Year: 1987 / 2004 (Deluxe)
Developer: Lucasfilm Games / LucasFans
Publisher: Lucasfilms Games / LucasFans
Game Genre: Graphic Adventure
Narrative Genre: Adventure/ Comedy / Mad Scientist
Maniac Mansion is an important classic. Along with Zack McKraken, and Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade they form part of the first wave, or golden age of Lucasarts’ SCUMM-interfaced graphic adventures. Maniac Mansion was the first game to feature the SCUMM interface. Maniac Mansion Deluxe is a remake of the game made by LucasFans.
From those years in the early ’90ies Lucasarts (Lucasfilm Games back then) meant more or less go anywhere, talk to anyone and get anything “takeable.”
For its B-rated and teeny movies themes Maniac Mansion is, in any of its incarnations, a must-play for any serious 80ies nostalgic gamer. The surfer, punk and new-wave alignment of some of its characters makes it interesting from the start. Not many games feature playable punk and goth characters like Maniac Mansion. One of the funniest cornerstones of Maniac Mansion is that, the capability of choosing kids aligned to one or another youth movement. Although they aren’t very much fleshed-out, the sole fact of Syd being a new-wave and Razor a punk was quite esthetically pleasurable for me even if it was only for the cheap thrill of telling one’s grandchildren.
The remake’s (MM Deluxe) exclusive features: the graphics are enhanced beyond the second PC version, it features 640×400 and 320×200 resolutions, windowed mode, anti-aliased scaled sprites which make it look very cool for an eighties’ game. The constant music helps a lot in keeping the games atmosphere going. The other versions didn’t have this goodie, I liked it. Some of the music in MM Deluxe is ripped from Day of The Tentacle.
In the vein of a teen movie of the ’80ies, mixing mad scientist and comedy, one as the hero, Dave, must choose among one’s acquitances, namely Syd, Michael, Wendy, Bernard, Razor and Jeff to rescue Sandy Pantz (Dave’s girl) 
who was kidnapped by the weirdos that live in the victorian mansion where they are mind-controlled by an evil meteor that fell nearby.
The interactions with the weirdos inside the mansion are quite very succinct but they let you form yourself an idea of their personalities. Of this family the most anti-social is, in my opinion, Dr. Fred Edison, who is a recluse in his lab for the last several years. Edna doesn’t lag much behind, either. But With Edward the story is different. One can come to terms with him and thus advance the plot.
I wanted this game to be my first review since this game has proven to be a landmark in my personal experience of home computer entertainment. The famous Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion interface blew my mind from the start, because the first time I saw a PC in my life, in ’91, while waiting for a friend in his house, his brother was playing Indy and the Last Crusade and showed it to me. I had this game in my pc-xt without hard disk drive when I was a teen; soon after Indy’s incident. I played this game’s C64 version (the original) with a friend in his house as well.
Personally, my early forays into the mansion were quite a few because I haven’t mastered English yet (it isn’t my mother tongue) and I didn’t want to spoil the fun of playing to it actually knowing what I was doing instead of playing it with my meager English knowledge at 13-17 years of age; this would imply dialectical brute force and it was something to do way to gross for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the humility of picking up a spanish-english dictionary and letting Maniac Mansion teach me english, either. It was simply that I gave it and myself time to develop my knowledge of English.
This was when I had it and played it, in 1991. Then in ’94 the friend of the Commodore a day showed me the enhanced PC version and I instantly felt thrilled by the difference, I realized that even when I picked Maniac Mansion up, for the second time, to play it, it was already very late and I wouldn’t gain anything in playing to the original, if I could do it with a better realease.
After a decade of seeing the enhanced PC version, in 2004 I started playing to the deluxe remake again and finished it. I trusted this remake as the most polished version of Maniac Mansion and it didn’t disappoint me.
I played this game from beginning to end seventeen years after it was released and fourteen after I knew it, because of the desire of playing to it in English, but the script of the game quite dissapointed me. It sounds very, very much like a movie. The dialogues are very concise and short, this dissapointed me, but of course adds quite a factor of coolness to this great classic, but I really expected more content; I thought classic Maniac Mansion’s narrative would be longer and more in-depth, Like more attempting to make an immersive experience instead of evoking a movie’s dialogue.
On the personal side again. I couldn’t take myself seriously as a gamer and former punk if I haven’t played to Maniac Mansion from beginning to end. So I embarked in this undertaking in the Spring of 2004 and finished it in the Summer of 2009. It may be that I am so much infatuated with ’80ies
nostalgia and Maniac Mansion looks and feels very much ’80ies…
I did not know that you could finish the game with different combinations of characters. Of knowing it I would have played it with a different entourage for Dave. I would have liked to have played to it with Razor and Syd, to be in touch with my punk/gothic roots. But I had a word of mouth version that the only way of finishing it was with Bernard and Michael.
It took me fifteen hours and a half to finish it. I don’t remember how I played the puzzles but I have read that the Lucasfans remake has some puzzles made harder. This is other attractive feature of Maniac Mansion Deluxe.
WARNING SPOILERS BELOW
If one waited so many years to play it, then why not making it as hard as possible? If the reader is going to play it and doesn’t want to have the narrative spoiled, should stop reading this review.
The bottom line is that it is very obvious that the 8 bit machines’ lack of capacity made itself very felt in the game, specially in its dialogues. That’s why, to me, Maniac Mansion seems to me as thought as a movie’s script dialogue. And what surprise when I found, eighteen years after knowing it and twenty-twoafter the game was released, that the game even spawned a sitcomm in 1990. I don’t know how it is but I haven’t seen anything of it, not even a trailer.
Feeling outsider for being such an incomplete Maniac Mansion fan, I felt silly and sillier when I finished the game just to being told what to do and/or how to behave.
This for me, while you… are you a tuna head yet?
