game was really short with Bernard in my party, possibly why he was included in part 2?

I’ll try another playthrough with some different characters this weekend. So far I’ve relied on Bernard’s technical and Michael’s photography skills to get me through, so I’ll see if I can solve it without either of them next time. I figure I may as well try a different version each time so it’s either NES or C64 next.