Do You Remember - Maniac Mansion?

[IrishCanadian25]

Please accept my most heartfelt apologies for not keeping up with this as I would have liked. This is a fun thread series for me as I take all of you on a nice walk of nostalgia to the days of the original NES, and some of the amazing games not names "Mario" or "Zelda."

In this installment, we look at 1987's amazingly freaking and funny "Maniac Mansion."

20 years before the game begins, a purple meteor falls from the sky and into a huge home. The owners of this mansion, The Edisons, are a reclusive and quasi-odd bunch. Dr. Fred, Nurse Edna, and Weird Ed live in the home where the meteor crashed, and slowly, the local hospital at which Dr. Fred works has seen some of their patients disappear.

When a local cheerleader is kidnapped and brought to the mansion, Dave Miller and the rest of his stereotypes college buddies (the nerd, surfer, rocker chick, etc.) go to rescue her.

One of the best parts of this game were the multiple endings - depending on which character you played as (and you could switch mid-game, especially if your character died) and which characters survived.

Possible ending include launching the evil mind control meteor back into space, radioing the meteor police, publishing the meteor's autobiography, feeding it to a plant, blowing up the mansion (and sacrificing your characters lives), etc.

The BEST part about this game, other than the puzzles and the challenging game play, were the characters.

Dave Miller, a James Dean-type character; in some artwork for the game he resembles Michael J Fox from the Back to the Future films. Dave, although not particularly talented or useful, is Sandy's boyfriend and has organized the rescue and as such is a mandatory character and is automatically selected.

Syd, an aspiring New Wave musician. He specializes in musical instruments.
Michael F. Stoppe, an African-American amateur photographer, aspiring to be a professional photographer. He works for the college newspaper and is able to develop film.

Wendy, an aspiring novelist with talent for writing and editing documents.

Bernard Bernoulli, a nerd suffering from overwhelming cowardice (he runs away from Green Tentacle until another character makes friends with it). He has the most skills of any character in the game, as he can disassemble the radio in the den, fix the HAM radio, and fix the telephone in the library. His presence in the game, although optional like the rest of the kids, is significant (and perhaps canonical) because he reappears in Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle as the main playable character.

Razor, a female punk rocker. Her talents are identical to Syd's, even the ability to microwave Weird Ed's Hamster. She was based on Gary Winnick's girlfriend.[3] Her band, Razor and the Scummettes, is referred to in Zak McKracken. She reappears as a member of "The Vultures" biker gang in the 1995 SCUMM game Full Throttle.

Jeff Woodie, a "surfer dude", is the least talented character of the group after Dave, as his only ability is to repair the telephone. However, the game is still completable with Jeff in a player's party. The only other quality he has is that, as he lacks shoes, he doesn't make the same "walking sound" the other characters do.

Dr. Fred, the patriarch of the family and a mad scientist. Although he periodically wanders through the house to talk to other family members, the player can only reach him if they breach the inner lab at the basement of the mansion. Formerly a quack with medical degrees from correspondence courses, some of his greatest creations are living, disembodied tentacles, and the Zom-B-Matic machine, which the Murderous Purple Slimy Meteor uses to control him through mind control.

Nurse Edna, Dr. Fred's wife, a gruesome, lusty nurse in to S&M. When one of the male characters is captured by her, she locks them in the dungeon while lamenting, "How silly of me. I should have tied you to my bed!" Female characters are given the ominous, "You're lucky you're not a boy, or you'd be in BIG trouble right now!"

Weird Ed, Fred and Edna's macropalegic son, is a survivalist paramilitary maniac with a hair-trigger temper and an obsession with his pet hamster. In one notorious sequence (which is not needed to complete the game), the player can actually steal the hamster, microwave it, and then give its remains to Ed; prompting Ed to kill the offending character.

Dead Cousin Ted, Edna's cousin, is a mummified corpse with his own private gym, pornographic magazine collection, and a sarcophagus equipped with a television set.

Green Tentacle, an aspiring rock-and-roll musician and manic depressive, who doesn't really want to follow Doctor Fred's orders. It is possible to get him to kill one of the players, by having him listen to an audio recording of "Tentacle Mating Calls". Doing so causes Green Tentacle to go into a frenzy; the screen will then cut to the dead player's tombstone. He will also react badly to anyone who presents a recording contract made out to them (by killing that character out of jealousy) or a publishing contract made out to the meteor.

Purple Tentacle, Doctor Fred's easily-fooled henchman who guards the lab. Reappears in Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle.

The Murderous Purple Slimy Meteor is an evil, intelligent meteor from outer space who is on the run from the "Meteor Police" for the past two decades, during which time it has been hiding out in the Edison's mansion. It is also ultimately revealed to have coerced Doctor Fred into a life of villainy via mind control through his Zom-B-Matic machine. Should the player try to approach the meteor without first having acquired a hazmat suit, the meteor will kill the player by firing a lethal dose of radiation at them. The exact means of dealing with the meteor remain up to the player; amongst his several fates are banishment to outer space, death, life imprisonment by the "Meteor Police", and an appearance on late-night television with a David Letterman parody.

So, the question remains - DO YOU REMEMBER MANIAC MANSION?

 

[Cena's Little Helper]

I definitely remember this game. I had it on my old PC when I was a kid. I loved it, although I could never get past the green tentacled monster, as I never had what it wanted to eat.

About a year or so ago, I got to play it again. Although I got past the green tentacled monster this time, I never beat the game. I made it to Dr. Fred's lab, but, for some reason that I can't remember at the moment, I couldn't get rid of the meteor.

I definitely plan on playing it again someday when I have the time, as I always thought it was such a quirky yet clever game. I was also impressed by the fact that I was still as into it in my twenties as I was when I was eight/nine years old. I also just found out that there's a sequel to it that came out in the early 90s. Hopefully I can find it and play it as well!

 

[Steamboat Ricky]

I played it for sure. It was pretty challenging, especially with all of the passcodes and whatnot. That was very, very irritating. Overall...a very entertaining game. Not nearly as good as Monkey Island, however. I think that might be the greatest game of all time.

 

[Hip2bsquare]

Gee I had totally forgoten about this game until I opened this thread. How could I forget it really? PLayed it a lot when I was a youngling. Must say I sucked at it and never got too far atall. But playing it was all kinds of awesome.