Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure video game developed and published by
Lucasfilm Games. It follows teenage protagonist Dave Miller as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend Sandy Pantz from a mad scientist, whose mind has been enslaved by a sentient meteor. The player uses a point-and-click interface to guide Dave and two of his six playable friends through the scientist's mansion while solving puzzles and avoiding dangers. Gameplay is non-linear, and the game must be completed in different ways based on the player's choice of characters. Initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II, Maniac Mansion was Lucasfilm Games' first self-published product.
Home computers
Lucasfilm Games
NES
LucasArts[2]
Realtime Associates[3]
Publisher(s)
Lucasfilm Games
Home computers
Lucasfilm Games
NES
Jaleco
Designer(s)
Ron Gilbert,Gary Winnick,Carl Mey,Gaey Wimmick,Rob Gikbert,,
David Fox Warhol,Dave Lawrence,Davey Govett,David Hayes,Brian Hales
,,,,,Tsukasa Tawada (Famicom version)[4]
Amiga
Engine
SCUMM
Platform(s)
Commodore 64, Apple II, MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, NES, Macintosh
Release
October 5, 1987
Commodore 64 / Apple II
October 5, 1987[1]
DOS
March 12, 1988
December 31, 1989 (enhanced version)
NES
JP: June 23, 1988
NA: September 18, 1990
EU: October 22, 1992
Amiga / Atari ST
July 26, 1989
Genre(s)
Graphic adventure
Mode(s)
Single-player
The game was conceived in 1985 by who sought to tell a comedic story based on horror film and B-movie clichés. They mapped out the project as a paper-and-pencil game before coding commenced. While earlier adventure titles had relied on command lines, Gilbert disliked such systems, and he developed Maniac Mansion's simpler point-and-click interface as a replacement. To speed up production, he created a game engine called SCUMM, which was used in many later LucasArts titles. After its release, Maniac Mansion was ported to several platforms. A port for the Nintendo Entertainment System had to be reworked heavily, in response to Nintendo of America’s concerns that the game was inappropriate for children.[5]
Maniac Mansion was critically acclaimed: reviewers lauded its graphics, cutscenes, animation, and humor. Writer praised it as a step toward "computer games [becoming] a valid storytelling art". It influenced numerous graphic adventure titles, and its point-and-click interface became a standard feature in the genre. The game's success solidified Lucasfilm as a serious rival to adventure game studios such as Sierra On-Line. In 1990, Maniac Mansion was adapted into a three-season television series of the same name, written by . A sequel to the game, Day of the Tentacle, was released in 1993.bbv
