Maniac Mansion, if you don’t know, is a classic adventure game from Lucasarts (then known as Lucasfilm) that spawned en entire generation of titles like its sequel Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max and Fate of Atlantis. And now it’s getting a remake! More »
In 1987, Lucasarts (well, Lucasfilm) released Maniac Mansion, a game that would revolutionise PC adventure titles with its innovative “SCUMM” menu system. This is what the world would look like if that game had been based on TV series Lost. More »
Don’t call it a comeback, but Lucasfilm has filed new trademarks for Maniac Mansion, its classic 1987 adventure game. The trademark filing was extremely (extremely) expansive, ranging from goods like “read-along children’s books” to services like “providing news programming in the field of entertainment relating to science fiction over an electronic network.” Relevant to our interests, the new mark also references “computer game software and video game software.”
Ron Gilbert is probably best known for his work at LucasArts, where he worked on such favourites as Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Day Of The Tentacle. Most recently, he’s worked on Penny Arcade Adventures and has a forthcoming title called DeathSpank. Gamasutra sat down for a somewhat lengthy interview, discussing the episodic model, working within the current industry framework, and moving outside the current studio framework into a more ‘Hollywood’ type model. On this aspect (shifting to a more ‘team’ based approach where people come together to work on specific projects), he’s got this to say:
Never played Maniac Mansion on the NES, and haven’t played the original in so long that I’d fail to spot the differences anyway. But a fantastic article penned by former Lucasfilm/Lucasarts employee Douglas Crockford shows just how many changes they had to make to the adventure classic to get it published on the NES, and how batshit loco some of those changes were. Howie Rubin of Jaleco (the company that was going to publish the game under license) advised us the that the baddest bad word is Kill. The central activity in most Nintendo games is killing things. The image and the act are good, but the word is bad, even if the word does not suggest the image or the act.
The mansion contains a number of arcade video games. One was called KILL THRILL. The name had to be changed. Doug Glen, our Director of Marketing, suggested that we change it to MUFF DIVER, which I thought was a pretty good idea.
See? Good reading. The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System [via Dtoid] More »
