Better Ed Then Dead

I am so tired of writing about underwear perverts! You'll get to know what else I ended up with at the con, plus a backlog of back issues bought for their silly covers when I'm good and ready. For now, we're going to talk about video games or hactual books with hactual words. Or that theramin I'm gonna build when I get some cash in.

Today, in honor of LucasArts being less dicks (I'm going to reserve "deciding to stop being dicks" until I see the pricing) and releasing their classic adventure games on Steam, which means that the rerelease won't go out of print and be just as big a pain to get my hands on, we're going to go on delightful romp through childhood memories of Maniac Mansion. That was a pretty serious sentence back there. For this article, I'm going to call the statue of limitations on spoilers, because this game is twenty years old at this point.

Maniac Mansion is what I tell people is my favorite game ever. Yeah, it's not exactly the most polished, or sophisticated, or even what I would call the best game, but it occupies a very special place in my heart. In lieu of having cable my parents would let us rent a game or a movie. Now this was back in the day, and I didn't get any game magazines for reviews. So when you were in the store you could either go with a known good game or take a chance on being stuck with a crappy game all weekend, and all you had to go on was the box art. I'd end up renting Maniac Mansion on a fairly regular basis, and I remember owning it at some point--maybe we bought it from the video store when they were paring down their stock at some point. The point is, I logged way more hours on this game then were strictly necessary to beat it. The puzzles were fairly difficult for me, and I only ever managed to get Bernard's Meteor Police ending. The thing is though, I was content to just wander around the mansion, trying to unlock its secrets all on my own. Now all I seem to care about is making progress; I still like to explore but unless each session has a noticeable accomplishment I seem to break out the walkthroughs on the internet. I'm actually kind of bothered by that change in behavior, and even though it means a lot of games ultimately end up unfinished I'm trying not to be such a cheater these days.

At the beginning of the game, if you go into the kitchen immediately Nurse Edna is in there, looking through the fridge, and as soon as she comes into view she sees you, shuts the door and comes chasing after you. That's the first time I can remember something in a game responding to my actions, and not just following their own patterns. I mean, yeah, there was interaction but it was more you reacting to them. And it was terrifying. As a kid I would check the other rooms first and wait to go in the kitchen, afraid that I hadn't let enough time pass. To this day I have this primal fear response to going in there, even if I do it purposefully to get caught and sent to the dungeon. Later on, you can ring the doorbell with one kid to get Weird Ed to come down from his room and have another kid root through his stuff, which was another panic moment for young me. Am I going to have enough time to get the card key and the change? Is he going to come back up and catch me with his precious hamster?

There's more to this game then just nostalgia. It came out in 1987, and it made a ridiculous number of innovations. It was one of the first games to use cut scenes to advance the plot; the manual actually spends a page explaining what a cut scene is. I mean, at this point even having a plot in the game and not just as color in the manual was a pretty big thing. You got a pool of characters with different abilities, and to some extent personalities, to choose from at the beginning, and switched between kids on the fly, which created a teamwork style of gameplay that is rare to see even today.

It has this great genuine horror/humor vibe and, especially given technical limitations, great writing and characterization, from the green tentacle who wants to be a rock star to the evil meteor, whose ambition was to rule the world...one teenager at a time! The meteor turns out to be a big softie if you get his novel published, though. Oh yeah, MULTIPLE ENDINGS. I told you this game was amazingly ahead of its time.

You could be a punk rock chick (or really new wave dude) and microwave a hamster. What's not to love?

Ok, this one's a rambling mess, so I'll let you go here. I'll most likely be picking up Loom and The Dig tomorrow, and even if you're not big on video games normally, but for some reason have read this entire post, I'd advise checking out some LucasArts adventures, but only if you like joy.

Bonus: Howard and Nester go to Maniac Mansion.