Fan-made Maniac Mansion 256 Color Remake 232
xDCDx writes "LucasFan Games have just released an impressive 256 color remake of Maniac Mansion. There is a sequel to Zak McKracken available too. Their website is scarce in details, but the games speak for themselves. It seems the perfect timing for this release, now that LucasArts is obsessed with killing the graphical adventure genre. (If only Ron Gilbert would buy Monkey Island rights and made Monkey Island 3a: The Real Story...)"
Re:Woo and yay (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just Lucasarts. It seems *nobody* cares about adventures anymore. Because it's just more profitable to make yet-another-3d-first-person-shooter-this-time-wit
Re:How many of you completed Maniac Mansion? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Finished the NES version, though, which was a bit censored for content. Then went back and did it every way - launch the Meteor in the Weird Edsel, summon the Meteor Police, get the Meteor a book publishing deal... Then I looked for all the ways to blow up the house, and all the different ways of getting the Edisons to murder the kids.
Remember, Maniac Mansion was back before adventure game designers saw the light and took out all the ways you could get into a no-win situation and not realise it for weeks... Accidentally wasted the paint remover, or the developer fluid? Too bad - you can't win. The nice thing about later games like Day of the Tentacle was that you could play as you saw fit, and know that no matter how badly you treated the NPCs you could _never_ get into an unwinnable position.
Re:How many of you completed Maniac Mansion? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This game was awesome on the NES... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you could give the hamster to Weird Ed...
Re:No SCUMM engine? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:get it off p2p (Score:4, Insightful)
Do people really verify the integrity of *any binary file* they've downloaded, no matter how? Even with MD5? Most people do not, including slashdotters. p2p or otherwise.
KOTOR == adventure (Score:5, Insightful)
>
> Not just Lucasarts. It seems *nobody* cares about adventures anymore. Because it's just more profitable to make yet-another-3d-first-person-shooter-this-time-wit
Huh? LucasArts?
Killing off Sam and Max was teh suck, but have you played KOTOR?
Look beyond the 3D (it's purty!) and the fact that it has character stats/abilities a'la D20-based RPG. When I finished KOTOR, I didn't remember a damn thing about any of my characters' stats or class. For an RPG, that's unusual.
But I do remember spending a lot of time navigating dialog trees where my choices had a greater effect on my character's development than anything I chopped up for XP. I also remember a game salted liberally with math and logic puzzles, none of which would have been out of place in an Infocom title, and I remember a story featuring character development of the player, evolving relationships between the player and the NPCs, and considerable exposition of the history of the early SW universe.
It's ironic - George Lucas can't make a good movie to save his life. And yet, if you took a LucasArts/BioWare game, recorded it all the way through, edited out about 2/3 of the combat and "walking around town" between quests, you'd have about 2 hours of video that would better Star Wars movie than either of Episodes I or II. Go figure.
KOTOR, at least for me, was a work of interactive fiction, not an RPG. (A feature, not a bug!)
Re:Best. Game. Ever. (Score:3, Insightful)
Totally agree here. This game, and X-COM UFO defense are my 2 most favorite games of all time. True, it is a shame that this genre died out (or at least appeared to). Probably the biggest reason is that games of this nature gain nothing by the use of "STATE OF THE ART, 3D TECHONOLOGY!", which game developers have been using as their major selling point. Sure the game sucks to play, but look how realistic the blood splatters out of the Zorg soldiers!
Plus, maniac mansion required a very creative story line, as well as multiple endings, etc. Which must have really pushed the envelope for systems like the old NES.
Pfft (Score:4, Insightful)
The fourth game, however, was... meh. The whole game just felt tired and strained, and the 3d look wasn't as vibrant and expressive (MI3 had only 256 colors and STILL manages to come out on top). They should pick up where part 3 left off, and in the same style.
i love this game (Score:3, Insightful)
They were fully immersive in that you could roam around and complete the game the way you wanted to. In fact, Maniac Mansion had 5 different ways to complete the game if I recall.
The game world itself wasn't incredibly complex but it gave the illusion that it was complete. And when you found something new, it was interesting (draining the pool, the observatory, edna's bedroom). Unlike like these 3d adventure games on N64 or gamecube where you just roam around and find mini puzzles. The world was more cohesive. So you felt like you had many options at your disposal and that made for a great adventure.
Re:Woo and yay (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with these people who run around screaming "the adventure genre is dead!" is that I would wager none of them own a copy of The Longest Journey, or Syberia, or Syberia II, or Crystal Key or any of the adventure games that have come out in the last 5 years.
You know why companies don't make as many adventure games as they used to? Because people like the ones complaining about it here don't go to the store and buy them when they come out! Why would anyone make a game nobody buys?
Anyway, the sooner these complainers figure out that adventure games are still *there* and go buy them instead of making up crap about none of them existing anymore, we'll all be better off.
Re:ScummVM (Score:2, Insightful)