Fan-made Maniac Mansion 256 Color Remake

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...)"

Woo and yay

[oberondarksoul]

Perhaps fan-inspired efforts like this will convince Lucasarts to resume development of the cancelled Sam & Max sequel they were making? Apart from Monkey Island, Lucasarts appear not to care for the genre they brought so much to in the early Nineties.

Sweet :)

[Tetsugaku-San]

Damn u - I submitted this 3 weeks ago! Anyway - more to the point it's a pretty sweet conversion, works pefectly with win2K and brings backk all those memories of SCUM on the A500 :D

Now that brings me way back...

[WegianWarrior]

I loved that game when I was younger... played it on my trusty old (even if it was newer back then ;) ) Commodore 64 until I could walk thru it with my eyes shut. Played it again when Day of the Tentacle came out.. in cause you havn't found it, the entire MM was included as an easteregg.

Good memories... this will definitly be downloaded once I get home from work today!

How many of you completed Maniac Mansion?

[zonix]

I played Maniac Mansion on my old pc back in the good ol' 80's. I remember it as being the absolute most difficult adventure game to complete. Did anyone succeed?

I've been thinking about playing the original again with the help of the DosBox project. I just completed Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry: Enhanced. Pretty cool! Nothing beats nostalgia!

I miss the 80's.

z

Best. Game. Ever.

[L3WKW4RM]

The NES version of Maniac Mansion is to this day my favorite game ever. I discover new things about it still after all these years.

It was actually a very interesting ordeal for the development team to get the game approved by Nintendo, The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the NES [crockford.com] gives some insight into how bland they required their games to be in those days.

The sequel, Day of the Tentacle [adventuregamers.com], for PC was great as well. It's a shame that this game genre has died out.

Re:Woo and yay

[Troed]

My girlfriend bought Day of the Tentacle (compilation CD with Sam & Max) a few months ago. We played on on the big screen via DosXbox (DOS emu ported to the Xbox). Extreme nostalgia.

The idea to run it on the Xbox came after it refused to work under Win2K until I used Dosbox, and I knew that Dosbox had been ported to the Xbox. It took some setting up to map the needed keys, but it was worth it. Much more fun to sit two in a sofa and play vs sitting in front of the computer.

graphic of the /. effect

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone notice the stats link off of the home page?
have a look. very wool
http://www.nedstatbasic.net/s?tab=1&link=1&i d=1544 813

Works with CrossOver Office

[L3WKW4RM]

I tried it out with CX Office and it works for the most part...the resolution is a bit off and I had to CTRL-ALT-+ a few times and ALT-TAB to get my mouse to escape. Looks like they've completely redone all the graphics, and it looks good for 256 colors!

/me calls in sick today

Egg go SPLORTCH!

[Zawash]

I keep thinking of the egg in the airplane microwave from Zak McKracken. The only way to get the oxygen tank (last bin, remember) was to egg the microwave.
..I've always wanted to test it myself, but I've heard enough horror stories of egg being found in the most obscure corners of the kitchen for weeks after such incidents.. :-D

Re:Woo and yay

[Jagasian]

DOSBOX is great, but for Lucas Arts adventure games, you would be better off using ScummVM [scummvm.org], which has also been ported to the XBOX, as far as I know.

A remake of Maniac Mansion is all fine and good...

[isolationism]

... But how will we ever make a sequel to Grim Fandango? By today's standards the engine is unremarkable. A remake could have more detailed graphics with the scenes rendered realtime; the characters were designed for very low-polycount rendering already.

What really set Grim Fandango apart was the writing, and the audio. The music and the voice acting were second to none. Without them the game loses its character.

In any event, the remakes likely won't get much further without having to start lifting audio, too -- I'm fairly certain LucasArts started doing that not long after Maniac Mansion 2...

Copy protection

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Lucasarts' "un-Xeroxable paper" copy protection start with this game? There was this piece of dark-brown paper with a table in black symbols written on it, that you could still read but was really hard to photo-copy right. During the game (I think to enter a door on the second floor) you had to look up one of the codes.

I have to admit I was really stumped by this bastion of security until I found a photocopier with really good contrast :-)

Re:This game was awesome on the NES...

[meringuoid]

They did NOT take out the "exploding hamster" scene in the NES version. You just needed to use Sid when putting hamster in the microwave, and he'd happily do the deed.

I was a truly sick child; I systematically tried it with all the kids and none would do my bidding.

Apparently the first few thousand copies of NES Maniac Mansion would let Sid or Razor microwave the hamster. Then NoA caught on, and later ones gave the message about cholesterol... Boo, hiss, etc. Of course years later I got to play the real thing on a PC (hello, little computer. I respect you, even though you only have 64K of memory) and indulged my horrific heathen ways to the limit ;-)

Re:Now that brings me way back...

[Photon01]

not particularly an easter egg, it told you in the manual exactly howq and where to find it. IIRC

Nostalgia

[Angry Black Man]

Playing all of those old LucasArts puzzle games was my first PC gaming experience. And they were awesome.

I hope this fan site will remake more classics like Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, etc. etc. but those mihgt be under more strict copyrights I guess.

Help Request

[Doomrat]

I'm doing a remake of the crap-classic Camelot Warriors [worldofspectrum.org], but I am incompetent when it comes to art [waz6.net] as this prototype for the knight shows (I gave up when I got as far as the arms). If anybody can draw, please help.

Re:Woo and yay

[ctellefsen]

Luckily, there are still adventure games being made.

Funcom [funcom.com] is currently making the adventure game Dreamfall [dreamfall.com], which is the sequel to The Longest Journey [longestjourney.com].

Re:Woo and yay

[The Hobo]

I agree, we need more of the good-old-fashioned text adventures, games like Rogue, the old Scott Adams adventures, and even ones with graphics like Hugo, while cheezy, were still pretty fun to play and figure out..

Here's a link to some of the old text-based adventure games:

http://ww1.freearcade.com/textadventures.html [freearcade.com]

Re:get it off p2p

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I use VMWare as a sandbox for checking P2P stuff out. It's not fool-proof, but at least it'll protect me from a blatant attempt to wipe my main system.

Re:Great Game

[Dimensio]

Get the Meteor a publishing deal. Have Wendy improve the Meteor's manuscript using the typewriter, and send it off. Get past Purple (with either Weird Ed or Green's help) and go into the Meteor's lair. Give the Meteor the contract, and he realises he doesn't have to be evil any more. This gets a really cool ending where the Meteor's on the sofa in some TV interview show.

3a) Call the meteor police JUST before giving the contract to the Meteor.

"I don't care if you've reformed. You're still coming with me!"

OK with LucasArts?

[DrCode]

I looked throught the LucasFan site, and couldn't find anything about the legal issues. Wouldn't LucasArts have a valid complaint about them distributing a game that they have the rights to?

Re:How many of you completed Maniac Mansion?

[Solosoft]

I completed it many times. You can actually choose anyone but you have to include benard. If you don't then you can't fix the wire to get the arcade machine working to find the secret code for the safe.

If you choose Benard and Michael (the developer) then you can develop photos (which isn't an important thing to do). If you choose syd you can make a recording contract and fuck the Tenticle over. If you choose the librarian you can publish your "Manuscript". So each character can do somthing "unrelated" to winning the game.

Ive only beaten it by the meteor police, and sending the tenticles mail out to that publishing company which publishes anything. I will prolly try to beat it some other ways tonite.

Oh a tip too ... if you find yourself getting cought inside of the dungeon you can snag yourself the key for it from the top of the light thingy in the room with the stereo infront of the library. You go into the tenticles room snag his mating CD then record it from the tape in the last panel in the lirary. Once you have that tape you go into the room with the piano upstairs and make a recording of the tenticle mating call onto the tape. Take it downstairs into the "Living Room" (room right before the library) and play the mating call. The Light thing will fall down and you will get a rusty key. That key is the key for the dungeon. Also you can push a brick in side of the dungeon and let one player out (you need one to push the brick and one to run out)