A Bit About Making Maniac Mansion

Over at the Grumpy Gamer site, Rob Gilbert is reminiscing a bit about the making of Maniac Mansion, prompted by a YouTube video depicting a 9 minute speed run for the game. "I found it fascinating to watch this video. It's was like thumbing through an old family album of childhood photos. Memories long forgotten are jarred to the surface by the smallest of details. An old and forgotten toy. The front grill of your fathers car. Things you could never have remembered if you tried become so clear they could have happened yesterday. I'd see little things like Dave hitting the edge of the porch, turning around, then walking forward and then continuing on his way. I remember this from development. It was a weird bug having to do with the walk-boxes that told the character where they could walk. I knew how to fix it, but it would have broken oh-so-many of other things. It always drove me crazy that he did that." Many thanks to Mr. Gilbert for his work on the game; Bernard's Theme still pops into my head every once in a while for no particular reason.

RON not ROB

[The Velour Fog]

His name is RON Gilbert He also worked on most of the classic Lucas Arts graphic adventures like Monkey Island

Re:Why MM?

[kinglink]

Perhaps it's the class of people that worked on Maniac Mansion, or perhaps it was a different enough group than monkey's island. Hell it could just be the freedom they had to work on it.

Personally I'd like to think the later because there's just so many ways to "win" the game with so many different groups that I have to imagine it was hard but fun to develop and design, which produced a better relationship that the developers had with the product. But it could be any number of reasons.

Re:Why MM?

[SydShamino]

There's a fan base for Monkey Island as well, but that game came later. For whatever reason, Maniac Mansion is the one that "clicked". Maybe it's the same for the developers.

See the "syd" in my username? Yeah, that's from Maniac Mansion. I've used it ever since.

Incidentally, I was only able to solve Maniac Mansion using one particular method with one set of people. (Very sadly, that didn't include Syd.) I've *always* wanted to go through the game to reach every possible ending. Is there a web site that charts out all the possible events that can occur with each set of characters, and all the possible end sequences?

Whenever I played a game after this where I could make personnel choices, or where the game was set up for me to interact and explore the environment, I always felt a little cheated if the game only had one way to solve a particular puzzle. ("Damn, I have to flip *that* switch? Why can't I instead use this chair to break through the glass?) Compares to the seemingly-endless combinations that could produce different results in Maniac Mansion, everything else seemed like it ran on rails...

Re:Purple?

[Xner]

Found it! Apparently it's a glitch related to the cut scene that immediately precedes it.

Re:Why MM?

[lavid]

I think this: http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/game/46872 2.html [gamefaqs.com] might be what you're looking for. I take no responsibility for your lack of productivity at work.

Personally, I always preferred Day of the Tentacle

Re:Why MM?

[BumBiscuit]

In my opinion, Maniac Mansion has the best music of any video game ever, I have it on a CD in my car that I listen to regularly.

Maniac Mansion did have some pretty cool music [djgallagher.com] for the time. It wasn't in the DOS version of the game, since the AdLib didn't exist yet.

Maniac Mansion Deluxe

[Novus]

The fan remake Maniac Mansion Deluxe [bigbluecup.com] may be of interest to the Maniac Mansion fans here. Looks mostly like the PC version, but with more colourful graphics (partially influenced by the sequel, Day of the Tentacle) and added sound and music.