Maniac Mansion

Random Thoughts While Playing

I was only half-heartedly thinking I would play this game. I started it up just to see what it looked like and planned to move on to something more recent. After playing for about 10 minutes though I’ve gotten hooked and now I’ll probably play the whole thing.

I can see why this game was popular. Especially for like 13 year-old boys. It’s a little weird, a little campy, a little sexy (well for an 80’s video game, we’re not talking anime tits here). The puzzles are fairly silly but not obnoxious or unfair so far.

I’ve figured out the idea that you need to use multiple characters at once to solve these problems. I think it leads to just trying everything with all your players though.

This vacuum tube in the old radio is annoying. It’s quite obvious I need to get it into the CB radio in the upstairs bedroom but all my kids are like ‘I don’t understand how this thing works!’ Who cares how it works dumbass… pick it up and put it into the damn radio.

Some weirdness… when I kill the power in the nuclear reactor room the pink tentacle comes to fix it and then it grabs my kid and throws him into the dungeon. Then it bounces off screen to the left – towards the Sekrit Lab door. But my other kid is standing right there and doesn’t seem to see it go in there. Also why would it come down the stairs but then leave to the left… weirdness.

I missed a key when I was trying all my keys and didn’t get the pantry door open. That led to a huge waste of time as I tried everything else and couldn’t progress.

So I’ve played through about a third of the game. It has some difficult puzzles which I feel probably were more acceptable at the time that now. I remember being a kid and playing games like this and having the time and patience to just try everything under the sun.

I do like this game for it’s silliness and relative complexity. Of course the graphics are super bad and all but the idea of switching between kids and getting them to work together was fun.

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