The hypothetical "Ron gets Maniac Mansion IP" thread

Yes, you have to change the puzzles. Just turning MM into a multi player game won’t work (very well). You have to construct puzzles that have to be solved by two kids. Have a look at The Cave: There are some puzzles where two characters have to work together.

But what happens when the first player rejoins the game? He has in his inventory several “new” items not knowing where they are from. :slight_smile:

Yes. :slight_smile: (But as I said: I’ve an idea that might work…)

I haven´t played The Cave with someone else but I seem to remember there were issues with the 2player mode, can´t remember which, though. But I get the point, there were many situations where you had to switch. That part was done really well.

But The Cave was more like a “puzzle platformer”. For example you haven’t an inventory like in TWP.

How about a global inventory?

I imagine there would be a disclaimer in the game warning you that if you exit or go offline, your character will be at the mercy of the other players. Assuming there is an in-game walkie-talkie chat system, friendly players could fill you in on what happened if you needed to take a break. It’s really not fair to the other players to just halt the whole game if someone else has to leave.

Yes, but imagine how fast you could solve the whole thing if 3 people are working simultaneously to solve it? It might even lead to high score boards for best times… though with a game like TWP, I’m not particularly interested in how fast you solve it. It takes away the fun of immersing yourself in the world and trying as many random things as you can think of to find a hidden joke.

Could work but depends on the story: If one kid picks up the rusty key in the sewers, why could the other kid in the bathroom use this key? So you have to construct a story that explains the global inventory.

Yes. But it would be still frustrating because the other players are pushing the story forward. So the first player will miss parts of the story. Beside that, it’s still irritating to have suddenly “new” objects in the inventory.

Or classify objects differently. Keys are seperate from other story objects. But of course that would make some party maybe a bit too easy.

Though what you guys are talking about is also interesting, it sounds like you’re thinking of making a whole new game. I was thinking a multi-player Maniac Mansion would be targeted mainly towards people who are already fans and know the story, but want an interesting twist to play an old favorite.

Psssst. :wink:

But yes, someday I would like to do that.

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Overthinking it? Us?

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This Hide & Shriek game looks pretty awesome (even though it doesn’t look like a classic PnC style adventure).

[quote=“milanfahrnholz, post:26, topic:332”]
which I´ve never seen, because I don´t think it was ever on in germany, and I don´t really care either
[/quote]I’ve never seen it either. It has a German title though: https://ssl.ofdb.de/film/109674,Das-Tollhaus
Considering the overall reviews, I don’t think I have to watch this either. Yet I wonder when and on which channel that was.

German wikipedia says Tele 5 from 1991 on and then continued when Tele 5 was changed into Der Kabelkanal (later Kabel 1), which makes this especially puzzling to me that I missed it because I watched Tele 5 all the time in those days. But the name might be a reason, because had it been advertised as Maniac Mansion I no doubt would have checked it out (and suffered Super Mario Bros The Movie proportions of dissaspointment, no doubt.)

It was on “Kabel 1”:

A postive thing might be the fact that Eugene Levy was involved as a writer, who is undoubletly more talented than you would gather from his appearances in those dreadful American Pie movies.

No. Tele5 was discontinued and owned by a different company (Kabelkanal was Kirch Media, Tele5 was/is Tele München Gruppe).

Mmmhh, yes the reception of Tele 5 was taken over by DSF (Sport1 today) but for some reason several longer running shows from Tele5 were taken over by either Kabel1 and later RTL2.

I remember the Maniac Mansion TV show. It was on the Family Channel in the US. I saw it once or twice but was totally confused by it–it was just about a weird family and none of them seemed to actually be the characters from the game. I think there were the parents, and there was an unintelligent giant and a guy who was out of the “Help Me” bit from the Fly.

I watched the intro of the first season (it’s on YouTube), and at a certain point is written “based on an original computer game by LUCASFILM GAMES”. The intro itself has many references to the game.
So why the episodes are completely far from Maniac Mansion characters and story? What’s the meaning? Just a bait?
(I’m not blaming you, of course, those are unanswered questions that I am carrying from a lot of time!)