Maniac Mansion is a name that adventure game fans know very well. This game was a major turning point in adventure games and a major release for LucasArts ( then called LucasFilm Games), and was unlike any other adventure game at the time. Prior to this game, adventure games required more in-depth commands, no matter how refined the controls were getting. While Point and Click Adventure games had started already, they were still based on older ideas that were unintuitive. Maniac Mansion was different though and changed how the adventure game genre would play. The game was made by Ron Gilbert and used the SCUMM engine (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion), which became the engine for several LucasArts adventure games including Ron Gilbert’s masterpiece, The Secret of Monkey Island.
It is not an exaggeration to state that SCUMM was the biggest innovation ever for Adventure Games. The engine changed the way the User Interface worked and distilled all the minutia of game design in a simple scripting language. SCUMM would be refined over and over again and pushed to its limits, but the engine lasted over a decade and produced many classic games, ushering in the Golden Age for point and click adventure games. Taking the plot of having teens enter a mansion to rescue a cheerleader, the game was a hilarious sendup of clichés and became a sleeper hit the world over. It slowly rose up in the charts over time and became a genuine pop culture phenomenon in Canada, where it was such a hit that a TV show was made by several alumni of SCTV and aired on YTV and the Family Channel in the US.
Maniac Mansion would be ported to several computers and also the NES, where despite heavy censorship from Nintendo, the game still retained much of its charm. The NES version did manage to sneak a lot past the censors, and also had an amazing soundtrack as well, proving the viability of Adventure Games on consoles. It is difficult to stress just how much of an impact Maniac Mansion had on gaming. From the iconic puzzles to the surreal humor, MM innovated on how stories were told in gaming. It was for this game that the term Cutscene was coined, and changed how narrative storytelling could be done. The different characters that were playable all had unique features to them and their own personality, which again was miles ahead of anything else at the time. It managed to mix some intentionally uncomfortable moments with later moments that just were hilarious and wore its surreal nature proudly.
Maniac Mansion was a masterpiece, and while later games from LucasArts would surpass it, they all owe their legacy to this gem. It was truly a great masterpiece.
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