Monday 9 January 2023

Game 131 - Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle (1993) - Introduction

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

It's here. The game you've all been waiting for. The game you all think is going to be the highest rated game on this blog. Anybody feel one of those laser sights on their back?

When we last left Lucasarts, the developer of a flight sim, Hal Barwood, had developed their highest selling adventure game to date, and indeed the one that would remain their best-selling adventure game. Unfortunately he was busy working on the ill-fated Indiana Jones sequels. Gilbert was gone, off making children's games for children, leaving...uh...no one left to make adventure games. I dunno, let's get Gilbert's assistants to make a game, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, nerds do what nerds do when they're put on the spot, and they say they're gonna do another Maniac Mansion game. Not a terrible idea, it might not have sold great when it first came out, but it had great legs. And there's a crappy cartoon about it...for some reason. It's like that Beetlejuice cartoon, barely relevant to the source material. Except I assume there are reasons to like the Beetlejuice cartoon since it somehow has a DVD release. Shout Factory ain't releasing a questionable DVD of Maniac Mansion.

SIDENOTE: Before looking up the series on Youtube, I wrongly assumed it was a cartoon. Because I made a mental leap that someone adapting a cartoony game would turn it into a cartoon. Because that's logical. Unfortunately, I forgot this was the time when people were trying their hardest to make live-action cartoons...or something. You can find more about it on Wikipedia, but the short version is this is basically irrelevant to the games and is a weird offshoot of SCTV, which in turn is a weird offshoot of Second City, an improv company (for lack of a better term) founded in Chicago. My desire to tell you about this in detail is currently being sucked out by the absolute black hole of comedy this show is.

Gilbert, shortly before leaving this game

Despite Gilbert having gone off by the time the game was released, he did have some input in the beginning. Grossman says it was Gilbert's idea to do a time travel game, that he always wanted to do one (wonder if he had any input in Putt-Putt Travels Through Time). There was never a specific idea in mind, just picking out whatever seemed like they could think up enough for. Two time periods they specifically singled out were the [American] Revolutionary War and the future. The latter because they could philosophize about it.

A French shot, detailing the process behind making the backgrounds

Despite the more enduring popularity of the game, magazines weren't lining up to preview the game at the time. At least English-speaking ones. Computer Gaming World was the only one I could find, but thankfully Trickster's stash had another. CGW goes over the voice acting. This is actually the second Lucasarts talkie, after Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. More importantly, the process describes how every line is voiced, which the article points out is something like 4500 lines. That said, the game could fit on a single disc twice over.

The voice acting was directed by Tamlynn Barra (now Niglio) who would go on to direct the voice acting in most Lucasarts titles going forward, with an exception in Full Throttle for some reason. Each actor did his lines without another actor in the studio, which I guess was uncommon then. I guess this approach worked well, because I can't really say I've ever noticed an issue with the voice acting in any of the games she's produced that I've played. This is also an aspect that's given the game praise over the years, not to mention that they used professional actors at a time in which that wasn't as common...outside of Japan anyway. (they were slightly earlier to this whole "talkie" business)

I feel the money in my wallet loosening itself right up

Most of these actors are just your typical voice actors who have a bunch of cartoon and video game credits over the years. A lot of attention has been placed on the person who plays Bernard, Richard Sanders, who was in WKRP in Cincinnatti. If you're not American or below the age of 40 or so, you probably don't know what that was. That was a sitcom which was immensely popular during the late '70s and early '80s about a radio station that switched to then popular music, like Pink Floyd and Blondie. Because of a loophole at the time in the way music got played on TV, they could get these songs for cheap for a show which I don't believe had that high a budget. (something to do with shows being shot on tape IIRC) Unfortunately said music turned out to be immensely popular in the long term, so when that loophole got closed, they had to stop showing it with the original music, resulting in a show that got hacked apart pretty badly. I understand that most of the music has come back in recent rereleases, but I haven't seen it.

I have no recollection of Sanders character in WKRP, but I only saw one episode, and I don't remember him being much of a factor in it. I have no idea if this was a factor at all in anyone's decision to buy the game.

This release also marks for Lucasarts a closing down of the systems the game was released on. Just DOS and a Mac port some years later. This partially represents the homogenizing of the computer industry into the Windows/Macintosh monopoly that would persist to this day. The Amiga and the FM Towns were only popular outside of America, and ergo, not something they concerned themselves with. Interestingly, this game doesn't have any console ports* for some strange reason, which would persist all the way to Escape From Monkey Island.

*modern ports don't count.

This perplexed me a little bit, since it's not like Lucasarts never released anything for consoles, and, I should point out, there were some weird games out on Sega CD, 3DO and CD-i. It turns out that while it did good at the time...that good was 80k copies. The lowest title of any Lucasarts game during the 1992-94 period for the PC at least. Their console titles are missing a lot of sales data.

For instance a demo on this very disc

Which is something that seems to be a trend for Lucasarts around this time. Fondly remembered in retrospect, but not so great sales wise. Unless it was related to something Harrison Ford was in. The best selling release they had at the time was Star Wars: Rebel Assault. An actual interactive movie. Which got on some of those aforementioned consoles.

So my choice basically just boiled down to soundtrack, with floppy/Roland MT-32, CD and the remastered release. I briefly checked out the remastered version until I saw that was not as simple a remaster as The 7th Guest or the ilk. Very much a full-fledged entry in its own right. I assumed in this case that the CD would have CD music in addition to voices, but alas, this wasn't the case. So MT-32 it is. I don't think there's much of a difference, just slightly nicer instruments.

Onto the game. The intro is pretty well designed and has what feels like an absolutely massive amount of animation. It feels impressive in a different way than it did back then, because it's impressive they managed to get all this done in such a tiny file size. These days even a 5 minute intro like this would probably take up a gigabyte of data.

They said they tried to capture a real cartoony, Looney Tunes atmosphere, and judging by this at least, they've succeeded.

The gist, if you're not watching that, is that Purple Tentacle drank some toxic sludge, and became super intelligent and super evil. Dr. Edison has them locked up, so Green Tentacle sent out a message to Bernard, the nerd from the original, via Weird Ed's hamster. It is intercepted by Bernard's not siblings, a fat rock drummer and a weird lady hyperfixated on anatomy. We get a couple of jokes about how the dude is going to bite the hamster's head off for his band, and chick dissecting the hamster. Guess we know part of how the original game went by now.

Then Bernard gets super dramatic and says that they have to go back...to the mansion. So close to a title drop. This is setting us up with three playable characters, Bernard, and uh...Hoagie and Laverne. Who I assumed were Bernard's siblings at first, but apparently aren't? Reading interviews, they originally intended to include six characters, with some more returning from Maniac Mansion, but execs forced them down to three. This was before the voice acting was in place. Tim apparently refers to it as his last easy project, owing to this, along with not having to work with 3D. Whatever was made would just get put on the screen.

Then we get the credits, a sequence of the trio driving to the mansion. Probably some of the best credits I've seen in a game, that's not hard, but this feels like more effort was put into it than some whole games.

Once they get there, Bernard suggest they spread out, and the game begins. I should note before I end this entry, I'm playing the CD version in DOS. This means I have no subtitles. I don't have an issue with this so far, but I haven't heard everyone's voice yet. Its not great quality, but there's nothing about it that screams awful to me. Then again I didn't catch the name of Bernard's not siblings the first time around...which also led me to assume that they were his siblings. Are they? Aren't they?

So the score, so far every Lucasarts game has gotten over the 60 range, even Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for some strange reason. I see no way this is going to change for this game. Unless it turns out everyone has really oversold the quality of the game. While I usually rate things on the lower end of the scale, I note that 3 out of the last 6 games I've played got a higher rating than most people would be willing to give. This would have to really buck the trend for me to change my mind.

This Session: 0 hours 5 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 20 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

161 comments:

  1. The Beetlejuice cartoon was great.

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  2. It baffles me why in the US Sierra's games sold way much more copies than LucasArts games, cause I think the latter are way better games. Anyway, I think this is the game with the best puzzles of all adventure games ever. My score, a record breaker of 90

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    1. Sierra had many more games, and they marketed better. InterAction Magazine (previously Sierra News Magazine), a robust BBS with plenty of downloads, titles that were as exciting as TV shows (Police Quest tapped into the Dragnet/Adam-12/police show fans, Space Quest to the Star Wars/Trek/etc fans, and so on.)

      LucasArts made good games, but much less often, and they had very few series. Sierra built an empire on sequels, like KQ, SQ, LSL, while Lucas ignored them.

      Loom? Sequel cancelled.
      Full Throttle? Sequel cancelled.
      Sam & Max? Sequel cancelled, until later when Telltale Games got the rights.
      Zak McKracken? Sequel cancelled.
      Maniac Mansion? It took nearly 6 years for the sequel.

      The only games that got the attention they deserved from Lucas was Indy and Monkey Island, and Indy only got the one adventure sequel, and that was it.

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    2. Sierra made a lot more games, which probably helps, they get that brand recognition and that's probably also good for the stores selling them at the time.

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  3. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a terrible, terrible game. The Action Game, I mean. The Graphic Adventure, on the other hand, is a great game with only a couple of problems (too much boxing, the plane action sequence sucks). It's better than 80% of Lucasarts (including Fate of Atlantis) and 90% of Sierra games. You can clearly tell that it was developed by the main designer of the best game in history, which delayed this other little proyect to work on this one.

    About Day of the Tentacle, not my cup of tea. I find having multiple characters (and inventories) to be the third worse design flaw ever in graphic adventures (right after dead ends and timed sequences). I honestly prefer to die every few minutes or pixel huntings to multiple controllable characters.

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    1. Someone anonymously claiming that Last Crusade was better than Fate of Atlantis? My gut feeling is that this is a random internet troll looking for a fight, and I'm holding back the temptation to engage in a flame war.

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    2. Well, let me clarify that, since I'm not a troll. The thing is, some people believe that the first Indiana Jones and Monkey Island graphic adventure games are the best ones. I'm one of them, and my sister is also in that camp in regards to Indiana Jones (at least I finally completed Atlantis a few years ago, but she doesn't even like that game!).

      With Monkey Island, it's pretty easy to understand: the second one is prettier, bigger and has a better story and better music, but the first one has a special charm and probably better puzzles (the second one feels too big sometimes and has a couple of terrible puzzles).

      With Indiana Jones, however, I can see how many people would see our opinion as a sacrilege. That old game with barely any dialogs, worse VGA mode and way too much boxing, better than MY Atlantis? Maybe it's because we play Last Crusade first (I didnt' it attempt it seriously until 2007, but I played Last Crusade in 1994). But in my case I see a few reasons that I will try to explain: 1) I believe the puzzles are better (Atlantis goes a bit overboard with labyrinths, going back and forth on them, and using Atlantean artifacts for strange purposes), 2) I really can't find much enjoyment out of Fate of Atlantis story (Sorry! Both the girl and the bad guys come across as boring to me) and 3) While Atlantis has great VGA graphics, I still prefer the visual aspect of the EGA version of Crusade.

      So there you go! At least we can agree that more of those games should have been made (Gilbert left too soon, and the 32 bit era also came too soon!).

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    3. Last Crusade has way more mazes and trial & error. I hold it in a similarly low regard as Adventure Gamers do (2/5 stars): https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/17668

      I'm assuming it got such a high score in this blog mainly because most of the games before it were even worse.

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    4. Atlantis goes a bit overboard with labyrinths

      Seconding what Laukku said, the only real maze in Fate is the circular section in Atlantis -- and you can see practically everything on the screen. In Last Crusade, you have that god-awful system of catacombs under Venice, the trillion-screen navigation of the castle, and if you chose the path, the navigation of the airship.

      Last Crusade tried to reward you for going a different way than the movie, but largely, the game is just the movie with some mazes added to stretch out the game play. The movie is excellent, so it helps the story and setting of the game, but there's too much tedium in the game to stretch it out.

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    5. I'll jump to your defence a little. Whilst objectively, I think Fate of Atlantis is the more rich and complete game, I too prefer Last Crusade. It's one of my all time favourite movies, and as far as movie>adventure game adaptations go, I can't think of a better executed one. I still *like* Fate of Atlantis, but the labyrinth towards the end angered me, and when I think about replaying the game, I'll often baulk at it because I just can't be bothered with the labyrinth bit. I feel the same about the Zeppelin maze, but at least that's entirely avoidable (I actually like the catacombs and castle sections of Last Crusade as there's a specific charm/aura to both, whereas I find the FA labyrinth, I dunno... generic?!?)

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    6. I'm sorry, no one's bothered to mention the multi-screen pixel hunt where you have to/should find 3 books among a pile of other books? Yeah, the seemingly endless fighting does drag things down, but so does that. I can see why someone might think there are good aspects to it, the EGA is very nice, if inferior to Loom and Sierra's later titles, but its got just so much tedium in it.

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    7. I do like in in-jokes in there. That was a specialty of LucasArts. The statues of Sam & Max in Indy's back office at the college are one of my favorites.

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  4. The game doesn't have multiple paths like Fate of Atlantis, and the voices and music are on par... in Fate, there was one annoying voice (Dr. Heimdel, I believe, the one in the ice cave) and in this game, it's Laverne, who's a main character. That might have a scoring effect. The cartoonish graphics and animations were well done. The puzzles, especially in the past, are very Americanized, which will affect how some people think about and solve them. (I'm an American, so I appreciate it, but I know there's people on this blog that are bothered by that.)

    So, since Fate got an 82, I'll guess an 83 for this game.

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    1. I can't say I find her annoying yet, but I do note that I thought she was high school age rather than college age because of her voice. Probably contributed to my initial understand of her as Bernard's sister.

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    2. According to the manual, they are all college roommates. She's a "slightly twitchy medical student".

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  5. I remember they made some really good uses of the time travel mechanic, but I also remember younger-me having some issues with knowing what I should be doing in each time period in order to progress in another one, meaning a lot of switching back and forth which can get a little frustrating.

    But it's probably gonna score higher I guess? let's try lower than most and go for 81.

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    1. Bonus points because vg qbrfa'g znxr lbh jnyx NYY GUR JNL gb gur Pueba-b-Wbua™ jura lbh fraq fghss gb bgure punenpgref. Nf ybat nf n punenpgre PPBHYQ trg gurer, vg nyybjf vg. Tbbq cebtenzzvat. Hopefully, Morpheus notices that, to save a little time.

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    2. I feel like one probably shouldn't use the sarcastic ™ in a ROT13 comment.

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    3. Abg zrnag gb or fnepnfgvp. V gubhtug gurl npghnyyl hfrq vg va gur tnzr. Thrff V jnf jebat, ohg V'z EBG-13vat guvf whfg sbe sha abj. :)

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  6. Because I like this game more than Fate of Atlantis, I'm guessing 85.

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  7. No Dave, the most generically useful character from Maniac Mansion. I had him stand outside the gate until the package arrives and use him as a lever puller and that's about it

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  8. I am also surprised by Sierra selling more, because these days you see multiple anti-Sierra people that can't only play either Lucasarts games or something that looks similar (like Simon the Sorcerer). I kind of understand them because Lucasarts game (since 1989) don't have dead ends and "unfair deaths", but I also believe that Sierra has at least 4 or 5 games that reach Lucasarts quality.

    So looking at the themes, perhaps one of the reasons was piracy: Sierra games seem more oriented to regular people (Police Quest, King's Quest), so maybe people playing Lucasarts adventures were generally more nerdy and therefore more used to "copy that floppy". Also, Sierra games have more valuable manuals and physical "extras" compared to Lucasarts (except for the Grial Diary included in Last Crusade and the poster in Maniac Mansion, perhaps).

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    1. I always found the anti-sierra thing always seemed to mainly come down to the deaths, as if you couldn't save whenever and wherever you liked. From a more modern perspective, with games usually having autosaves and stuff now, I get why people prefer it, but at the time I don't remember there being many complaints. Adventure games are short enough that replaying a bit is usually not too much of an issue (outside of certain specific examples).

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    2. I thin that the anti-sierra thing comes more from the "dead man walking scenarios" than the deaths themselves.

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    3. IIRC, Monkey Island did okay and the sequel only got greenlit because they already okayed it before the game got out. Apparently the reason for its later popularity was it got massively pirated, especially in Europe.

      But yeah, the issue people have with Sierra these days are the dead man walking scenarios. Almost to a phobic degree. I can't blame people too much since in some cases you had to do really obtuse stuff to avoid getting stuck in one, like the often-cite pie in KQ being what sticks out.
      I do get the feeling, from reading about modern reviews, modern commentators and even the words of one adventure developer that any sign of people getting stuck in an adventure game is considered "bad design". Having to replay a game also isn't good, intentionally making a player replay a game is the worst thing you could possibly do. Sierra does that, ergo Sierra is terrible.

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    4. My personal “anti-Sierra” stance is that the games feel much sloppier in design, controls, and aesthetics. They are nowhere as polished as the LucasArts games and the writing even in the weaker LA games such as Full Throttle or The Dig is still light years ahead of any LSL, the exceptions being, of course, the QfG games, Jane Jensen’s games and the Christy Moore games. Sierra was groundbreaking in the beginning but their enormous output meant that many games felt rushed and unfinished, at least to me. That’s all my humble opinion, of course.

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    5. Sorry, I didn't mean that (^) to be posted anonymously. It's me, Will Moczarski.

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    6. I totally agree with you Will. Although I never played the QFG series (the RPG aspects are what kept me apart from trying them)I think the Conquest series by Christy Marx (I guess you were refering to her) and the Jane Jensen games are Sierra's best

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    7. Yes! Christy MARX! What a curious typo, sorry.

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    8. @Will, I don't know, I think that the Sierra version of point & click (see LSL5, KQ5, etc) is a lot better than the Lucas version. I hate the medallion method used in Curse of Monkey Island and other games of that era, and the interface used for Grim Fandango was not the most desirable either. That's why, for the remastered edition, they changed the tank controls.

      Also, while the early LucasFilm interface (verbs on screen) was easier to use, it took up valuable screen real estate back in a time when we were using only 14" monitors and made some puzzles so much easier, because of not having to think of what to type.
      The screen design was my biggest gripe of the era. Sierra's SCI0 games (LSL3, PQ2, etc) were, in that regard the best, because even the prompt was hidden, and came alive only when needed when you typed. Also, typing paused the game then. Puzzles like the grog mugs to open the jail cell in SOMI were obnoxious to able-bodied people like myself, as well as those who had control concerns.

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  9. By the way, it would be interesting to learn the story of how Ilmari reached 2022 without playing Day of the Tentacle. Were you unconsciously trying to resist the hype somehow? Afraid of the multiple characters? Already played it in the 90s and have already forgotten all the puzzles?

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    1. You probably mean Morpheus, who wrote the post. I just uploaded his post to the blog and that's why you see my name at the bottom of it as the poster (Blogger does that automatically, so we have to include the separate "written by" bit at the beginning of each post to make the true writer stand out - you can also see the writer of the post from the labels at the bottom). Personally, I've played the game around early 2000s and remember the details pretty well.

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    2. Thanks for the correction! Yes, I mean Morpheus Kitami. It's funny because I just checked the games he reviewed ( https://advgamer.blogspot.com/search/label/Morpheus%20Kitami ) and he has been playing LOTS of obscure graphic adventures, including The Kristal, so it's strange that he didn't want to play Tentacle. Perhaps the theory of "already played it, forgot the puzzles" would make the most sense.

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    3. I also got as far as 2021 without playing it. I just never got around to it. I do like adventure games and had played the prequel. I was aware of its legendary status and began with great anticipation, but I was disappointed.

      I found it visually drab, with indifferent writing and few (if any) sympathetic characters. The game doesn't give the player a whole lot of direction, which I get is a plus point for some, but when you aren't enjoying where you're at it's only a further aggravation not to have any indication of how to get somewhere else instead.

      It's possible I just didn't stick with it long enough, but I gamely gave it a half-dozen hours before hanging it up. Maybe I just don't have the adventure gamer in me any more, I'm not sure.

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    4. I don't think its that interesting. I wasn't in the right age group to have had the game as a kid, and my parents old DOS games were Gobliiins, Inca and Dragon Lore, of which I played Gobliiins. I was the right age for Escape from Monkey Island and Curse, which I did play. Then I went from shareware games to abandonware games, and the site I used didn't allow people to get Lucasarts games, so I was playing what I could actually get. When I did find those and everything else you'd find in say, SCUMMVM, I played through some of Last Crusade and MM, along with finishing MI...which is actually the only Lucasarts adventure game I've finished. (EfMI has Monkey Combat and the submarine section in Fate glitched out on me) Then I got sucked into Elvira's bountiful violence and didn't really play much classic adventure gaming after getting defeated there. Played more late '90s Myst-esque games and even a few later on. Then when I started blogging about games I tended to cut back on games I wasn't going to be writing about.
      Also, there was some concern on my part about being the guy to play one of the greatest adventure games of all time if I wasn't that eager to play it before. And a little bit about writing a proper introduction, but then after seeing the wealth of materials about it that concern disappeared.

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  10. 80. It'll score excellently, only held back by the simple story. Also, if this doesn't get a 10 in puzzles I don't know what will.

    >I'm playing the CD version in DOS. This means I have no subtitles.

    Ctrl+T

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    1. Having recently replayed this with someone who was experiencing the game for the first time, there is one aspect that knocks down the puzzle quality from a sterling 10 - there are not enough hints and custom responses when trying things that are not the correct solution. Sure, the puzzles are relatively tame, but it's always best to give something to the player for a fair guess.

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    2. The game does give feedback on some false solutions (its feedback is positively showed in an adventure game puzzle design video I think I've linked years ago), even if there's always something unanticipated a player could conceive. And to be fair, I just remembered one puzzle I dislike (gevpxvat Checyr Gragnpyr vagb fubbgvat ng Qe. Serq ng gur raq; gbb haboivbhf vs lbh qba'g xabj byq-snfuvbarq ynzcf ba qbpgbef' sberurnqf hfr zveebef). I'd like to think of it as a 9,5 rounded up to a 10.

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    3. Yes, Ctrl+T works. Interesting text effects, I didn't know they could do that.
      Also, if this doesn't get a 10 in puzzles I don't know what will.
      Riven's a good contender.

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    4. That in itself is a polarizing challenge. I know that I couldn't stomach more than a few minutes of Myst or Riven to find out about the puzzles, and I know I'm not alone. Oddly, though, I have a soft spot for the game Faust (Seven Games of the Soul in America, but I have an imported copy), and to this day, the only of that style "adventure" game I've ever played.

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    5. +1 for Riven! I played it in high school with a friend and it was fantastic.

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  11. I'm gonna be one of the unbelievers and say this game will not get into the 80s. In fact, my guess is 78. I think the game is too goofy in all aspects for its own good. But maybe it's just me. I'm one of those people who like immersion and thick atmosphere in games and not just silliness. That's why I prefer the 1st Monkey Island instead of the later, Loom and The Dig instead of Sam & Max and Toonstruck, Maniac Mansion instead of Day of the Tentacle. Not saying the later are bad games, it's just that they didn't excite me as much as the former.

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    1. Hah, I just read your comment after posting mine and it seems like we're very much aligned in our thinking!

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    2. And I just read yours, and I agree fully with your comments! I couldn't have said it better! Especially what you said: "It feels like they were trying too hard to be funny ALL THE TIME, to the point where you knew every interaction was going to be imbued with some kind of comedic bent." Perception of humor is totally subjective but that's where the game totally lost me.

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    3. Fully agree. I never even played this because it just looked too cutesy and cartoony, and anyway I hadn't much liked the original Maniac Mansion, for much the same reason and more opaque puzzles. I know it's a classic and all, but hey, everyone's got their preferences. I'll be quite content to read about Morpheus playing it so I don't have to. ;)

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  12. I remember playing this a little as a 12 year old. I was a Monkey Island and Indiana Jones fan, and was always up for a good graphic adventure... but something about DOTT didn't grab me then - I suspect it was largely due to the lack of cultural relevance (Benjamin Franklin and the "first fathers" mean diddly-squat to us Aussies), and as an adult with limited patience and a lack of invested nostalgia I actually found both DOTT and Sam and Max quite grating when revisiting them recently.

    I appreciate that both are good, well constructed games with high production values that show in the quality of their execution, but I found myself sighing at them more than nearly any other game I recall. Unlike, say Blue Force however, where the sighs were around the "plot" and general lack of QC, these laments were for one of the things both games are often praised for - their humour. It feels like they were trying too hard to be funny ALL THE TIME, to the point where you knew every interaction was going to be imbued with some kind of comedic bent. Some hit the mark, others were predictable, but ultimately, when wanting to immerse myself in a world and a story, they were just too much, too often. IMO Full Throttle and Grim Fandango got the balance right, showing you can be funny charming, without being funny groan.

    Anyhoo, on its merits, I don't actually think it's as good as Fate of Atlantis, and whilst you could argue it's a technological leap forward as far as graphics go... the likes of Putt Putt and Fatty Bear actually beat it to the punch there. 81. 81 feels right.

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    1. Never got into Full Throttle much, but I will put forward that Grim Fandango is definitely in their top 3, along with Fate and SOMI, but I'm not sure what order they would be in.
      But, at that time, that's what we wanted from LucasArts. We wanted all funny, all the time. It's what they were known for. Sierra was mostly serious except for two series (LSL, SQ) and Lucas was mostly funny... In fact, all funny. Loom might have been their most serious adventure title.

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    2. Agree - what I loved about Loom was, it was still humorous, but in a far more subtle way, so when it came it was both a) highly effective and b) remained congruent with the tone of the game. Humour *is* DOTT, and don't get me wrong, there are some absolutely classic lines... but it's just too unrelenting for >my< adventure gaming tastes.

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    3. The humour in DOTT does feel too forced to me too, Full Throttle was excellent in this regard and LSL1 was spot on. The later LSL games also suffered from too much forced comedy. We can say that this is what was expected at the time but the true test of any form of entertainment is "does it hold up years later?". If you look for example to 1971, most of the billboard hits are songs we no longer remember, but Stairway to heaven is almost a no-show. It doesn't mean the rest are bad, just that they did not have the staying power of some of the others.

      I will go for 85, I expect it to score high.

      It might be best that an American reviews the game too (I hope I am right in assuming Morpheus is at least from the North American continent), as some parts of the game would be lost on an international audience. The writing of the declaration of independence is known to most of us simply from what we glean from TV shows and for most of the world not really something we know a whole lot about. It's not something I hold against the game, it was primarily written for a North American audience and probably did not expect much more traction outside of that.

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    4. Oh, regarding American knowledge, before I forget...

      http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.com/2015/08/day-of-tentacle-history-lesson-part-1.html

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    5. @ShaddamIVth I'd argue that LSL3 was the best of the Larry games for balance of humor, but I take your point. LSL5 was definitely a n effort to copy LucasArts (no dead-ends, more humor) and they went too far, making it an adventure with training wheels on (even more so than playing Monkey Island 2 in Lite mode). LSL3 is my favorite, but the upcoming LSL6 went back in the right direction, and LSL7 is many people's favorite.

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    6. Yes, I'm an American, so I in theory at least, should be able to understand everything.

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    7. Torbjörn Andersson10 January 2023 at 17:47

      I look forward to reading about all the references to American history and folklore that I missed.

      History in my schools went something like this, as I recall it:

      The first six years, there wasn't really much of that, that I can recall. It probably wasn't until years 7-9 that there even was a dedicated history class. So we went through ancient Greeks and Romans and their architecture, some history about Sweden and our numerous wars back in the bad old days, then World Wars one and two, after which nothing of historical importance has ever happened.

      For the next 2-4 years (depending on your choice), you went to a different school, so you thought "oh, great, now we're going to do all the bits we didn't get to, right?" Nope! Back to ancient Greek and Roman architecture and the two World Wars again...

      Point being, we never got to US history. At all. (Nor US Geography, for that matter.)

      I do think it says something about how well designed this game is that I was able to to solve it anyway! I may have missed a lot of references, but the game does give you just enough to get the gist of it. (I think!)

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  13. "It feels impressive in a different way than it did back then, because it's impressive they managed to get all this done in such a tiny file size."

    The intro was distributed as a non-interactive demo of the game over BBSes, an entire floppy full of it. It was a bold move to distribute a demo with no gameplay, but when we saw what awaited us on the other end it was mind-blowing. I guess Another World was an excellent demonstration that incredible animation could be squished down into tiny filesizes, but I remember at the time thinking that I would happily watch movies at that level of quality. (And I guess for a while at the turn of the century, we did!)

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    1. Doing an intro in a small file size is just a matter of using sprite animation (or polygon animation) instead of compressed video files; any modern game that does that still has a small-sized intro movie.

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    2. That explains why the intro credits are so long and with so much animation in them. Its an interesting strategy and it seems like it would have worked.

      While it is true that one could get a small-sized intro if one just uses game assets, its not true that you could get it as small as DotT does, with some 15 backgrounds, each with a bit of unique animation. Put in another way, its possible for a modern (indie) game to get under 10 megabytes, its witchcraft if they get it to 1 megabytes.

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  14. I'm going to be bold and guess 93. It's that good.

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  15. Running out of real estate, so 87.

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  17. I will say 79 because it seems nobody has said it yet.

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  18. I played all of LucasArtgs games when they were relesed (except, shame on me, Grim Fandango, which i never played to this day) and for me, with Day of the Tentacle ends the golden era of LucasArtas. I know Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, Last Crusade and Loom aren`t the best, but when they were released they were pretty revolutionary for the genre. Monkey 1 & 2, Fate of Atlantis and DoTT marks for me the peak of LucasArts craft. From Sam & Max onwards, I dont`t know why, but the games lost the magic for me. Maybe it was that I was growing up, but they never made me feel what I felt playing the previous games

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    1. I think that "lack of the original charm" comes from the three games that came after "Day of the Tentacle"; "Sam and Max" seemed much more mean-spirited and too short, "The Dig" has an awesome beginning and then it begins to lose steam and comes schreeching with some really dreadful puzzles (¡that turtle's skeleton!), and "Full Throttle" is even shorter than "Sam and Max" and has some very questionable design choices (Was a good idea the "biker battles"? And the less be said about the stadium arena, the better).

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    2. I adore The Dig mostly down to its atmosphere rather than the puzzles. But that turtle puzzle is nowhere near as difficult as people make out, everyone seems to miss that a helpful guide to the solution is one screen to the left.

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    3. I guess Sam & Max could seem mean when compared to the Lucas catalog, but compared to pop culture in general at the time, it was downright tame. This is just about when the Simpsons were reaching their stride, my personal favorite Married with Children was also at it's peak, and the rest of TV was starting to get gritty (NYPD Blue, for example).

      The original comic for which it was based on has a very interesting history

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    4. Sam & Max was pretty similar to some of the cartoons that were going on at the time, like Ren & Stimpy. Lotta gross-out humor going on.

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    5. I agree, Leo. "Sam & Max" is a good adventure game but probably doesn't deserve the stellar reputation it has nowadays. While I learned to appreciate "Full Throttle" a bit more when I replayed the remastered version three or four years ago it's still a far cry from MI 2, Indy 4 or DotT (my three LucasArts favourites, in that order. I always thought that MI 1's second act left something to be desired but I know it's a minority opinion - still a fantastic game, mind you. When it comes to the early "Lucasfilm" adventure games I actually think that "Zak McKracken" and "Loom" are just as good as MI 1 in their own ways.) "The Dig" was essentially a recycled older game and it shows. They added the cinematic atmosphere in 1996 but didn't change the puzzles much. It felt like a step back when it came out.

      And while "Grim Fandango" was arguably their swan song (the less said about "Escape" the better) I predict that it will be a strong contender for the top spot on our list once (if?) we get there. When it was released adventure games in general didn't have the same kind of commercial appeal anymore but boy did they ever get the transition to 3D right! (And everybody else was REALLY struggling with that big time.) Also, CMI will do surprisingly well, I think, because it has aged very well. Back in 1997 (?) I didn't like it all that much but that was mostly because it glossed over the ending of MI2 so carelessly. For me it stopped feeling like the real thing right with the opening cinematic. I guess that I'd enjoy it a lot more now.

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    6. >[Grim Fandango] will be a strong contender for the top spot

      Grim Fandango's puzzles and interface are unquestionably sub-5, already relegating it to a 80 PISSED score at most (unless you abuse discretionary points), with a 60s or 70s rating being more realistic since it won't score that many 10s to balance the other areas out. Furthermore I don't find the story to be anything to write home about either, other than for the admittedly unique mixture of elements in its setting. When/if we get there I will complain the hell out of it, and hopefully there will be a reality check for everyone here grossly overrating it. People are overly romanticising it as LucasArts's last hurrah when they in fact peaked earlier.

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    7. That would be a "reality check" for me then, according to your assessment :-)

      I can't see how the puzzles and the interface are unquestionably sub-5. Also, show me an adventure game with a good story and I'll show you an RPG (visual novels don't count). It's not exactly the genre's strong suit in general but "Grim Fandango" easily makes up for it with its inventive setting. But your mileage may vary, of course. When I last played "Grim Fandango" I was astonished how well it had aged. I guess it can't (and shouldn't) be everybody's cup of tea, though.

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    8. I'll ramble a bit more about the UI as that's what I remember the best right now. Tank controls, slowly cycling through the inventory only one item visible at a time (extra tedious if you don't remember the item order and take the longer way to get to something you want), turning head as only hotspot indicator (no quickly mousing over everything to know what's there, let alone the convenient hotkey from Simon the Sorcerer II), limited traverse speed (I still have PTSD from the unnecessarily long distances in Rubacava)... all the UI problems Monkey Island 4 gets criticised for but much worse. At least it isn't quite as clumsy as Under a Killing Moon or Pandora Directive.

      Puzzle memories are a bit more hazy but I recall there being quite a lot of puzzles, especially in Rubacava, where what you're supposed to achieve only becomes apparent after the fact.

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    9. Grim Fandango's puzzles and interface are unquestionably sub-5

      The interface, maybe, but not the puzzles. While some of them aren't as tough as earlier games, there's some nice object manipulation and dialog ones in there.

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    10. The main issue isn't being too easy, it's that there's a lot of unclear goal-subgoal structures. E.g. znxvat Tybggvf qehax va gur erfgnhenag is something you do just because you can, not because it'd be something you'd intuitively understand as helpful or advantageous. The whole Rubacava section in particular devolves into an unsatisfying mess of doing seemingly random things. Maybe your familiarity with the game blinds you from seeing it. I've gotten pretty far in Return to Monkey Island and it's WAY better designed, you know what to focus on in puzzle solving (even without the ingame to-do list).

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    11. I'm playing through Grim Fandango again for the first time since release and my quick litmus test for the impact a game is having on me is how I feel about returning to it when I'm not playing it (i.e. when I'm out and about or at work) and I get palpably excited when thinking of returning to the Ninth Underworld. I know I'm probably in the minority, but I really like tank controls... They take me back to the early self-controlled-avatar days of Sierra and I dunno, I just find them intuitive. The inventory on the other hand - yes, a definite deduction there. A real case of style over substance. On the whole though, I find GF's puzzles far more intuitive and structured than Sam and Max for example where I literally verbalised on multiple occasions "What the hell am I meant to be doing now??!?"

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    12. Grim Fandango's inventory, ugh. At least in Monkey 4 you can see it all at the same time and know which way to go. (Monkey 4's controls are frustrating, but I was way more aggravated by Grim's, overall. It might get better if I played it more times, as I've been through Escape several times and even gotten used to the keyboard instead of a controller, but Grim doesn't really grab me like Monkey Island, so enh.)

      And yeah, the puzzle with Glottis that Laukku mentioned was a showstopper for me for basically the same reason - not sure how one was meant to make the connection between "V arrq gb zryg guvf vpr" and "url, yrg'f unir Tybggvf or fvpx nyy bire vg!"

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    13. I'm holding off reading the ROT13 here so I can see how I go. There were a few puzzles in Gabriel Knight that certain commentators said "How were you meant to connect X to Y" that I got immediately, so it may have been written for a mind as damaged as mine. We shall see - but I'm prepared to be objective on it :)

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    14. There's nothing wrong with tank controls. It feels like a better option for those pixel hunt kind of stuff, at least when you actually know there's a hotspot somewhere. IIRC, EfMI wasn't the kind of game like Alone in the Dark, where, say, you can use an item, but unless you're using it in the exact right place, you'll never know if you're right. Especially 2 & 3. Yeugh.

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    15. The whole Rubacava section in particular devolves into an unsatisfying mess of doing seemingly random things.
      WHAT? Rubacava is hands down the best puzzle-story integration in an adventure game ever.
      If you had said that you didn't like the forest puzzles of year 1 or the island puzzles in year 3, I could be forced to admit they are not an high-point, but Rubacava is just perfect.

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    16. @Lisa H.: Although that puzzle is terrible too, it's not what I meant. I worded it badly but I was referring to fraqvat Tybggvf gb guvf cynpr: uggcf://jjj.lbhghor.pbz/jngpu?i=fukyicwn8Vt

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    17. uggcf://tnzrpbyn.arg/2015/07/gur-ybfg-neg-bs-tbbq-tnzr-qrfvta-tevz-snaqnatb-erznfgrerq/

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    18. Ah, that. (And I see now that I was wrong about melting something - it's freezing something. But whatever.) I'm amused we both thought "ugh that made no sense" about two completely different things.

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    19. Re: Laukku's most recent link:

      “take a shot every time Glottis makes a loud noise while you’re trying to solve a puzzle”

      Too real. "Shut UP, furball, I'm trying to THINK" are words that literally passed my lips while playing this Grim for the first (and so far only) time a little over a year ago, and I resorted to the same solution as the writer: I turned the sound off. If your voices/sound effects annoy me that much, you have done something wrong.

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  19. I must add that the loss of the LucasArts magic for me starts, coincidence or not, when they drop the verb interface and change it for the icon one (and I must admit that The Curse of Monkey Island is pretty good, except for the final act)

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    1. That's the loss of the magic for a lot of adventure gamers in general. When games went from parser to point-and-click, they because easier to program (the logic), easier to play, and as a result, easier to solve. The average computer user in 1986 had to have some brain cells. The average computer user in 1996 simply had to choose which color his iMac was going to be.

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  20. This will obviously get a 10 in Puzzles, but still I don't think it will score higher than 82.

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  21. What I like about DOTT: time travel; the puzzle design; the various Edison families.

    What I dislike: Hoagie and Laverne (they should have reused e.g. Razor and/or Jeff from MM); the art style (a matter of taste, but I prefer realistic art over cartoonish); and that unlike in MM or Zak, the player characters can't actually meet and do team-up puzzles.

    So I'd say it's a good game but not as good as Monkey Island or FOA or the QFG series, and not as groundbreaking as MM, and prefer the humor in TSOMI. My estimate is 65 points.

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  22. What's undeniable is that this blog is getting more interesting every month as we approach the golden era of graphic adventures and MS-DOS gaming!

    By the way, I'm currently playing classic action MS-DOS games such as Stunt Island and... Fuji Golf! (Actually a Windows 3.11 game that I discovered back in my dad's Windows 95 in 1997, originally included in Windows Entertainment Pack 3). If anyone is curious about Fuji Golf, I have uploaded a playable version here (it needs a 16-bit processor emulator): https://mega.nz/file/1pJE1YQS#LXhd1hO4BQtmFn_vXAsrRFyfIdtNh0TzB07z7FiNl3M

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    1. Just to clarify, the game already includes the emulator! You just need to run the BAT file I kindly created to play this nostalgic game created by a single Japanese guy from Microsoft Japan.

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    2. Stunt Island is a genuine treasure, and such a unique sandbox game.

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    3. Aren't we in the golden era of graphic adventures? I was under the impression that it was something like 1991-93, with DOS's golden era being closer to 92-97 or so.

      Stunt Island has always interested me, although I must admit that if its as good as people say it is, its certainly an outlier among The Assembly Line's titles, because I've noticed that a lot of their other games are weird and hard to play pseudo-puzzle games.

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  23. Regarding sound options, even if the MT-32 and General MIDI options offer technically higher quality, I feel that AdLib/SoudBlaster enhances a certain wackily demented mood of this game. (Conversely, e.g. Fate of Atlantis benefits more from the MT-32's spacious reverb for a mysterious atmosphere as well as more realistic instruments for a grand adventure feel.)

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    1. Since I own a real MT-32, I'll say that this game more than some others, the emulated MT-32 is no good, but works quite well with the real one, and SoundBlaster sound effects. If the version you're playing do esntballow for that (sometimes different releases behaved differently) then go all SB. ScummVM is the preferred choice with real Roland hardware, I'd say.

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    2. @Michael - when you say emulated MT-32 here, are you referring to MUNT, or the MT-32 soundbank mapping (eg. AWE32 MT-32 mode)?

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    3. Yes, MUNT, either standalone or the version built into ScummVM. To be fair, even the developers admit it hs faults. The description from their SourceForge page:
      A multi-platform software synthesiser emulating (somewhat inaccurately) pre-GM MIDI devices such as the Roland MT-32, CM-32L, CM-64 and LAPC-I.

      Some games, the difference isn't very noticeable, but as I recall, on this game, many of the notes sounded sour in the section of the William Tell Overture.

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  24. Wow! 51 comments (so far). I am so glad to see the strength of our community when we play games that you actually want to read about. ;)

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    1. Yeah, we kind of had a dry spell for a while. And I suspect the blog slowed down because even the reviewers weren't interested in what they were playing.

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    2. And a lot of reading! This might genuinely be the only time I have more to read than the commentators do!

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    3. I suppose that they are "games that you actually want to read about..." but also "games that you have actually played", so commenters have a lot of things to say about them.

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    4. Often, that's both for me. I know I'm more interested in seeing hoiw others react to my favorite games, than to watch someone play something I would never have any interest in. Sadly, that's been a lot of the content throughout 2022...

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  25. I'll guess 78, even if it's taken already. Have to be a draw then.

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    1. Keep in mind "78" is already taken by Antonakis (which it is the reason why I chose "79"), but "77" seems to be still available!

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  26. Hey guys, have you thought about creating a forum so we can discuss multiple games and not only the one being reviewed? Maybe you could create your own Subreddit and link in very visibly on the front page of the blog.

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    1. That's an idea worth considering, I'd say. What do the other commenters say? Would there be people interested of such a forum?

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    2. I would participate, but I wonder if it would take too much attention from the posts? But it could help to grow the community a little. At the expense of someone having the headache of being a moderator.

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    3. There is already r/adventuregames which I occasionally cross-post things to, but much less than before. We considered a TAG Twitter account that auto-posts new entries and similar. Fact is that none of us are social gurus (and the blogspot tools are not that great) so we know we're doing less than we could to promote and foster conversations about adventure games.

      I have no objection to setting up a TAG subreddit, but we'd need a plan for what gets posted there and how we manage it.

      I think we had the same talk about setting up a TAG discord a few months back. It seems like a good idea, but we're not sure that enough people would be interested and whether that changes the culture on the "real" site. (But really anything we can do to foster conversation about our favorite topic is a Good Thing.)

      Should we set up a poll about it? A community discussion post?

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    4. While part of me likes the idea of the discord, I like when the spontaneous conversation happens on the posts, but unless someone happens to be following the right post, they might miss out on a conversation. I'm personally not a reddit person, I avoid the site like the plague, but to each their own. Simple message boards work best for me.

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    5. I use by browser (Vivaldi) to read the blog's RSS feed of all comments, so nothing is missed by me.

      Spreading the community to another site makes be anxious about yet another website to obsessively check, so the idea doesn't appeal to me as of now.

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    6. I read the comments RSS by Old Reader.

      I might join a Discord, since I'm there all the time anyway. I probably would not join a forum.

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    7. I'd favor a forum, but I note that's the sort of thing that's dying out.

      Reddit kind of feels like a place where people only post memes and aggregate content from other websites, which makes it feel weird that its de facto replaced forums. I'm feel like a subreddit would just be a mediocre forum posts get crossposted to.

      Discord would work too, but I can't help but feel like those tend to attract drama like magnets. Seems like its far too often I hear about some Discord or another imploding or worse, much worse. It also tends to give people the impression of privacy when it doesn't really have much. I also note that a disturbing number seem to have a considerable amount of NSFW content. I would hope considering the relatively mature age of our audience and a hopeful lack of people hyperfocused on this season's waifu/husbando some of these issues.
      (although it is something of a shady website, but there are no big websites that aren't anymore, are there?)

      As a purely mercenary attempt to get more eyes, I would suggest trying to crosspost more to already existing forums and other places. IFDB contains links to various off-site reviews of text adventures for a start. Of course a good balance of properly promoting things and not ticking off the natives is ideal.

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    8. Yeah, I also prefer a forum! I only mentioned the Subreddit thing because it's probably cheaper and faster to set up.

      I don't think the point is to gain more views, but to have a logical way to be able to discuss games reviewed in 2014. A few weeks ago I saw an old review of a Police Quest here, and one guy had posted a comment in 2022 (saying that the puzzles were not so bad, as I recall). It would be great for guys like him (or myself, a common off-topic creator in the comments) to be able to discuss those things in places where other blog writers/readers would see them.

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    9. I also use the RSS feed to keep up on comments. I tend to avoid discord firstly because it crashed my linux box twice and I am slow to forgive such things, and second because it is blocked by the firewall at work and, since I have an eleven-year-old who doesn't respect Terms of Service, at home between the hours of 3 and10 PM.

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    10. I believe the best system would be a website that uses a forum for the comments, and users can then click on the rest of the forum to view or create more topics after entering to comment on a new entry.

      Just like Abandonia (who doesn't get much activity these days).

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    11. On that front, I note that there are free forum creation tools around, like Proboards. Although there are more advanced options, though I know nothing of the details.

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    12. I don't know about creating a forum....This post, I believe, has the record of comments for the second age of this blog (in Trickster days this was more common, but usually because of Canageek posting billions of links trying to earn some caps), but I believe because this is a game almost everyone here played, everyone wants to say something about it. I love the missed classics, but sometimes there are more missed classic posts than posts for the games on the main list, and most of those games few people ever played them, and that is why I think there is no much traction in the comment sections.

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    13. I would agree with this. The missed classics are a wonderful part of the site, but I don't think they should dominate over the main content the way they seem to.

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    14. My hope is that now that we have more main-line reviewers writing again that we'll be more balanced.

      While I don't know for sure, I suspect that main-line games generate more comments overall... but 5 of our top 10 read posts of all time are Missed Classics. Or perhaps as we've done more of them, we are just getting to more obscure games.

      I personally like (too much) what CRPGAddict has which is a range of popular and obscure games and half the fun of his site is learning about the obscure games. I respect though that what I enjoy (overly-researched posts) might not be what everyone wants.

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    15. Just to be clear Joe, one of the things that I like most of this blog is the research that you and other reviewers do on the first post of any given game, be it main list or missed classic. But I think the term "classic" is somehow misleading. Of course Zork is a missed classic, but a very large number of missed classic games reviewed here were games that i think most of us never even heard about it. Don't get me wrong, it is super interest to read about them, but the fact that almost nobody played them is going to be reflected in the comment sections. I think that the success of this post give us (or the adventurer's guild admins and reviewers) a lot to think about this

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    16. I feel the same about the use of the term "classic" here. Some of them are indeed classics that were apparently just missed when the list was drawn up. But others are merely old. I do like reading about many of them, because often I'd never heard of them before, but they're more a sideshow to me than anything "classic".

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    17. "Missed oldie" would be more appropriate, especially because they predate mainline games.

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    18. Even before I became an editor here, I assumed that "Classic" was tongue-in-cheek...

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    19. Given that in this case its probably the missed classics I've been covering that mostly get hit in the crossfire, I note that in a lot of games I've covered had big initial waves of popularity, but failed to capitalize on anything. In that sense, one could thing of them as games that missed their chance to be considered classics, not obtaining the cult status of other such titles.
      I also want to point out that the issue of never having heard of a game being played is going to increase in the future. I mean chronologically, the rest of the '90s and especially the '00s seem to be filled with games the adventure gaming community sort of forgot or ignored, for whatever reason.

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    20. Hopping on this thread late -- as a recent addition to the reviewer club here, I started with a Missed Classic that had significant attachment to me, and I know that some of the others have been chosen for similar reasons. Where the mainline games are sometimes just being played for the sake of being played. Hence, why wer have so many (yes, IMHO) awful games being slogged through to get to the one or two gems worth playing.

      Back in the early days of the blog, most of the games that met the criteria for being played was well-received, but as the market opened up and it was easier for companies to put out shovelware, and also as the technology allowed for some games to be made that were for alternative interests, the games were less universally loved and now splinter off to niche fan groups. I think the first truly mediocre game that Trickster played on the blog was the Hugo series, before that everything rightly belonged.

      I also want to point out that the issue of never having heard of a game being played is going to increase in the future. I mean chronologically, the rest of the '90s and especially the '00s seem to be filled with games the adventure gaming community sort of forgot or ignored, for whatever reason.
      @Morpheus maybe, but maybe not. Some of those games might be alien to me, at the old age of 44, but if there's readers on here aged 35-40, these games would have been during the appropriate years for them. So, it might balance out.

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    21. Then again, a blog of only good games would be dull in its own way. There's a certain charm in reading about the awful games that make the horrible mistakes that a game shouldn't make. What perhaps makes the post series about these less than ideal games drag so long might just be our reviewers' innate desire to try and complete all the games they start to play, all by themselves. There is the possibility to declare a game Lost - or the possibility to ask for a hint - and we should perhaps use that more often, just to keep our own sanity when playing the more unpolished gems.

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    22. No doubt. I just meant that when we review the "bad" games, the posts come less frequently because the bloggers aren't interested in the games, and the comments are less frequent for much the same reason. And lately, it feels like there's a lot more of those games, by percentage. Maybe it just feels that way because of the missed classics, but I don't think that's it.

      Now, games that are borderline, like say, Blue Force, get a lot of comment traffic. But that's about it.

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    23. Given 1993's reviews started back in 2019, and we're still only halfway through it... I think any potential lack of interest in Adventure Games released in the 00s is a concern for another generation ;)

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    24. Forget the 00s. 1994 might be a concern for our grandchildren. :P
      Looking at the master list, it seems there's about 26 main line games left in 1993 we haven't started yet. And, at least for me, it's a very polarizing year. There's a few I love, a few I hate, and a few that I might go either way on.

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    25. Considering the blog is proceeding as smoothly as its been in a while, this kind of feels like a silly thing to complain about. Will had an illness in addition to being a recent father, in that regard, he's proceeded in Bloodnet admirably. Dracula Unleashed is neither difficult nor bad, but I imagine Joe was focused on the Christmas game for a time. We actually have momentum going on right now, I'm willing to bet we're going to see most of the current games gone by February...and with it a new crop of games to complain about. Hey, maybe we'll see some of the real bad games before the end of the year!

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    26. Please note, in true 90s fashion, that we both used emoticons with those joking statements. ;)

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  27. By the way, Day of the Tentacle was probably one of the last Lucasarts games to have copy protection codes. With Sierra, I bet the last one was Space Quest 6.

    I guess by 1995, companies realized using CD-ROM was enough to avoid piracy. And when people started to be able to copy CD by the end of the 90s, the protection was implemented as technical solutions instead of codes in a box.

    It would be interesting, however, to learn how many people decided to buy an original game just because a game had copy protection codes... In my case, we 90s kids simply photocopied the codes.

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    1. Leading to, for example, Sim City using iconographic copy protection printed on dark red paper, because f*ck colorblind people or people with visual limitations

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  28. Since this is a top post and I expect a number of our most frequently commenters have "Notify Me" turned on, I hope you don't mind if I broach a different topic: domain name.

    We have always been "advgamer.blogspot.com" and that is fine, but I know I have secretly longed for a more "professional" looking name when soliciting interviews and such with developers. It is also true that the old URL doesn't match our no-longer-new name. Would anyone object to switching to a domain name? While "theadventurersguild.com" is taken, there are some other variants that are not. Redirects would be in place (by blogspot) to keep it all clean and so we don't lose our search traffic or internal links.

    There COULD be a small impact to the number of people that find us through a search engine if this splits our site incoming links, but as far as I know Google handles the permanent redirect case correctly in their ranking system. (If any community members are SEO experts, they can say for sure...)

    Perhaps this too should be part of a community post/poll (along with whether or not we should consider opening a subreddit or a discord for the community.)

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    1. It's not a whole lot of money, but the things that need to be thought of if you do that: whose name is it in, who is paying for it, and who will be responsible for maintaining it. Not big issues, but just pointing out the obvious.

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    2. Happy to contribute if the hat needs to be passed around...

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    3. I thought we were autonomous collective!

      Important details, of course. I expect that if we elect to get a domain name, the admins can work out the logistics. Google manages blogspot domains through their own backend platform that also deals with the SSL certificates, AFAIK. I haven't tried to add a domain here yet.

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    4. I do not believe it will be necessary to pass around hats for buying a name, but thanks for offering!

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  29. Oh, tough one. I have some great memories playing this game. OTOH, I actually prefer Fate of Atlantis, though I generally find myself in the minority on that one. Also, it is definitely better paced than Indiana Jones, feels tighter in a positive way. AND it was the added bonus of hiding the original MM game in there as well...
    My guess is 84. It will make it to the top of the list, but it won't obliterate the table.

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    1. You're not alone. I agree, and that's why my guess was just one point higher than Fate, because honestly I think Fate has better puzzles, but this game looks nicer. Both are classics, no doubt, but still.

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    2. Wow, that's a lot of comments. Best adventure game ever? It's between this and Grim Fandango for my vote. As it says at the top, we've all been waiting for this one.

      What will it get in the PISSED rating though? Story and setting, acting and dialogue - if they don't get a perfect 10, nothing will. It's Lucasarts, so the inventory and interface, sound and graphics should get very good scores as well given how their previous entries have gone.

      I do wonder if the puzzles and environment scores might just let it down. It's a great game, but the one strike against it is that there's not an enormous amount to it - one location (albeit presented three ways), limited places to go and people to talk to, and while the puzzles are well designed, they're overall quite easy and the game is fairly short as a result.

      Head says low 80s - will equal or beat monkey island but not by much due to those limitations. Heart says this should be 90+.

      I'll go with the heart. 92.

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  30. Ref: "Each actor did his lines without another actor in the studio, which I guess was uncommon then."
    No, that was the norm for recording voices for games, and I'm pretty sure it was also the norm for TV cartoon shows. You booked each actor for one or more four-hour recording sessions. Sometimes they would perform more than one role, but rarely more than three.
    Bringing the three actors for Hans, Franz, and Ivan in Quest for Glory IV into the studio at the same time was the idea of our brilliant voice director, Stu Rosen. He wanted to let them play off each other since each had relatively few lines. I let them go off script for the infamous ad lib section of the recording.
    Since you pay an actor the same amount whether they're alone in the studio, or recording with others, you want to minimize studio time. That's best done by giving each actor their own session(s). Only in cases where a role has few lines does it make sense to share a session.

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  31. Oops, that "Anonymous" comment ref QGIV voice acting was me. On a new computer, and not yet fully configured.

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  32. Until the forum is created, here's another offtopic: What is the most overrated and underrated graphic adventure of Lucasarts, of Sierra and of the rest of the companies?
    I'd say:
    - Lucas: Most overrated = Grim Fandango; most underrated = Last Crusade
    - Sierra: Most overrated = Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers; most underrated = Space Quest III
    - Other: Most overrated = Shadow of the Comet; most underrated = Lost in Time

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    1. For me, LucasArts most underrated is The Dig, most overrated is Grim Fandango.

      It's much harder with Sierra, not sure I can do it! There are just too many to choose from.

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    2. I'm starting to consider "Last Crusade" as the Most Underrated for Lucasarts. Other games as "Loom", "The Dig", "Full Throttle" are always mentioned, but "Last Crusade" seems to be always forgotten, probably because "Fate of Atlantis" (which I consider a better game) overshadows it, and it has the "demerit" of being "the game of a movie" instead of an entirely original history like the rest of the Lucasarts graphic adventures.

      And I would consider "Monkey 2" as the Most Overrated. It is an excellent game, but I consider the first chapter ("Largo's Embargo") much better than the rest, and I miss a final confrontation with LeChuck's lieutenants (Largo, the governor of Phatt Island and Lechuck's voodoo warlock), which gives a very disjointed feeling to the story of the game in its last act.

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    3. LucasArts
      Most overrated: Curse of Monkey Island
      Most underrated: Full Throttle

      Sierra
      Most overrated: Quest for Glory 4
      Most underrated: Quest for Glory 3

      Other
      Most overrated: Machinarium
      Most underrated: ToonStruck

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    4. I just noticed Cory's comment below. Sincere apologies if you read this! I enjoyed all the QfG games a lot, my judgement is purely on how their reception (I feel like the series is pretty tight on quality throughout and don't understand why people seem to have strong opinions about any given instalment being better or worse than the rest).

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  33. Lucas: Most overrated = I'm going to be controversial and say Monkey Island 2. I'm not saying it's a bad game, but I've seen a lot of comments rating as the best ever, and I really didn't like it - especially the ending, but other elements too.
    Most underrated = Tricky, they were nearly all well received and fondly remembered, apart from one or two that are justifiably poorly rated (Escape, I'm looking at you). Loom, perhaps?
    Sierra: Overrated = Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers. I also never liked any of the King's Quest series.
    Underrated = Space Quest V (silly but a lot of fun, but never seemed to reach the classic status of other titles). Rise of the Dragon (may not count, as it was developed by Dynamix and only published by Sierra, and it hasn't aged overly well, but it was ground breaking for the time.
    Other. Overrated = Myst (Curse of Money Island got it right - 'sure Myst is pretty, but boy is it dull), The Longest Journey (I only played it recently, so maybe it's another title that hasn't aged well, but I could not for the life of me understand what all the fuss is about).
    Underrated = Discworld Noir. I'm probably a bit biased, as I'm a huge Discworld fan, and once again, the tech really hasn't held up (I'm seeing a theme with these late 90s releases), but the story, environment and immersion were top notch if you like Discworld.

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    1. I loved Discworld Noir, and I actually saw the game before I had read any of the books. (I've since read them all.)
      But Noir to me just drags a little, too much with the dialog trees and not much else, I kind of wish it was a movie instead of a game.

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  34. ** Lucasarts **

    Most overrated = Sam and Max Hit the Road for reasons stated earlier in the comments - I actually got angry at this game.

    Most underrated = Loom. It gets smacked for being too short, or too easy... but the thing was way ahead of its time. It's art, and IMHO, a beautiful journey with no low points.

    ** Sierra**
    Tough one here... I feel the highly rated games are rated deservedly so (I poo poo'd Gabriel Knight until I finally relented and played it last year - now it's my number 1 adventure!).

    Most overrated = Quest for Glory 3. Apologies to Corey (As a consolation: HQ1, QFG2 and QFG4 are 3 of my favourite games of all time so...), but QFG3 left me wanting as a career thief. Whilst it was beautiful, the game world felt empty to me, and the story pacing was all over the shop.

    Most underrated = Police Quest 3. OK, hear me out. It's not a brilliant game... but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and didn't despise the driving sections half as much as everyone else seemed to. It's far more maligned than it deserves to be I feel.

    ** Other **

    Most overrated = Beneath a Steel Sky. I've tried playing this one several times and whilst I don't *hate* it, I never end up coming back for a follow-up session, so that must say something.

    Most underrated = The Putt Putt Series. These are great little adventure games that the kids love, and as an adult, I love playing along with them. The animations and characters are charming, there are some cracking little ear worms that you find yourself singing despite yourself and, I dunno... they are just put together with a quality beyond merely children's entertainment.

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    1. No apology needed for complimenting me. :-) TLDR: My design role on Quest for Glory games was only on games 1, 2, and 4. I was only a full-time game designer on QG4 and Castle of Dr. Brain.

      I didn't work on Quest for Glory 3 except for some editing just before release. Sierra had me assigned to the ill-fated Sega Genesis CD conversion project that year.

      I was a full co-designer on Quest for Glory 4, so that's my main game in the series from a design viewpoint. I co-designed 1 and 2, while my main job was programming. That naturally took time away from design work, so I'd put the game design in those as something like 75% Lori, 25% Corey. QG4 was pretty equal in the design. Lori wrote most of the character dialogue in all of the games, while I wrote more of the object interaction messages.

      Lori designed QG5 with some writing and art design help from Sierra employees. I came in as a contract programmer more than a year into the project. We worked together on the premise and preliminary design notes before Sierra cancelled the game, and I went to work for Accolade for a while.

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  35. - Lucas: Most overrated = Grim Fandango; most underrated = The Dig
    - Sierra: Most overrated = King's Quest VI; most underrated = King's Quest III
    - Other: Most overrated = Pandora Directive; most underrated = YU-NO (played these two at the same time)

    Sierra games are quite fairly rated, I feel. But if I had to pick, KQ6, while not terrible in either puzzles or story, doesn't excel enough in the areas either compared to other games for me to rate it highly, and I prefer KQ1 and KQ3 for their more open-ended puzzle structures.

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    1. A game that looks like a VN seems like a bold choice to pick, I'm curious as to the reasoning. I've found in the past that the story to a lot of VNs just aren't as good as their reputation would suggest, more pre-disposed to simplistic, repetitive philosophy. (for the record, this would be more PC games, not say, DS titles)

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    2. It's more properly categorised as an adventure game - it has genuine exploration, puzzles and environmental interaction. There are a lot of hugely impressive things going for it - a ridiculously epic plot (the protagonist grows several years older during the 10-hour finale, to give an idea), a soundtrack to rival Nobuo Uematsu (video has footage from a completely different game for some reason), innovative time travel mechanics and nuanced dialogue. Its biggest flaws are some tasteless eroge stuff despite otherwise well-developed characters, and constant click-everything-multiple-time-to-continue scenes (which plagued old Japanese adventure games, including Hideo Kojima's). It would be a nigh Riven-tier experience of solving a grand puzzle without the latter.

      I've found that, compared to "pure" visual novels, those with more adventure game elements tend to have more enjoyable, efficient storytelling. Pure VNs (even highly-rated ones like Fate/stay night) are often riddled with slice of life, which might at first seem like a good way to take advantage of length unlimited by paper in order to develop characters more, but in almost all cases is repetitive fluff and brings the story to a halt. Clannad is probably the worst offender I've encountered. Those with adventure gameplay on the other hand are more goal-focused in their narrative flow in my experience, with less faffing about. Makes sense, as adventure games are all about problem solving (overcoming obstacles to goals). Fewer cliché anime characterisation tropes too.

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  36. https://advgamer.blogspot.com/2023/01/game-131-maniac-mansion-day-of-tentacle.html#comment-form

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    1. It looks like I pressed the button accidentally. Admins, feel free to delete these 2 messages.

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  37. Hey, it's the Anonymous who started this offtopic. Here's the extended version of my previous comment:

    ** Lucasarts **

    Most overrated = Grim Fandango: Too many interface and puzzle problems to be considered a masterpiece by most of the press.

    Most underrated = Last Crusade. The most similar game to the first Monkey Island, it has Gilbert and the EGA graphical team in a "sweet spot"

    ** Sierra**

    Most overrated = Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers: Excellent graphics and music, but the story is too meh and the puzzles have quite a few design problems to consider this one of the best or even the best.

    Most underrated = Eco Quest: I could have said Space Quest III because that's the one I was particularly underrating more, but SQ3 is fairly rated, maybe just a bit forgotten partly because you need to type the commands. So I go with Eco Quest, a very solid experience, excellent audiovisually and without the frustrating puzzles that many games have, that many gamers from all ages are missing and could experience thanks to the point & click interface.

    ** Other **

    Most overrated = Shadow of the Comet: My second and third choices would be titles like Beneath a Steel Sky or The Longest Journey, but at leat those games are quite playable. SotC, on the other hand, is an interface disaster (unforgivable in 1993) with illogical puzzles, but still many retro players give this game 4-5 star reviews only because they like the atmosphere.

    Most underrated = Lost in Time: The last part in a jungle is terrible, but it's short. The rest of the game (the boat and the mansion) is the best 1st person graphical adventure I've ever played (even if it's a McGyver simulator), and I believe many retro gamers are missing on this one.

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    1. Lucasarts:
      Most Overrated: Sam & Max (didn´t like it back in the 90s, and didn`t like it when I replayed it a couple of years ago). Also, Full Throttle, only a 7/10 IMHO
      Most Underrated: Maniac Mansion (It should be hailed like Moneky 1 just for the fact that when it was released it was groundbreaking and tons of adventure games copied the UI until the mid 90s)
      Sierra:
      Most Overrated: King Quest V (yeah, it was nice to look in the 90s, but the gameplay is awful)
      Most Underrated: Conquest of Camelot: The search for the Grial (like the best Sierra game of all time, Conquest of the Longbow, the thorough research made for this game is highly commendable)
      Other companies:
      Most Overrated: Myst (it feels not an adventure game to me, just a puzzle game). The Syberia series is nice to look, but the game is so so, specially in the puzzles department)
      Most Underrated:
      The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes; The Case of the Serrated Scalpel. I know it got pretty good reviews almost everywhere, but it deserves to be better known and played by more people that it did, maybe because it was not a Lucasarts or Sierra game. I hold that it is, even today, gorgeous to look, the atmosphere is great and the story got it all (kidnapping! murder! blackmail! suicide!)
      An aside for the admins and reviewers: instead of creating a forum, maybe we can have a monthly post like this, making a poll or debating about things like the one raised by Anonymous. We can start it with: Which games are best, Lucasarts or Sierra?. I know it is an old issue, but i believe the comments sections will be very busy and a good starting point for this kind of posts.

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    2. We've had occassionaly such discussion posts and we could again have more of them in the future. It's more a question of coming up with good questions.

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  38. This blog entry has made me do some research about Tim Schafer. I appreciate what he did, but I also realized the only game I like from him is Full Throttle. Here's a couple of fun facts about him:
    - Grim Fandango sold "decently", but they were expected millions. So it was the game that "finished graphic adventures", sadly. According to Rob Lowe, Sierra and Lucas cancelled several sequels after that semi-failure. I wonder how tank controls had an impact on that (I kind of like tank controls, but not in graphic adventures).
    - Tim Schafer abandoned the graphic adventure genre, and moved to platformers and other genres. And I'm among the many who believe the gameplay of these action games is pretty average. His explanation for this genre change was that the important thing about games is to "tell a story"... I strongly disagree with that vision: interactivity must be paramount in video games, not telling a story.

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    1. Whoa! I mean Al Lowe, of course.

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    2. I wonder how tank controls had an impact on that (I kind of like tank controls, but not in graphic adventures).

      Very little, I should think. The genre was already gasping for air at that point, Grim was more of an attempt to keep the genre afloat than anything else, and if it had done well, I still doubt LucasArts would have made many more adventures. After Grim, about 99.9% of their output became Star Wars action games.

      As for Tim's move to platformers, I've always thought of it as a sell-out move. I really, really wanted to like The Cave, for example, but too much was lacking. It was also just some bad game design -- if you chose to replay the game with different characters, you had to replay all of the common areas and solve the same puzzles all over again, just for the few character-dependent puzzles that would be added for the new one.

      Broken Age was pretty much an adventure-lite. The puzzles were dumbed down, but the game looked really pretty. I was a backer on the Kickstarter, and played it as soon as I got it, with practically zero problems solving the game. In the years since, I've never considered a replay.

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  39. A bit late to the party, but still.. Though I love this game, I can't in hood conscience rate it above my favourite, Fate of Atlantis, so I'll go with 82

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  40. If I'm not too late, I'll take 77, or if someone else has that, 76. I enjoyed Day of the Tentacle, but it's much less epic than Fate of Atlantis.

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  41. I'll guess 80 as a compromise between what it's likely to be rated by those who like this style of game more than I do and what I would probably end up rating it if I were playing it. :)

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