Maniac Mansion.......simultaneously one of the most unique and awesome games ever.

To my knowledge, there was really nothing else like it. I loved how open ended it was, and the quirky humor that was so prevalant in it.

MY FAVORITE TEAM:

Dave: The main playable character of the game, although he was definitely the worst. Most of the time when I played, he spent the entire time in the dungeon pushing the loose brick so that my other characters could escape. That is, unless I chose to record the tentacle's mating call on tape, and play it in the room with the old rusty key on the chandelier. Doing so would shatter all the windows and bring the chandelier crashing down, letting you retrieve the key which opened the dungeon. Then you'd have 3 characters roaming the mansion, but there wasn't much of an advantage in it.

Bernard: The geek. Having Bernard in your team provided you with the easiest path through the game, however. All you had to do was get him to fix the radio in Dr. Fred's room, and have him call the meteor police. His only weakness was that he'd freak out if he was the one who had to "tame" the green tentacle.

Razor: I liked her for three main reasons.......she was a hot female (by NES standards), she had awesome music, and she wasn't afraid to put Wierd Ed's hamster in the microwave. "Awesome!" she'd say when taking the exploded hamster out of the microwave.

SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS TO DO IN THE GAME:

Blow up the house:
--Turn off the fuse box for too long
--Leave the pool drained for too long
--Take too long to send the meteor into outer space at the end of the game
--Push the "hidden" self-destruct button next to the steel security door

Kill your own party members:
--Give Weird Ed his exploded hamster
--Drown them in the pool
--Microwave a jar of water from the pool (radioactive gas!)


-Play the tentacle mating call record in the green tentacle's room, and make it get all "touchy feely" with you.

-Send the tentacle mating call (on tape) to the publisher. Watch it shatter his windows.

-Sneak up on Nurse Edna in the kitchen in the beginning in the game, and desperately try to outrun her before you get caught.

-Obnoxiously ring the door bell repeatedly, making Weird Ed shout "I'm coming! I'm coming!"

-Read the tombstones of deceased party members. ("And good riddance!")




By the way.........does anyone know if there's any point to using Jeff to fix the phone in the library, and then call Nurse Edna?

No love for Maniac Mansion? Hard to believe!

Valdronius wrote:

I also particularly love Maniac Mansion. However, I've said all I have to say about it ina steamy tell-all article I wrote last year.

If you've got a link to that article, I'd love to read it.

Good article!

I had always wondered why, in my NES Maniac Mansion, certain things were missing, such as the statue of Nurse Edna. It wasn't until relatively recently I learned that it was because of Nintendo's restrictions. How lame. But at least I could still blow up the hamster.

From the pictures in the article, they weren't blue in the PC version.

I must say I like the NES's graphics better.

Was there any practical purpose to fixing the phone in the library and calling Nurse Edna? Or maybe there was supposed to be a purpose and it got cut out somehow?

Valdronius wrote:

You had to fix the phone so you could call Nurse Edna and distract her while another kid snuck behind her to get the small key on her dresser, and climb into the attic where the safe with the quarter was.

Ah.....I didn't realize you could control a different kid while she was on the phone.

I always just used the "suicide" method......where you let her catch one kid while another sneaks in to her room.

Syd Lexia wrote:

I believe Val used the Commodore 64 version, not the PC version. But I just checked, and yeah, they are pink in the PC version.

Oh yea.......I forgot that a Commodore and a PC aren't the same thing.

Sometimes I just use the term PC to refer to any type of computer.