Hey everyone, PushingUpRoses here and today we’re talking about an Adventure Game classic
from good old LucasFilms, AKA LucasArts, AKA, that company who did the Star Wars games,
MANIAC MANSION. Released in 1987, it was designed and programmed by Ron Gilbert and David Fox,
with art and animation by Gary Winnick. You know how I can tell this was designed by Ron
Gilbert. Do you? Because all of these fuckin’ verbs. Sorry, I get a little salty when it
comes to superfluous game mechanics; I’ve always been more of a fan of the command prompt
for these older adventure games.
Maniac mansion was conceived in 1985 by Ron and Gary, who shared a love for campy horror
B-Movies and silly humor, so they came up with the idea to set the story in a mansion
inhabited by mutant beings with very strong chins. You will find references to B-Movies
all throughout the game, however it is not a horror game or scary in anyway. It used
to frighten me as a kid because a mansion named MANIAC didn’t inspire too much joy
but it is mostly a humorous title with some creepy settings. Something I find really interesting
is that this started out as a pen and paper board game; as described by David Fox, the
set of the mansion served as the game’s board, and there were acetate overlays for
the levels of the mansion and room details. I love how it was conceptualized - I attribute
Maniac Mansion’s solid map design to the fact that it was planned out so well in advance.
It should be noted that I am playing the enhanced version of this game because I just prefer
the aesthetics over the original, but somehow these characters still look like they have
rubber legs. This is some weird Gumby shit right here. The plot is as follows: A group
of teenagers find themselves at this huge mansion because one of the protagonists girlfriends
was kidnapped. His name is Dave, and his girlfriend’s name is Sandy. Why did this happen? Because
she is being used as an experiment to feed this radioactive meteor that crashed near
the mansion and has turned the head of the household into an evil doctor that has spent
the last 5 years in the basement. Also, did I mention there are tentacles? We’ll get
to them later.
So as the game starts out you are instructed to choose your characters; Dave is chosen
automatically, much to my dismay. You have 6 other kids to choose from, all fitting a
specific archetype. Syd, a musician into the New Wave scene, Michael, a talented photographer,
Wendy, a budding novelist, Bernard, a geek, Razor, lead singer of punk band the Scummettes,
and Jeff. He’s like, a surfer dude. I always choose Razor for my team, and I’d like to
say it’s because I enjoy her puzzles a bit more but there MIGHT be another reason for
it that definitely doesn’t have to do with aesthetic, and I also go with Bernard because
nerds and punks just make for a really good team. I ship it.
Because you can win this game using characters that solve puzzles differently due to their
varying skill sets, this game is NOT linear, meaning that you can do many things out of
order and complete it in different ways, also resulting in a few endings. Typically I don’t
like adventure games that require the use of multiple characters at once to solve puzzles
because I find it a little overwhelming, but at the very least we can get Dave captured
right away and shove him in the basement. He’s in charge of pushing the lose brick
that opens the security door, so if one of the other kids gets locked in there’s always
someone else to let them out. Unfortunately, that means that one kid does have to stay
down here and for my playthrough, that person is Dave. Good luck son, you have one job and
that’s to push the brick. Don’t fuck it up. (Dave fucks it up) Are you serious.
So technically I guess I’m only controlling 2 characters at a time, but if I am honest
I try to avoid even that by only using Razor. Some puzzles require switching back and forth
but I used Razor for the majority.
These strong chinned characters that live in the mansion are The Edisons - Dr. Fred,
who has been brainwashed due to prolonged exposure to the radioactive meteor, his very
thirsty wife Edna, and their son, Weird Ed. Weird Ed is definitely the normal one in the
family. There’s also Dead Cousin Ted - he resides in the bathtub in case you wanted
to visit and pay respects. You can also call Edna for a good time; look, I don’t blame
her for having this insane libido and going all Blanche Devereaux on us. Blanche: Do you
realize it has been four days since I’ve enjoyed the company of a man?” Her husband
has been in the basement for 5 years and this woman needs to fuck something.
Right, so the story of Maniac Mansion is pretty simple; every now and then you will get a
cutscene that pushes the story forward, or informs you on what a character is doing,
but the majority of time is spent exploring and completing inventory object puzzles. So
since we’ve got that squared away, I will talk about the shit I love about this game,
and the shit I love a lot less.
Living in the mansion are two talking tentacles; Green Tentacle and Purple Tentacle. Purple
is a little power hungry and is on the side of Dr. Fred, and Green Tentacle is… a little
depressed. See, he wants to start a band but hasn’t the confidence to send in his demo
tape. He’s the only one who hasn’t tried to kill me or throw me out of the house so
I need to help him. I must protect this sensitive, fragile tentacle with every fibre of my dark
punk heart. So I had Razor play and record some music for him to listen to, and he ALMOST
felt inspired but this little darling one needs just one more extra push. As in I’m
just gonna send in the demo tape for him and get him a contract. PERFECT. He vows to protect
us ALWAYS now and follows me around like an excitable puppy. This is actually one of the
ways you can beat the game, getting Green Tentacle to assist you at the end because
you helped him early on. It should also be noted that his favorite food is wax fruit.
He’s a disembodied, cognizant tentacle so I am trying not to judge this preference too
harshly. I’m not even sure what the digestive system of a lone tentacle would even be.
I also really like the design of the mansion - even though this game has an absurd amount
of backtracking, I think keeping the entire game in one location with different rooms
to explore was a good idea. I especially love this risque statue - oh and this mummy pinup.
Mmm, there’s nothing sexier to a goth darkling than a monster pinup, Rrrrr! As some of you
know,a version came out for the nintendo and it went through what is now considered infamous
censorship before it was approved. No sexy mummy, no risque statue, no playboy calendar,
and a lot of the dialogue was altered. Interestingly, they left the part where you can microwave
Weird Ed’s hamster. You confuse me, Nintendo. I’d much rather see some boobs than explode
a innocent animal. This poor lil furball, who would do such a monstrous thing? ...Me,
apparently. I cannot tell you how bad I felt about this; this may be a pixelated hamster
but I’m still human. In an act of the ultimate evil, I went back up to show Weird Ed the
obliterated body of his former rodent friend, and he was so hurt and traumatized that he
killed me. Honestly, that’s probably the correct reaction. If you take the hamster
and give it back to Weird Ed, he’ll be on good terms with you.
I also like the man eating plant. He’s so cute! I helped him grow using radioactive
water and pepsi so I could..uh… climb up his body to get to the attic. Yeah, that’s
a thing that happens.
In general there are just a lot of details about this game that create a fun, silly experience.
HOWEVER, I noticed that as I was replaying, I was getting increasingly frustrated at the
amount of backtracking I had to do. And not always because I was getting stuck, but rather
the rooms you do the most in are SO far away; I started to hold a pretty massive grudge
against these stairs. But most of my issues with this game, and most old school adventure
games, are with the puzzles. Now, I realize I am going to sound like a hypocrite here
because how many times have I defended my love for the classic Sierra titles? The answer
is too many times, but the difference is that Sierra had no shame in designing utterly ridiculous
puzzles to amp up the difficulty and prolong the amount of time spent on their games. Ron
Gilbert, one of lead developers at LucasArts, has gone on record saying that even though
King’s Quest was an influence, he didn’t like that the puzzles punished the player
by being illogical. In an interview, David Fox recalled a Sierra game that punished the
player for attempting to pick up a broken piece of mirror, stating, “in one of those
games, picking up a piece of broken mirror would kill you – you’d bleed to death.
I know that in the real world I can successfully pick up a broken piece of mirror without dying.”
You know what else I think I could successfully do in the real world? Open an envelope without
the fear of ripping it and rendering it useless for a future puzzle I need to complete. I
LOGICALLY think that if I get an envelop in my inventory I should be able to open it but
SILLY ME WHAT WAS I THINKING I NEED TO STEAM IT OPEN. I also loved when I logically had
to come to the conclusion that the high score of an arcade game, that I have to go through
extreme lengths to power on, is the combination to the main security door. Yeah, all my high
scores are definitely my passwords, totally logical. As Jessica Fletcher would say: “It’s
unfair to the player.” The amount of useless inventory items can also be a bit daunting;
early on I found myself taking broken bottles of ketchup, cheese, a head of lettuce; what
the hell am I doing, am I making a cheeseburger.
Yeah, I’m being a bit of a smartass because comparatively, LucasArts has always had better
and more fair puzzle design than Sierra, but they ain’t perfect. I found some of these
puzzles rather excruciating; this is made up for slightly by the fact that there are
so many ways to complete the game, so messing up doesn’t necessarily mean a dead end,
but things definitely got tedious. You can also die if you’re not careful, as shown
with the hamster incident, and if you don’t act quickly in certain situations, the entire
mansion will explode. LucasArts would eventually scrap the possibility of death in future games;
the company mostly stayed true to their belief in not punishing the player. At least not
too much. A pleasurable amount of punishment; it’s like when you have a loose tooth and
moving it around hurts but it also kind of feels good. Yeah. That’s LucasArts.
One of my favorite things about Maniac Mansion is not necessarily from the game itself, but
its influence on the adventure game genre. Because of this, we got to see Bernard and
the tentacles again in Day of the Tentacle, which is an outstanding title in LucasArts’s
catalog, and a lot elements from Maniac Mansion are used in Ron Gilbert’s spiritual successor,
Thimbleweed Park. Delores: “Carefully handling broken glass...If this were a Sierra On-Line
Adventure Game, I’d be DEAD by now.” Woooooow, David Fox held onto that broken glass thing
for a LONG TIME. As I played LucasArts games throughout the years I only loved them more
and more; they became funnier, more refined, and the puzzle design improved. So even though
Maniac Mansion is not one of my favorites, I think it is one of the most ambitious and
detailed early titles, instrumental in bringing a new mechanic to adventure games, and it
proved that they could be funny and a little be naughty. Though I am a little disappointed
that I couldn’t turn on the statue.
In 1990, LucasFilms developed an idea for a live acted, Maniac Mansion television series
that would focus on the Edison family; the rights were purchased by The Family channel
where it ran the US, and on YTV in Canada for three seasons. I’m gonna be honest;
I wasn’t even aware that this was a thing until several years ago, I have no recollection
of ever seeing it growing up. If you’re expecting something to really follow the premise
of the game however, you aren’t going to find it here; it strays pretty heavily. Though
as a show, it was well received. It’s very...odd, and I couldn’t quite grasp what kind of
audience this was targeting; It almost comes across as a kid’s program, but has a lot
of dark and subversive humor. Personally I would have liked to see a campy Maniac Mansion
cartoon based on the kids you could play as; this show just doesn’t resemble anything
from the game. I’m not even sure it can be considered an adaptation, the only thing
it has in common with the source material is it’s name. Woman: “The Maniac Mansion
10th Anniversary Special will return after these commercial messages.
Final thoughts! Of course I recommend this game; it offers a lot of replayability and
Green Tentacle is a treasure. Cheers to LucasArts for creating some of the coolest adventure
games out there. No matter how snarky I get about UI or the puzzles, LucasArts will always
have a very special place in my heart. Don’t be a tunahead, check out Maniac Mansion.
Hey everyone, PushingUpRoses here and I just want to thank you again for watching my video
on Maniac Mansion - if you’re interested in more gaming related content then be sure
to check out my backlog because I have a SHIT TON of gaming related stuff. If you happen
to like classic television, I also cover that! Murder, She Wrote! Goosebumps! The Golden
Girls! All this and more.
I very much appreciate shares and likes, but if you want to support me directly, then consider
pledging to my patreon campaign. I have rewards like handwritten postcards, a discord chat,
and I’ll also love you platonically forever if you decide to pledge. Just like Green Tentacle
followed razor around for helping him, I will do the same for you. Thanks again, and I’ll
see you in the next one.