It doesn’t get much better than watching Double Fine designer Tim Schafer fire up Day of the Tentacle and depart on a ScummVM-powered trip to the past — commentary included. What’s that? You’d like to see that now? OK then, here’s the video.
What makes the clip so compelling is Schafer’s anecdotes about almost every part of the game, which makes you realise just how much effort went into even the smallest detail.
For example, upon seeing the tentacles pop out from behind a tree during the game’s intro:
“I think the original concept art [for Manic Mansion] was a fireplace with a tentacle coming out of it and they were like ‘What’s on the other side of that tentacle?’ and I was like ‘It’s not attached to anything!’ … So we did that same joke here by making it seem like there’s a giant octopus walking through the forest.”
While trying to remember the last time he played the game, he mentions the well-known “developer’s dilemma”:
“Back then, early on, I couldn’t stand to play games that we shipped because all I could see were the bugs we couldn’t get to. I was like ‘Oh, I can’t stand to watch this.’
Apparently this video was originally made available to backers of Double Fine Adventure, fortunately for everyone else, the developer has released it publicly. Looking forward to the second part!
Tim Schafer Plays “Day of the Tentacle” Part 1 [YouTube, via Reddit]
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