Maniac Mansion

Posted by MattyRasker in Gaming, Nostalgia on Jan 10th, 2010 | 0 comments

I have recently downloaded a cool little application to my Android phone called Nesoid, a NES emulator for your Android mobile. As someone who spent most of his pre-teenage years on a NES, one had to download it to see how well it actually works. With Nesoid installed, you then need the ROMs for it to load, of which I had found from a number of sites. Allow me to point out that you really should have the original NES cartridges before downloading the ROMs, but I’m sure that gets ignored in some cases. Not in this case, for I have my original NES and cartridges and it was time to send me back to 1990 on my mobile.

And so, we start my Gaming nostalgia section with a classic – Maniac Mansion.

The story – in a nutshell, a group of kids, led by a kid called Dave, are out to rescue a friend of theirs, Sandy, from the evil Dr Fred Edison. She is being held up by the evil doctor in a Mansion high on a hill, who’s other residents are the doctors wife, Nurse Edison, and their son “Wierd Ed” Edison. Oh, and some, er, tentacles, including a tentacle wanting to be a rock star (it’s true!). It is to be said at this point that twenty years prior to these events, a strange, purple meteor crash landed in front of the Edison mansion, so not all is as it seems inside the huge mansion doors (of which you will find the key to under the doormat).

Before setting out, you must select two other kids to aid Dave in the rescue attempt. From a surfer bum to a rock musician, a novelist to a science whiz, you must select the kids whose talent you think will be of use during the rescue.

So onto the game. You start outside, and via a “to do” panel, you solve puzzles in order to progress through the game. You move your arrow to the action you want to perform (the choice ranges from go to, open, push, use, look at etc) and then select the object you want to perform the action on (Open -> Front Door). Along the way you must avoid Dr Edison and his family or otherwise you will get chucked into the dungeon.

There are some memorable moments in this game, and is very humorous at times. Just remember not to cause a nuclear meltdown near the pool, thats a very bad idea.

This game came out around the time point and click adventures were readily available, Monkey Island, Indiana Jones, Kings Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest (!) to name a few. But none really had the appeal to me than this one – it was spooky yet funny, quirky yet serious at times. From what I can remember, this was the only point and click that was converted from the PC to a console format (correct me if I’m wrong?), and a good job it was too. O.k, it was slightly more frustrating having to move your cursor with the D Pad than a mouse, and thus trying to complete tasks that needed to be done quickly proved somewhat difficult at times, but generally the format worked and gave hours of fun.

A classic this was, and always will be. It proved so popular that a sequel was released on the PC, namely “Day of the Tentacle”, which again was a superb game.