Maniac Mansion you say? That old gem? That revered LicasArts classic? A hall of famer in the point and click genre of comedy puzzle solving? Why yes the very same. As with so many games from the good old days I had not had the pleasure until now. I just happened to be playing Day of the Tentacle Remastered recently when I came across the easter egg within it, the complete game of Maniac Mansion hidden within its sequel. A pretty good value proposition really, at least I thought so until I played it.
Now don't get me wrong, in terms of character and comedy there is much to still enjoy here. If these games were animated features on Adult Swim they would be sure fire cult classics and deservedly so. As games however there is a lot of legwork to get to the punchlines and as is so often the case with comedy, the more you have to figure it out, the less funny it gets. The puzzles are obtuse, much as they are with the Monkey Island games by many of the same creators but its not necessarily the puzzle solving that is at fault, at least not by itself.
Much rests here on figuring out the sense of humour of those who put the puzzles together and its on this point that these games lose much of their charm for me. Day of the Tentacle is redeemed somewhat here by a remastered version that removes much of the visual clutter but Maniac Mansion is very much presented as it originally was, with all the fiddly busywork included. You find yourself performing peculiar mental gymnastics to figure out the kind of thing that gave some game developer a laugh over thirty years ago. Unfortunately for them and the game, it does their work no favours in the here and now and it all ends up feeling like an empty exercise. You know the punchline you need you just need to figure out the setup, ostensibly the least funny part of the joke.
After many failed attempts and a growing realisation that there are many better games I could be playing in my spare time, I loaded up the walkthrough to make it marginally less tedious but even this served to underscore the essential issue I have with these games. Even when you just use the cheat sheet and take the quickest possible route to the solution, it still plays like a slow, backtracking slog. The fastest solution does not feel fast, it still feels like a chore. Maybe the true lesson of these games is that gamers of the time were really starved for quality humour. That in the absence of quality humour, gamers were willing to jump through a whole lot of hoops to get to something that felt like a good joke.
So to come back to my earlier point, how do you play an old game? Do you judge it purely by the standards of it's time or by the standards of when you happen to be playing it? Do you split the difference and find the fine point in-between? Recognize a game for it's historical value whilst still acknowledging there was still mountains to climb in the field of video game development as there is in the development of almost anything at all?
It's not the first time I've had pause to reflect on the subject. A good long time ago now I went back to play the original Fallout and it's immediate sequel Fallout 2. This was a good few years after they came out back in the heady days of the late nineties. Both were fine games to put them in their historical context but both came with some pretty major disclaimers that got in the way of actually having fun whilst playing them. By the early noughties they were already feeling quite removed from the games of the time. The world was rich and intriguing, much as it remains to this day but the gameplay itself in those early games was something else entirely. Slow, glitchy and prone to absurd difficulty spikes with barely a moments notice. They were games that promised much with their customisable character options and setup but in reality there was only a few ways to play it if you wished to derive any enjoyment out of the experience at all. A testament to a time where developers tried to wring some grand ambitions out of some meagre system resources.
Therein lies perhaps the true value of playing old games. Yes they are a window into the conventions of times past but equally they are a window into the minds of those who made them and played them. You could even stretch it a little further to extract some insight into the minds of those who game in the here and now. Perhaps we're not patient enough? Perhaps we have so many options competing for our attention that there isn't time for more deliberate slow-paced experiences. Maybe we are all just drawn to more immediate thrills and spills and cannot for the life of us fathom why someone would follow a long chain of obscure clues to an obscure solution? All for a gag that may or may not land as intended.
I realise this has turned into a critique of point and click adventure games more than any other genre of old games. Faster paced intuitive gaming wasn't unknown back then even if it was neither as fast paced or intuitive as it is now. Point and click adventure games do feel like a monument to yesteryear though. Highly prescriptive games with only the one track to a solution, a neat embodiment to the wider mindset of game design back in the day.
In retrospect it's perhaps not a surprise that the majority of successful point and click adventure games were comedy based (notwithstanding The Broken Sword games which also come to mind). Something had to offset the tedium and comedy is the best pressure valve for that. Still I can't help but imagine what a resurgence of such games might look like? More open-ended with multiple paths to a solution perhaps? Funnier gags for those willing to figure out the more convoluted solutions with lesser rewards for the simpler but faster road taken? On the other hand maybe we just get a total retreat into the comfort zone of idiosyncratic puzzle solving? Who knows?
Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to find out why there is a trophy achievement here for sticking a hamster in a microwave? Enquiring minds must know...
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