There are also a few ways to blow up the entire mansion, usually by senselessly mucking with the Edison’s nuclear reactor, which will obviously bring the entire game to an end. Sending one of them to their grave doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost, but if their skill was vital to solve a puzzle, you’re basically out of luck. Some of them are almost Easter eggs unto themselves – try stealing Ed’s hamster, sticking it in the microwave and giving him the charred remains, or playing the record of Tentacle Mating Calls in the presence of the Green Tentacle, both rather silly ways to bump off the kids. You can also get your characters killed, although most of these require some conscious effort on the player’s part. In Maniac Mansion, it is entirely possible to find yourself in a dead end, requiring that you reload an earlier save, or possibly even restart. But while LucasArts games had a tendency to be very player friendly (at least compared to Sierra games), this design philosophy didn’t kick in until Loom. Although the mansion is quite large, there are really only a few major obstacles to overcome – open the two locks to get into the secret lab, find some way to distract the Purple Tentacle, and get rid of the Meteor. It’s just as well, since Maniac Mansion isn’t a terribly long game. There’s also Dead Cousin Ted, the mummified remains of a long deceased family member who nevertheless seems to maintain a fairly decorated living quarters.

Also inhabiting the house are two sentient tentacles – the green one, who looks fearsome but mostly just lounges around and dreams of being a rock star and the purple one, who is actively evil and aids Dr. Fred’s deteriorating mental health, and your troupe can attempt to befriend them to provide aid for the greater good. Even though neither of them takes too kindly to intruders, they’re equally as concerned for Dr. Fred lives in weird company, with his crazy wife Nurse Edna and military nut son Weird Ed. Sandy’s boyfriend Dave is none too pleased by this, so he assembles a group of his friends to stage an impromptu infiltration and rescue her from the Edison’s basement laboratory.

These two events are not coincidental – the Meteor is sentient, and has taken control of the not-so-good doctor. Fred Edison, owner of the mansion, kidnaps Sandy, a local teenage girl, to conduct a number of mad, brain sucking experiments. The story fast forwards twenty years, as Dr. Maniac Mansion begins with a meteor crash landing in the backyard of a large, rickety house.

Scummvm maniac mansion