Maniac Mansion has been one of my top 3 video games since I was a child. I played the NES version because I didn’t have a computer until much later, nor did any of my friends.
So I did not get to play any of the other classic adventure games until way way later. Once I did, I loved the Monkey Island games to death. Then it was finally time to give Day of the Tentacle a go.
I played it for a few days, but I just didn’t like it and gave up on it. The puzzles were pretty good, but I didn’t like the humor or the overall tone.
So my three questions:
Did anyone else besides me reject Day of the Tentacle?
If Ron and Gary were ever to (somehow) get the IP back or wind up leading a team on development of an MM sequel, would you want them to acknowledge the decisions made in Day of the Tentacle, or ignore the game and go about making their vision for an MM 2?
Yep, mostly. It´s an okay game but no way is it better than the first one as many say.
The only one I´d mostly agree with is for Dr Fred being mostly nice, after not being controlled by the meteor anymore, Ed however should be more unpredictable and Edna remain hostile.
Tentacles don´t have arms and Dr Freds family (unnamed in the original game!) is not blue!
Sigh, so I guess then for you Dave is supposed to be a redhead and Weird Ed wears a pink beret, well…
Well, I guess they just went ahead and based them on the old PC Graphics, but they also said that they consider the original C64 version the ultimate one so…I still have no idea why someone at some point decided they had to look like blue meanies, so it always confused me.
I think we should agree the ultimate version is TWP:
So the correct colour is more of a green!
I remember talking about this topic in the blog.
And as it seems like they had technical limitations in v1 (C64) so they used pink.
But they actually wanted them to look creepy so in v2 (EGA) they have used cyan (which was also a technical limitation). The mentioned NES version was then based on this I guess.
Now with TWP, having unrestricted access to all 256 existing colours on this world, they could finally choose their desired one.
Those quoted posts are very confusing and partly contradicting, but assuming the cyan was the intended colour because they thought their faces didn´t look creepy enough (which in my opinion, they are).
But why are they still human coloured on the back of the box of those later releases:
The c64 version was the original one and the one I originally played, yes it also doesn´t have all those paintings and references to later games (of course), but I still consider the original the ultimative one.
I´m also on the edge about Zak´s constant smirk in the later versions(except FM Towns and the circus scene in TwP), but that´s another story…
Cyan wasn’t the intended colour but it was the one colour they chose from the fixed 16 colour palette they had (EGA) which looked OK.
Box art often has nothing to do with the game itself. Interestingly your example shows a more greenish look which is actually what they have now gone for in TWP.
Oh well if you look close enough that might be veeeeery light greenish. But I think that box art is pretty close to the intention because I seem to remember that painting was done by Gary Winnick himself (can´t find proof for that though, so I might be wrong).
On another note in the original game the family´s name was never given. In the development documents it was said to be “Schwartz” but it´s nowhere in the game or accompanying media(I even checked contemporary reviews). “Edison” didn´t appear before the TV series.
[quote=“milanfahrnholz, post:7, topic:332”]
Those quoted posts are very confusing and partly contradicting, but assuming the cyan was the intended colour because they thought their faces didn´t look creepy enough (which in my opinion, they are).
[/quote]To clarify the limitations of the C64: You have 8 sprites, and two out of three colors are shared among all of them, which is the real limitation here. Thus the sprites in Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken use light red and black as their shared colors and only one additional color each. If the Edisons had cyan skin, they couldn’t use brown or white for their clothes any more, which probably was more important than an exotic skin color.
There were no such limitations in SCUMM V2 anymore, so they could use any colors they want.
Well, limitations are a good thing, if it wasn´t for limitations Mario wouldn´t have a moustache
The whole argument to me sounds to be like a “Mos Eisley was always meant to be crowded” kind of thing. I get Lucas´ argument but I was always okay with it looking like a ghost town.
I don´t have a handy source right now with a quote and everything, but the moustache was to distinguish his face. Jumpman (as Mario was called then) had one eye on each side but there was not enough space in the face for a decent mouth to be placed between the chin and the nose. So they put a moustache under the nose to cover the space where a mouth would be, giving Mario the distinct and iconic look he has to this day. This was for the Arcade version of Donkey Kong in 1981. At least that´s the story I´ve heard and when you look at him you can maybe see why.
Due to the graphical limitations of arcade hardware at the time, Miyamoto clothed the character in red overalls and a blue shirt to contrast against each other and the background. A red cap was added to let Miyamoto avoid drawing the character’s hairstyle, forehead, and eyebrows, as well as to circumvent the issue of animating his hair as he jumped. To make him appear human onscreen despite his small size, Mario was given distinct features, prominently a large nose and a mustache, which avoided the need to draw a mouth and facial expressions on the small onscreen character.
So basically everything about his looks is due to the hardware limitations of the time.
I hope that if they ever do make another game, it takes place in the 90s and the theme song is “I’m Blue” and “dabu di dabu dai” plays on a loop underneath every single scene.
I really liked DOTT, it was a great game for me and had real fun playing it, mixing past and future to solve puzzles looked like a great idea to me. I don’t know if this was the first game I finished without external help but it certainly is one of the firsts, so that might help too to have it in my heart.
in my case, i wasnt hyped about DOTT neighter, but thats because my english was really bad back then, i didnt know whats going on…and i was keep playing those games.
What made me excited was a thought, there is a new lucasfilm game with another great innovation and i loved their art.
You know 90s were a great time when we had a new technology every year and video game development always came up with something great.
When i seen a monkey’s head in german PC gamer and article talking about Monkey Island 2 coming soon… i pooped my pants and vomit to the toilet (JK)
It was just the time period that brought up lots of new stuff.
Look at Psygnosis, everytime they released a game…their art & animation was 2 levels ahead before others.
If we got the license to MM, I doubt we would do a sequel. DotT was not our game, but for most of the people who played MM, it was DotT that they think of, not the original. If we were to do a sequel, it would be held up to DotT, not the original. I never liked the art style in DotT, but that is what people would expect in a MM sequel.
To me, MM was a satire of B-horror movies (DotT was not) and it was about the camaraderie of those 7 kids. Any sequel we did would have to be about those two things, but I don’t know if it would be allowed to breath under DotT. For most of the fans of “MM”, DotT is MM (which makes me a little sad).
I’d be interested in a full remake, not a remaster, but a remaking of the game from the ground up.
