Co-written by Gary Winnick and Rob Glibert (later
of Monkey Island fame), this B movie send-up is
remembered for allowing you to swap control
between multiple teens as they delved deep inside
a creepy mansion – a rudimentary ‘lives’ system of
sorts, given the dangers lurking within.MANIAC MANSION 1987
Younger gamers might have a hard
time believing this, especially if
they’ve recently hacked their way
through one of Telltale’s recent
efforts, but the idea of graphic
adventures such as The Walking Dead
or Life Is Strange featuring moving
images was once considered little
more than a gimmick.
This way of thinking was a hangover
from the genre’s roots in text-based
adventures such as Zork, where the
player was left to picture the world in
their head, and interact with it by typing
clunky phrases such as ‘BREAK LOCK
WITH STONE’ into the command line.
As technology progressed,adventures began to include moving
images, but were still slaves to the
inflexible text parsers. This began to
change when George Lucas formed
Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts) in- The studio struck gold five years
later with a new game engine called
SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for
Maniac Mansion), which introduced a
new, more intuitive interface; instead
of typing a vague command, you clicked
on one of a list of action commands
and then the item/person you wanted
to do it to. This stripped out a lot of the
guesswork that blighted the genre, and
allowed the designers to implement
tougher, more complex puzzles.
The company that dragged the adventure game
genre out of the text parser doldrums
LucasArts Adventures
SPOTLIGHT
Founded 1982
Headquarters San Francisco
Years active 1982-2013
Lead platform Amiga