 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 ] Next Last |
Maniac Mansion is a graphical adventure game originally released in 1987, published by Activision and LucasArts. Maniac Mansion is highly acclaimed by many video game players and programmers as one of the most innovative and well-made video games ever, pulling together several then-novel design techniques together into a single game with a well-written plot and excellent gameplay. It was one of the first video games to feature multiple possible endings, multiple user-selectable characters with significantly different abilities, and critical clues contained in numerous cut scenes.
At the start of the game, the hero, Dave, finds that his girlfriend, Sandy, has been abducted by Dr. Fred, and sets out to save her, with two of his friends. The player could select the friends from a group of six, and the game would play somewhat differently depending on which friends were selected. The game was clearly a parody of the horror B-movie genre, featuring a secret lab, leftover tentacles, and an evil mastermind.
Like several other LucasArts adventures games of the period, Maniac Mansion was notable for its multiple possible endings, depending on which characters the player used (and which ones survived) and what those characters did.
The game was somewhat notorious for featuring a chainsaw for which there was no fuel, despite many wishful rumours to the contrary. In one of the in-jokes that are a hallmark of the LucasArts adventure games, the second SCUMM game, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, contains some fuel, but no chainsaw. In another reference, the entire game is contained within its sequel, Day of the Tentacle, on a computer in the bedroom of one of the characters.
Unlike most adventure games, Maniac Mansion had several possible playable characters. The player controls Dave and two other characters, chosen from six additional characters, each of whom has their own distinct skills and quirks. One of these characters, Bernard Bernoulli, an über- nerd capable of disassembling complex electronics but suffering from overwhelming cowardice, reappears in Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle as the main playable character.
In addition to the playable characters, Doctor Fred and Sandy, a number of other colorful characters (metaphorically and literally) populate the mansion in the Maniac Mansion games. Nurse Edna, a gruesome, lusty nurse, is revealed to be Doctor Fred's wife in Day of the Tentacle. Weird Ed, their son, is a survivalist paramilitary maniac with a hair-trigger temper and an obsession with his pet hamster. In one notorious sequence, the player can actually steal the hamster, microwave it, and then give its remains to Ed--prompting him to kill the offending character. Dead Cousin Ted is a mummy. Green Tentacle and Purple Tentacle, a pair of ambulatory talking, brightly colored tentacles, are probably the two most memorable of the mansion residents; the second game is named for the latter. Green is an aspiring rock-and-roll musician, and Purple is Doctor Fred's easily-impressed henchman. Lastly, Purple Meteor is an evil, intelligent meteor from outer space who is ultimately revealed to have coerced Doctor Fred into a life of villainy via mind controlMind control (or thought control theory states that an outside source can control an individual's thinking, behavior or consciousness (either directly or more subtly). This is a more modern term for " brainwashing". In the anti-cult movement and Christian; the exact means of dealing with the Meteor remain up to the player.
The game was originally released for the Commodore 64Commodore 64 C64 CBM 64 was a popular home computer of the 1980s. Announced by Commodore Business Machines (founded and owned by Jack Tramiel) in January 1982 and released in September of that year at a price of US$595, it offered unprecedented value (sou and was the first game to use the SCUMMSCUMM stands for Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion and is a scripting language developed at LucasArts (known at the time as Lucasfilm Games) to ease development of the graphical adventure game Maniac Mansion''. It is somewhere between a game engi engine, allowing relatively quick portIn computing, a port (derived from seaport) is usually an interface through which data is sent and received. An exception is a software port (derived from transport), which is software that has been "transported" to another computer system (see below fors to other platforms.
Maniac Mansion was ported to the PC with EGAThe Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA is the computer display standard specification located between CGA and VGA in terms of graphics performance (that is, colour and space resolution). Introduced in 1984 by IBM for its new PC-AT, EGA produced a display of 1 graphics in 19881988 is a leap year starting on Friday (click on link for calendar). Events January January 2 Georgia celebrates its bicentennial statehood. January 9 Connecticut celebrates its bicentennial statehood. January 26 Australia celebrates its bicentennial day.. The project leader was Ron GilbertRon Gilbert is a computer game designer, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. He began his career in the computer games industry in the early 1980s with a pro, and the game was designed by Gilbert and Gary Winnick . Versions for the Apple II, Amiga, and Atari ST computers were also released.
In 1990, Maniac Mansion was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, although the game was somewhat censored (i.e. "brains sucked out" changed to "brains removed", graphic of nude sculpture removed, etc.). However, Nintendo initially overlooked the microwavable hamster trick. Many thousand copies of Maniac Mansion had shipped before Nintendo censored it from the game.
In 2004, a free 256-colour fan-made remake entitled Maniac Mansion Deluxe was released by a group called LucasFan Games .
The game also spawned a TV series of the same name, featuring several of its characters—notably the Edison family, descendants of that Edison, headed by the mad scientist extraordinaire, Dr. Fred Edison.
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|