HorrorTober 2017 : Maniac Mansion (NES) Quick Review

It's baaaaaaaaaaack. It's October once again and you know that means it's time to get spoopy! This year I've got four games lined up to review for you here on the blog, as well as a game to stream on my Twitch channel for the end of the month. I've kept a couple games a secret, but I revealed two of the ones I'm going to be reviewing and one of them is this one right here. Maniac Mansion on the NES.

20 years prior to the start of the game, a sentient meteor (yup those are the right words, you're not reading that wrong) crashes down and enslaves the Edison family in their mansion, in order to obtain human brains for use in experiments. The game itself starts with Dave arriving to the mansion to save his girlfriend Sandy who has been kidnapped by Dr. Fred. Dave goes with two of his friends to break into the mansion, find Sandy and escape with her. There's five different ways to beat this game based on who you pick, what puzzles you complete, and who survives their visit


  


What's Good?
- Character Selection. Before starting the game, on the main menu you are given the group of characters to choose from (you can only pick two) to bring along with Dave into the mansion. Inside the mansion there are a number of different puzzles to try and solve, and certain ones can only be solved by specific characters. Some can play instruments while others can't, and some can repair things like radios while others don't know what to do. How you can finish the game is all determined by who you choose and what you do within the house, so having the range of character options that you do is pretty great.
- Save Game. This is a small thing, but considering the time period of games it was such a rare thing to be able to actually SAVE your game. It was easier for a lot of games because there was no real "beating" the game so it was just about saving the highest score achieived on the cartridge. A game like this though, where there's an actual story (also highly unheard of at the time), and it actually takes some thought for figuring out the puzzles you'll find, it's so nice to be able to save it and walk away for a bit to let your brain gears turn if you need them to.
- Open Ended. There are so many ways (well only 5 but still...consider the time period), to be able to beat this game, and Maniac Mansion is built with not only those in mind, but that certain endings can only be reached by certain people. It's something that's more common nowadays, but thirty years ago when this game out, this sort of complexity was never really in games. Even if one of the characters dies you can pick another one and start outside the mansion all over again. And while there are some dead ends you can run into in the game, namely using an item before you're supposed to and being unable to get it back again, there's not many of these, and they don't completely restrict the game from being beaten if you run into them.

What's Bad?
- If You Don't Have The Manual... This is only ever a problem really in the older games. A lot of things never got explained within the game itself because it just wasn't very possible to do with the size of the chips. Now there's in-game tutorials that cover everything, even stuff that's not actually needed. Before that though, all these things were explained in the manual. Which, if you don't have the manuals for these older games, you either have to hope the items are self explanatory, or dig on the internet. Maniac Mansion gives you a lot of things to pick up in the game, a lot of which are needed for puzzles but every time you come across them you'll wonder if it's something important, or if it's just there.

Is it Worth it?
Maniac Mansion is an incredible game, and it raised the bar for a lot of things in video gaming when it first came out. Back then, not many people were using video games to tell a story. Cutscenes weren't a thing in games, but this one featured them to tell parts of the story off-screen and was praised for it. Even the point-and-click style of the game became more of a staple in games after this was released. However, this game just might not be for everyone. To borrow a line of opinion from one of my streamer friends on Twitch, Krystal, this games puzzle's take some out-of-the-box thinking to be able to solve them.  So essentially, your love or hate for this game may simply be determined by how eccentric of a puzzle-solver you are, as well as how easy or difficult this game will end up being for you. If those crazy abnormal puzzle-solving thoughts come easy to you, you'll probably love this one, but if you're more of a straightforward thinker then you might not. You should be able to find a loose copy of this game for no more than $20, while a CIB copy will run up closer to $50. The loose price is definitely worth it for this game, as it definitely gives you a lot of playability with it's multiple ending potentials. But the CIB price might only be attractive for collector's, yet getting this game with a manual might just be a life-saver.

Scare-O-Meter - It's an old game, so it's not really going to make you jump or poop yourself. In fact, Maniac Mansion is more comedy than anything else, and at times feels like it's trying to parody a lot of cheap horror movie elements. So if you're looking to be scared by a horror game, this one won't cut it. However, everything about this game is done so beautifully that it is absolutely worth checking out.

I have yet to beat this game. I really want to, and ideally without using some sort of a walkthrough, but I am definitely more of a straightforward thinker when playing video games. This is definitely something I want to keep set aside and play along with viewers in chat on my Twitch channel to maybe beat this game as a collective. 

Up Next : Well...it's going to be a surprise! It could be the other game I revealed for a review, Lost Planet on PS3, or it could be one of the other two games I've chosen to review for the month. Stay tuned and find out next week!

HG

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