During six years of careful video game studies I have had the opportunity to witness the demeanor of many games which kept on cheating the player and preventing, a way or another, of achieving any progress at all.

“One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we’ll need a new definition.”,

Alvin Toffler said. Pertaining the virtual reality of videogames not one but many definitions were the kind of reflections which enabled me to cope with this frustrating issue of games cheating the player.

Rule of thumb number one: any CTD (Crash To Desktop) is unreal pertaining the reality of the game’s world. One example of a game which almost drove me crazy with CTDs was a particular level of Blood II: The Chosen. The episode in question was “Cabalco Meat Packing Plant” somewhere in chapter two. The design of the level and how the mobs were disposed encouraged and/or required the use of the sniper rifle. But among the bloody places of this level there was one special zealot which, if shot with the sniper rifle, will everytime crash the game to the desktop.

When one is having difficulty with a game and has already ruled out every misconfiguration or issues related to the game’s software itself one should be easy to realize that it is the game’s fault and not one’s.

In the two-thousands I’ve been studying the DOS era of PC video games; sometimes. I had vague recollections of my gaming seasons in adolescence. I must admit that I haven’t had much luck nor scads of fun with videogames back then. But sometimes memory gets deformed and ten or fifteen years later I remembered the DOS era with a vague self-satisfied nostalgy; thinking that I did have fun!
But now I must confess that it wasn’t so. I had only the essential fun with videogames from ’91 to ’99 (except in ’93 when I didn’t play), meaning that the only games that I played and finished were only the staples which “everyone else was playing”, something along the lines of Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Quake, DN3D and the compulsory graphic adventures (Lucasarts et al)…

Building a database of DOS games and starting to fire them up in DOSBox I have had many delusions about what that era was (really) about. It wasn’t about assimilating the whole commercial PC video game scene, playing to it, finishing it and then feeling glorious. It was more about choosing what really would be fun and discarding all the trash with potentiality to scar one mentally with contionuos deep frustrations. I am speaking of corporate trash, not even touching the topic of shovelware games.

In those years, many of them pre-Internet, it was difficult to find the information needed to fix an offending game. I am not talking from the resentment of picking an obsolete object of study for being out of touch with reality. Sadly the most painful memories are unforgetable, along with the erroneous ones (the ones of having deep fun with DOS games).

I remember very well that, for a myriad of factors, games back then did ”cheat” a lot more than the ones of present day. Not only strange acts on the meat of the game itself, but also OS-wide horrors like:

Heap overflow, (the gist), data error, fail on INT 24H, access denied, sector not found, sharing violation (BBS games), CRC error, invalid memory block address, file not found and the dreaded insufficient memory.

These traumas aren’t easy to forget. Now, to fire a high-end DOSBox emulating all the hardware that I lacked when things went wrong, and to start seeing the same acts, by actually the same perpetrators, is a
dumbfounding occurrence.

In 20 years of PC gaming some of the games that “cheated” me were:

The Dark Half: Once you reach game over the game quits to DOS.

Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen: played in a retrograming rig, yet something happened.

Shadow Warrior: The OpenGl, fanmodded version which is playable in modern OSes, very annoying and often occurring CTDs, but I remember it acting up, specially when using the missile launcher, in the late 90ies too.

Terminal Velocity: The Build3D games were all more or less buggy, except maybe for Blood, so to speak.

Redneck Rampage: Cheated me when I played it in the dedicated retrogaming rig which was high-end compared to the computer I had when I played it for the first time in 1996.  I think it cheated a lot less back then.

Doom II: Played with Risen-3D on XP. I can’t remember what it was, but it did.

Starcraft (on XP): Would appear to work okay since fired up until quitting it. Then when returning and going to open a saved game it just hadn’t any saved games.

Age of Mythology: I wonder what was it, can’t remember.

Unreal Tournament: can’t remember exactly, but surely bug-related crashes.

Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Can’t remember… CTD?

GTA: San Andreas: I can’t remember how did it cheat me, but it did it five times.

Far Cry: Woot, CIA cheats!

Painkiller: Another cheater…

Tony Hawk Pro-Skater: In PS, suddenly the menu stopped to work as it had to, this was weird….

I documented some of the games above when they were cheating me, other are mental recollections.

Now, the game wich I specifically researched how it cheated me, because I thougth was the one most offensive in this regard, was The Terminator: Future Shock.

The game crashed constantly, when playing, when loading up, even in the transition from a level to the next. The crashes were protected mode errors that crash to DOS with a lot of binary data garbage in the screen.

I was one hour walking in the sandbox-like scenario of level two without finding anything out of one of the sides of the death camp. Supposedly here I had to drop an explosive satchel, yet there wasn’t any really indicators of the spot being the access point to the death camp. This was more of a design flaw, subject for other set of articles.

The game freezes in the “LOADING…” (long) intervals…

The machine gun firing muzzle’s animation looks like two ansis, I know this game’s very dated, but even in its heyday, that was just cheating the buyer for the sake of code reusability. The pipe bombs explosion animation is the most grainy graphic I’ve seen in a game considered classic and a muster… The humming of the soundratrck in the transition from level two to level three, its bass, is really annoying!

The old-fashioned cutscenes are quite revealing but not 100% satisfactory. I lost more than one hour in level three simply because the cutscene didn’t explain how to select the satchel charge.

Around forty meters away explosions aren’t heard… why?

Enemies so easy as those wafting mines are not killed with half a dozen rounds of the shotgun? WTF?

Inside of death camp trying to hit a switch thingy from the exit to the sewers, the primitive of wall where the switch is just dissapears (when looking down), in the sewers the playing character just won’t transfer from a pipe to the preceding one if jumping backwards when trying to avoid a surprising mob and if falling from a ridiculously low height the playing character will lose a nonrealistic quantity of health points.

I concluded thinking that many times the cheatings are produced by buggy software, but there are times when the causes appear to be totally software unrelated. In this way they start needing to be judged from a techno-pagan point of view beyond the technical one.

Developer: Idol FX

Publisher: iGames Publishing

Game Genre: FPS / Survival Horror

Narrative Genre: Horror

Every real horror fan should play to Nosfertu: The Wrath of Malachi for the sake of putting himself in the skin of a person who must deal with Count Malachi (Orlok?) a Transylvanian vampire notable for his disregard for social conventions and for his despicable perfidiousness in luring a complete family to his castle to feast on them.

This game implements a very innovative map generation system that makes each new game started a new experience since interiors are generated randomly.

Playing as James, the player is visiting Malachi’s castle in Transylvania to attend his sister’s wedding to the count. When the game begins fifteen relatives of the player are absent and James must rescue them. They are being held captive in different parts of Malachi’s castle and each of them is scheduled for execution at a predetermined time of the night.

James has a stamina meter that decreases when he runs and fights. The accuracy when using weapons with low stamina (high fatigue) is somewhat affected and this forces the player to rest often.

Before the final showdown against Malachi the player will have to fight his way through the labyrinthine corridors and rooms of the castle for finding and killing six different vampire/demonic bosses and their minions like the un-dead, devil dogs, taunting gypsies, ghouls, desmodiij (humanoids), vampire shadows (floating dark shapes), lesser vampires, demons, demodus (mothman-like demons) and a few more enemies.

Given the several mobs of vampiric origin around the castle, it wouldn’t be right if it wouldn’t feature classical vampire-hunting weapons and goodies like consecrated water, garlic and crucifixes among other slashing and fire weapons. But it does, and with some cool twists like, for instance, the capability of allowing the player to bless reservoirs of water with the crucifix to replenish the chalice of holy water.

The standard mobs’ behavior is very unpredictable and surprising. They will chase the player through different rooms, even from the top to the bottom of the castle’s towers. They will appear out of nothing and mince the player to shreds in the twinkling of an eye.

The bosses are notable for their viciousness and that is why it’s advisable to carry a few wooden stacks while venturing into the hot areas of this game because, of finding these bosses sleeping in their coffins, it will take a single stack on their hearts to finish them, thus sparing the player of a confrontation where a lot of ammo (and energy) would be spent.

Taking the rescue of each relative as a single mission, when the player finds any given relative, and frees him/her, the mission is far from over. To finish it, the player must undo his steps and take the NPC to the sanctuary at the entrance of the castle. This may turn out being quite a feat to accomplish. These friendly NPCs sport some level of AI for following James, but most of the time they are going to need several attempts from the player showing them the way to follow him. Their AI could be improved for allowing them to act more real and following always the player and running away or dodging the enemies’ blows in the case of finding some of them in the way back to the sanctuary.

Like I said at the beginning, The Wrath of Malachi is a must for any serious horror video-game fan. The times a video-game scared me are just a few, but I must admit that Nosferatu was one of those games. Specially when I started to play to it, I was somewhat freaked out by the shadow vampires in particular and by the way how, in the most unexpected moment, some foes will just burst from the floor and attack me.

When for some reason the player can’t rescue one or another of the relatives and he/she dies the vibes evoked by the FMV cutscenes are also very lugubrious.

If you liked (as I do from my childhood) the Nosferatu version of Dracula, you should play to The Wrath of Malachi. You won’t be disappointed

Developer: HanbitSoft

Publisher: Game Networks

Game Genre: MMORPG

Narrative Genre: Oriental / Fantasy

Tantra Global was released in late 2004 in Indonesia and it had a monthly subscription fee. Then it became free of cost to play, and started relying entirely in the sale of premium content.

I think MMORPG players should not waste their time in the poor attempt at creating a massive CRPG Tantra is. That said, I also recommend real tantra practitioners and Hindu persons in general to keep away from this game, as it is blasphemous towards Hindu Dharma from its very sources. At first I fell lured but essentially offended by its “Shiva kills Brahma” hook, from the background that is to be found here. But recognizing from the first time I’ve read it, and taking it for what it was: downright heresy against the Vedic and tantric (and other branches of Hindu) creeds.

Then when I was reading the background story and the other background narrative “War of Eight Kings” I started to feel sick of how bad and full of orthographic and grammar errors the story was. Very discomfited by this, by phrases of the sort of “But when an army of Mara threatened to swamped Tantra, the tribe witnessed a birth of a miracle, a child that they all knew to be designed for greater things.” For other things that now I’ll expose I think that this MMORPG is a waste of time, I will review it by both a western materialistic and a Hindu (with a tantric slant) viewpoints.

The background in a nutshell is this: a tantric world called Trimurti, where humans envy the Gods (non-aspirant nature), who are Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva living as one in the Shambala castle. As a consequence of the non-aspirant nature of the humans the gods flee the Shambala castle and form eight tribes. Then, as the age changes and seemingly without any explained reason, Shiva slits Brahma’s throat provoking a cosmic paradox that ends in the retirement of support from the gods to the humans. Mara (a demon of Buddhist lore) appears out of the blue and the eight tribes unite to ensnare him and they succeed, vanishing him from the universe.

Then Mara seeds Trimurti (from the void?) with his spawn and that’s where the playing characters come into the story. The basic objective of the game is fighting the spawn of Mara to loot from them and to skill and level up, what enables the PC to access new scenarios (that are locked for PCs with less level) and this leveling also lets the PC reach the PvP area where she/he can attack the PCs of other ashrams.

The ashrams are the alignments that differentiate the players in the PvP zone. It’s chosen when choosing a God. After a God is chosen, the PCs are in the Brahma, Vishnu or Siva ashram.

If I, from my Hindu viewpoint, I am told of a game like this, it surely awakens some curiosity in me. But the delusions with Tantra Global, in my personal case, were a lot and from the beginning. They started from the character creation process, because I expected too much from something that is obviously a business and non-serious entertainment, and not something made with the sobriety like a theme as tantra deserves.

If I would be asked “Of the tantric universe, which race you want to be.” I’d come up with something like a Carana (a panegyrist of heaven) or with some race eldritch and inconceivable as a Pitri (an ancestor), or with something more traditional, like a mere human. But no. The MMORPG lets one choose only among Naga, Garuda, Deva, Asura, Yaksa, Raksasa, Kimnara and Gandharva. Half of these races in real-life, Vedic culture are considered demonic, but none of them is depicted as such in the game. Bear this in mind.

My story with this MMORPG begun when browsing a free MMORPG list, it called my attention because being Hindu I always dreamt of games with Vedic or tantric themes and content.

For getting the client I suffered first trying to find the few couple of places from where to download it, and then it was a slow download that had to be restarted many times to complete, because of persistent network errors. Then, I have had all type of problems with the installer. Specially with incomprehensible complaints from the loader when, after installing it for the first time, started to download updates and patches (for more than an hour) and then suddenly crashed with errors like “Internal Program Error”… this happened many times.

Soon after beginning my excitement started to wane. When taking up a MMORPG I don’t like to take it lightly. They aren’t casual games. If you are sinking a lot of time in it, then it follows that you want to know things like who produced it, who made it, how is its community and other particularities of the world. Then I felt kind of cheated when I saw it, and wen I started learning on the web who was behind the game. Were some Koreans, who are atheists, Buddhists and Christians. And they were supporting the country with most Muslims of the world (Indonesia) and a country with 80% of the population being Christians (Phillipines).

Why a game like Tantra Global supports these countries and has servers on them instead of hosting its gaming servers in India? I don’t know.

I suffered the worst deception, when I saw how blatantly unpolished the game was on its graphical aspects (think of square shoes and hands), not only on its desecration of Hindu Dharma and Vedic and tantric traditions.

But I played to it because I wanted to know how far the abuse from nations lacking in tantric roots could go. I realized that any expectation of my part towards the game, as funny while being original and conforming to a minimum of tantric logic, was hopeless.

But I don’t think it as original nor cool anymore after having played 145 hours to it. I think the most important disservice this game makes to humanity at large and MMORPG gamers in particular, is that it rewrites the Hindu scriptures in a very blasphemous way. Shambala is the hometown of Lord Kalki in Hindu end-times stories. As such it should be considered something sacred and ultimately unfit for inclusion in a game where non-Hindus are conducting themselves violently with intelligent beings and beast alike, beyond of if they are Mara’s spawn or not.

I hated, in the first levels of the grinding process, to be killing little beasts as needed quests to advance my character. I disliked the inconsistency of, when talking with NPC mobs around Mandara Village at the beginning, I was told that in that village they worshiped Lord Vishnu, but the self-styled and impersonalism influenced, deity in Mandara’s temple looked more reminiscent of Lord Shiva as The Lord of The Beasts, instead.

I think that a game about tantra can benefit from tantric and Vedic touches with a more serious approach. Like instead of doing only a fort (without temples) for each one of the three gods, doing also temples where rookies in or even total outsiders of the Vedic and tantric traditions could become acquainted with factual RL peculiarities of these traditions.

But no. I haven’t seen a single deity of Lord Vishnu, nor a single Shiv Ling in the whole game. No banyan trees. No forest shrines. That is somewhat stupid, when Temples and Shrines are an intrinsic facet of these two philosophical, religious and cultural traditions.

The design is very limited. The quests sounded to me more filler than anything else. Very simple quests, purportedly “episodes” of the PC’s sojourn in Tantra Global, of getting an item from a mob and then deliver it to the quest-giver NPC. I must add that these quests are nothing memorable that one must know to make any sense of Tantra Global’s universe. Besides, this characteristic is very undesirable and dated: having everyone doing the same quests and keeping the grinding process totally disconnected from a gaming experience that integrates the leveling up of PCs with a certain in-game continuity and more socially oriented gameplay.

What else? Oh yes, the combat system also sucked. It is point and click and while fighting one can’t move around. Basically because the control interface of Tantra Global is so limited. There aren’t attacks that rely in a stylish way of controlling one’s PC.

To attack one must click on the mob and then the PC approaches the mob and starts executing its (monotonous) default attack. The only way of putting some style in this extremely bored combat system is with the help of special attacks and spells that are unlocked from a skill tree that is based in prana points. These prana points increase with each hit from the PC against a mob. When the player gets 100 percent of prana points she/he advances a level.

As other annoying defects I must point:

The loading times when traveling from a realm to another. One must wait watching a load screen showing some concept art of the game. Funny that in one of these loading screens a stray human hair found its place.

The lack of freedom to travel by the game’s realms at will. One has to walk by the predetermined paths. One can’t skip these climbing and going over hills and such.

The typos and grammatical errors in the hud and in the quests’ texts.

The incapacity of changing one’s password in the “My Account” section of Tantra Global’s web site. The only way to do it is filling a GM (game master) complaint and waiting, waiting and then waiting even a little more.

I let the worst part for the ending of this review: did you know that HanbitSoft (Tantra Global’s developer) was the Korean distributor for the PC RTS StarCraft?

A great idea for a MMORPG down the drain.

Developer: Lucasfilm Games

Publisher: Lucasfilms Games

Game Genre: Graphic Adventure

Narrative Genre: Adventure/ Comedy / Piracy / Horror / Deserted Island

I remember asking a schoolmate friend in 1991 which game was in his opinion the best PC game. He said, without a trace of doubt, that the best PC game (until that moment) was The Secret of Monkey Island. I asked him why, and he said that because it was the most cool (read: abysmal) graphic adventure ever created.

The original Monkey Island deserves to be played since it is considered one of the staples of the graphic adventure video-game genre. For its design, plot and back-story it deserves the title of masterpiece.

Beyond the rustic and verdurous locations, one thing needing special note are the game’s characters. All of them, even the pets, are of such a fleshed-out personality that the threads of conversation available when speaking to them are several and full of tidbits of information that advance the plot letting the player become deeply aware of how is the actual situation in the Melee Island area of Monkey Island’s Caribbean.

This game features a very romantic and adventurous plot-line, multidimensional characters, thrilling and bizarre locations and it is spiced up by a very elaborate and ground-breaking, tongue-in-cheek dialogue system.

Guybrush Threepwood arrives to Melee Island with the clear intention of becoming a pirate. He is advised by Melee’s watchman to resort to the boss pirates at the Scumm bar.

BEWARE OF SPOILERS BELOW

At the Scumm, the three pirate bosses tell him that the only way they’re going to speak to him is after he passes the three essential test of piracy: sword-fighting, treasure-hunting and stealing; demonstrating that he is worthy of their attention.

But somewhere in the island, when Guybrush is completing the tests, the plot is going to thicken a lot. He becomes acquainted with governor Elaine Marley, and falls in love with her. Needless to say that the meeting with Elaine Marley and what happens next are going to have a pivotal importance in the game’s plot. From then onwards, the daring enterprise of Threepwood will take on a more romantic tone.

His admission into Melee’s pirate society circle is thwarted when, after finishing the tests, the ghost pirate LeChuck kidnaps the governor and Guybrush has to chase him to Monkey Island for rescuing Elaine and killing him.

END OF SPOILERS

As I fired The Secret of Monkey Island in 1991, in my no hdd, hercules XT, and started playing it, it impressed me since the beginning when I saw the delicately made use of perspective in it; after the first scene, when Guybrush talks to the myope night-watch and arrives to Melee Island’s pier from the that rocky edge. This technique is called character scaling.

I confess to using a walkthrough the first time I played it because I was 14 and it was very difficult. It could be anxiety for knowing what was going to happen next, as well.

Then I played this game three or four years later, again, to the end. It was the CD-ROM “enhanced” version of 1992 with improved sound track. This second time around, I used a walkthrough, again. Only in 2005 when I started playing it again, for the third time, 14 years after its release, I was able to do around 98% of the game without hints.

The impression this game caused in me was very strong. It was the second or third graphic adventure I played in my life. It was certainly the first with such a level of character depth. It showed me that it was possible to create a narrative in the vein of childhood classics like Treasure Island and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with the added engagement to the reader (in this case player) brought about by the highly interactivity of the game.

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?

Other reason is the massive disperssion of games started all at once. Since the last five years I started playing, sometimes finished and I’m still playing to more than 300 home computer, video-arcade, console and PC games. Of which, always faithful to my rules, I have finished a few more than a dozen. Anyway, I don’t care because the journeys were very enjoyable and the glory of playing without cheating and saving in hard parts was very, very rewarding. I will be posting here my views on those games.