I talk about Maniac Mansion a lot. So much, in fact, that most people in the Gamervision office tend to tune me out when I do so, even though I usually have a valid point about whatever is being currently discussed. It’s true that I may be a little biased, since the 1987 LucasArts adventure classic is one of my favorite games of all time. However, it’s also a fact that the game for which the SCUMM engine was created is one of the most influential titles of the late 1980s, shaping the point-and-click adventure into the genre it became in the 1990s. In 1987, when gaming was still fairly primitive, Maniac Mansion had multiple endings, seven playable characters, an awesome sense of humor, and some of the best gaming dialogue ever. However, it only saw one extension of the franchise, the 1993 sequel Day of the Tentacle. Maniac Mansion has a lot more story that needs to be told, and Telltale is the perfect developer for the job.

By the end of the 90s, it seemed like point-and-click adventure games were pretty much dead. This made me sad, and I later found out that I wasn’t the only one. When Sam & Max: Freelance Police, a long-awaited sequel to another early-90s adventure game, was announced around 2002, I thought that it was too good to be true—and surely enough, it was! LucasArts canceled the game, and it seemed like the end of the line. Instead, some of the LucasArts developers formed Telltale Games, which is where Steve Purcell moved the franchise after its licensing agreement with LucasArts ended in 2005. The rest is history, as Telltale began an episodic Sam & Max series that recaptured the fun, gameplay, and humor of the original. Again, it seemed too good to be true, but this time it actually happened.



Despite Telltale’s successful revival of a beloved adventure game franchise from the 1990s, I never expected it to happen again. I believed that Sam & Max was an exception because it was owned by Steve Purcell, not LucasArts, which allowed them to take over the series and create their own. I’m no lawyer, and I certainly don’t know the ins and outs of copyright and licensing agreements, but I never expected to see another LucasArts adventure game developed into an episodic series by Telltale. When they made the announcement that they would be working with LucasArts to put out an episodic Monkey Island series, I was absolutely floored. I was ecstatic, not just because Tales of Monkey Island will likely be fantastic, but because this theoretically opens the door for more series revivals. This perfectly sets the stage for an episodic Maniac Mansion to be made.

In Day of the Tentacle, the player revisits the Edison mansion several years after the events of the first game, but only one playable character returns: Bernard Bernouli, who brings two new friends along with him. My first thought was that I would love to see another sequel that brings back Dave, Razor, and more of the interesting characters from Maniac Mansion, but then I had another thought: prequel. As made clear in the intro to Maniac Mansion, that game takes place 20 years after the murderous purple meteor landed in the Edisons’ backyard and starts mind-controlling the mad doctor in his family. How about an episodic game about the meteor’s early days on Earth?



There are a ton of questions regarding the history of the Edison family that I would like to finally have some answers to. Was Dr. Fred always insane, absent-minded, and sleep-deprived? Was Nurse Edna so, um, amorous in her younger days, or did the lack of alone time with her husband cause her to go mad from frustration? Was Cousin Ted always dead? And what was Weird Ed like as a child—an actual child, not a psychologically stunted man-child? Those are just a few things that could be explored in a Maniac Mansion prequel. The biggest question regarding gameplay, however, is who the story should follow. Should Telltale put the player in the shoes of Dr. Fred, or maybe the meteor itself? Or should a new group of naïve teenagers be brought in to save one of their own? After all, it is implied in Maniac Mansion that Sandy was not the first person to disappear near the Edison house, and we all know what happens to trespassers (being horribly mutilated sounds horribly unpleasant, by the way).

In Maniac Mansion, all three (living) members of the Edison family were clearly your enemies. They needed to be avoided at all costs, and a run-in with Fred, Edna, or Ed meant, at best, a trip to the dungeon. In Day of the Tentacle, with the blood-thirty Purple Tentacle hell-bent on taking over the world, the Edisons took the role of supporting characters. You could converse with them, take Ed’s hamster, funnel hot coffee into Dr. Fred's mouth, or push Edna down the stairs, all without fear of death or mutilation. We’ve never had the chance to see the world through the eyes of the Edisons, however, and maybe a new Maniac Mansion adventure would give us the chance.



Whatever Telltale’s next big project after Maniac Mansion turns out to be, their track record is so good that I will try it out, no matter what. Whether it’s a revival of a classic game or something entirely new, they have a great team of talented writers and designers who are more than capable of handling any project. In fact, that’s why I want them to make a new series based on my favorite game—I’m not going to trust just anyone to do that! Only time will tell if Maniac Mansion will ever get another chance at life, be it prequel, sequel, or something else entirely. In the meantime, I’ll be eagerly awaiting Tales of Monkey Island, and hoping that Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space makes its way to consoles sometime soon. The point-and-click revival is undeniably taking place, and I couldn’t be much happier about it.

[Maniac Mansion fan art and screens source: The Maniac Mansion Fan Site]