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Fan-made Maniac Mansion 256 Color Remake
xDCDx writes "LucasFan Games have just released an impressive 256 color remake of Maniac Mansion. There is a sequel to Zak McKracken available too. Their website is scarce in details, but the games speak for themselves. It seems the perfect timing for this release, now that LucasArts is obsessed with killing the graphical adventure genre. (If only Ron Gilbert would buy Monkey Island rights and made Monkey Island 3a: The Real Story...)"
There is an 8 minute wait to download the game from the severs provided but you can instead get it from your favorite p2p. I found mine on edonkey (mld) just search for "mmdsetup.exe" for Maniac Mansion and "fanadv_zak2.exe" for Zak McKracken. About 16 sources of each.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Here's a hint: the front door key is under the doormat. It took me almost an hour to figure that out the first time around (but then I was only 7 years old).
;)
Also, watch out if you empty the pool
This game seriously freaked me out as a kid.
Perhaps fan-inspired efforts like this will convince Lucasarts to resume development of the cancelled Sam & Max sequel they were making? Apart from Monkey Island, Lucasarts appear not to care for the genre they brought so much to in the early Nineties.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Damn u - I submitted this 3 weeks ago! Anyway - more to the point it's a pretty sweet conversion, works pefectly with win2K and brings backk all those memories of SCUM on the A500 :D
My Portfolio
Putting the hamster in the microwave, pure genius.
:)
I can't hear a microwave go ping without thinking about that part of Maniac Mansion
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Looks like the will have to cancel their 256color version of Indy: The fate of atlantis.
Now that it has been discovered...
I loved that game when I was younger... played it on my trusty old (even if it was newer back then ;) ) Commodore 64 until I could walk thru it with my eyes shut. Played it again when Day of the Tentacle came out.. in cause you havn't found it, the entire MM was included as an easteregg.
Good memories... this will definitly be downloaded once I get home from work today!
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Hrm, whatever they're using to host the file doesn't seem to like me...
Not only that, but it looks Windows only (not using the *actual* scumm engine, but a free thing that's similarish)
http://freecache.org/http://www.tentakelvilla.de/t homas/mmdsetup.exe
Join the Free Software Foundation
Does this work with ScummVM? Or is it made in an entirely different engine?
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
I remember they took out the whole 'hamster exploding' scene in the NES version... There are prototypes that exist with this scene still in, though. I'll definitely be trying this new remake.
If you start looking for remakes, you will find out one of the most active "scenes" is the Sinclair Spectrum games remakes. Check out www.remakes.org
That guy with the sig saying he'll award mod points to people who get Monkey Island into their post is gonna run out...
also have some remakes of older games, in this case the first two in Sierra's venerable King's Quest series. You can check them out at http://www.agdinteractive.com/
You get to play as Zak's brother, Phil, this time around...
Ahh the fun from youth....
On a side note, has anyone ever documented the SCUMM engine commands so that you could make your own graphical adventure game?
I played Maniac Mansion on my old pc back in the good ol' 80's. I remember it as being the absolute most difficult adventure game to complete. Did anyone succeed?
I've been thinking about playing the original again with the help of the DosBox project. I just completed Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry: Enhanced. Pretty cool! Nothing beats nostalgia!
I miss the 80's.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
The NES version of Maniac Mansion is to this day my favorite game ever. I discover new things about it still after all these years.
It was actually a very interesting ordeal for the development team to get the game approved by Nintendo, The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the NES gives some insight into how bland they required their games to be in those days.
The sequel, Day of the Tentacle, for PC was great as well. It's a shame that this game genre has died out.
2) The developer fluid. If you put it in the jar, and then microwaved it, it turned brown. Presumably this did something, but I never found out what.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I certainly hope they've kept the wonderful Nuke 'Em Burglar Alarm - the copy protection that made sense in-game as well. "The house and everything within a five mile radius has been destroyed." - or similar. :)
:D
If I recall correctly, this copy protection was scrapped from the C64 version due to floppy space issues..
Cheers!
Zawash.
File not found. Fake it(Y/N)? _
Wow, talking about impossible to download. Using Linux here with Mozilla, but I can't get a download anywhere, only nasty popups and other ad stuff. And then only to find out it doesnt work in Wine... (I think, ais, couldn't download it yet).
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
anyone notice the stats link off of the home page?i d=1544 813
have a look. very wool
http://www.nedstatbasic.net/s?tab=1&link=1&
dont bother downloading it. The game uses AGS, and this one is ported to linux, but it relies on a plugin written in C++, which cannot be ported, since the Linux AGS version does not support plugins.
SCU
I wonder if Lucas Arts considers the money lost by loyal Monkey Island players finding their fun elsewhere and then trying to get them back when they make a new sequel ??
I tried it out with CX Office and it works for the most part...the resolution is a bit off and I had to CTRL-ALT-+ a few times and ALT-TAB to get my mouse to escape. Looks like they've completely redone all the graphics, and it looks good for 256 colors!
/me calls in sick today
I spent months playing this game, trying to find every secret, trying to find all the different diologs. I remember I spent 2 weeks trying to find the 2nd ending, I never found it or found out if it was just a myth. Something dealing with the purple tentical that ties to stop you, somehow you could befriend him, and something happenes.....
O well, cant wait to download it.
TruePunk | Games
I keep thinking of the egg in the airplane microwave from Zak McKracken. The only way to get the oxygen tank (last bin, remember) was to egg the microwave.
..I've always wanted to test it myself, but I've heard enough horror stories of egg being found in the most obscure corners of the kitchen for weeks after such incidents.. :-D
File not found. Fake it(Y/N)? _
I just installed and ran it with CrossOver Office. It's not perfect (the resolution is a bit skewed, I had to manually switch X11 screen resolutions with CTRL-ALT-+, and had to use my windowmanager to get the mouse cursor out of the game and back to doing *real* work), but it's playable.
I have not tried Wine proper, or dosemu.
What really set Grim Fandango apart was the writing, and the audio. The music and the voice acting were second to none. Without them the game loses its character.
In any event, the remakes likely won't get much further without having to start lifting audio, too -- I'm fairly certain LucasArts started doing that not long after Maniac Mansion 2...
Did Lucasarts' "un-Xeroxable paper" copy protection start with this game? There was this piece of dark-brown paper with a table in black symbols written on it, that you could still read but was really hard to photo-copy right. During the game (I think to enter a door on the second floor) you had to look up one of the codes.
:-)
I have to admit I was really stumped by this bastion of security until I found a photocopier with really good contrast
Let me be the first to say: YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!
I hope a few people will enjoy the first computer game I ever bought.
Playing all of those old LucasArts puzzle games was my first PC gaming experience. And they were awesome.
I hope this fan site will remake more classics like Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, etc. etc. but those mihgt be under more strict copyrights I guess.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
I'm doing a remake of the crap-classic Camelot Warriors, but I am incompetent when it comes to art as this prototype for the knight shows (I gave up when I got as far as the arms). If anybody can draw, please help.
>
> Not just Lucasarts. It seems *nobody* cares about adventures anymore. Because it's just more profitable to make yet-another-3d-first-person-shooter-this-time-wit
Huh? LucasArts?
Killing off Sam and Max was teh suck, but have you played KOTOR?
Look beyond the 3D (it's purty!) and the fact that it has character stats/abilities a'la D20-based RPG. When I finished KOTOR, I didn't remember a damn thing about any of my characters' stats or class. For an RPG, that's unusual.
But I do remember spending a lot of time navigating dialog trees where my choices had a greater effect on my character's development than anything I chopped up for XP. I also remember a game salted liberally with math and logic puzzles, none of which would have been out of place in an Infocom title, and I remember a story featuring character development of the player, evolving relationships between the player and the NPCs, and considerable exposition of the history of the early SW universe.
It's ironic - George Lucas can't make a good movie to save his life. And yet, if you took a LucasArts/BioWare game, recorded it all the way through, edited out about 2/3 of the combat and "walking around town" between quests, you'd have about 2 hours of video that would better Star Wars movie than either of Episodes I or II. Go figure.
KOTOR, at least for me, was a work of interactive fiction, not an RPG. (A feature, not a bug!)
The New Adventures of Zak McKracken
Maniac Mansion Deluxe
There's also a FreeCache mirror somewhere in the article, if you want to use that instead.
My reality check bounced.
The NES version was butchered.
The Commodore64 version was the way to go!
Hint: The mad scientist, nurse Edna, etc. don't really have blue skin.
Hey, what was wrong with Monkey Island 3: The Curse of Monkey Island? IMO that was a superb game, the absolute pinnacle of the series, even if Ron Gilbert wasn't involved. Great dialogue, excellent art, and both music and sound were to die for (the pirate song still cracks me up, I even have it on mp3). Don't touch MI3!
The fourth game, however, was... meh. The whole game just felt tired and strained, and the 3d look wasn't as vibrant and expressive (MI3 had only 256 colors and STILL manages to come out on top). They should pick up where part 3 left off, and in the same style.
because 257 would just be silly :)
-Cnik
This and Zak McKracken are two of my favorite games of all time. They don't make any good adventures anymore and it's a shame. These games showed how much fun you could have without 3d graphics, multiplayer, or even 256 colors.
They were fully immersive in that you could roam around and complete the game the way you wanted to. In fact, Maniac Mansion had 5 different ways to complete the game if I recall.
The game world itself wasn't incredibly complex but it gave the illusion that it was complete. And when you found something new, it was interesting (draining the pool, the observatory, edna's bedroom). Unlike like these 3d adventure games on N64 or gamecube where you just roam around and find mini puzzles. The world was more cohesive. So you felt like you had many options at your disposal and that made for a great adventure.
They have 'blue skin' in the graphically updated PC version of the game.
Or are you saying that there's an explanation for it?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
For anyone interested in old game remakes there are remakes of King's Quest 1 + 2 in VGA here:
http://www.agdinteractive.com/
They're also currently in the middle of redoing Quest for Glory 2 which I've been drooling over for the last two years as it's my favourite Sierra game.
- OBL
If you want to make your own adventure game, choosing AGS (which this remake was made with) would be far easier.
If you go to http://adventuregamestudio.co.uk/, you will find a free download, lots of tutorials and a helpful community.
The Wintermute engine ( http://www.dead-code.org/index2.php/en ) could also be worth looking into. AGS would be my firsh choice though, as it is pretty easy on the hardware requirements, and obviously built to be able to run on older systems.
I remember seeing some other engines on Sourceforge, though I can't remember any of them feeling as complete as the ones above.
Because it's still better than the 16 origingal colors.
I can't enter the site. I'm not Spanish, British, or German. :(
"Derp de derp."
The link on the website points to mmdsetup.exe--what's wrong with that? Please don't tell me it cannot run on ScummVM after unpacking... Just-- don't tell me!
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Why is it in 256 colors??
Well, why not? 256 colors is plenty if you use them right. A lot of people don't realise that 8-bit graphics can actually look better than 16-bit graphics under the right circumstances(e.g there are only 32 shades of red in 16-bit).
And using 32-bit graphics for simple 2D is just plain silly...
I looked throught the LucasFan site, and couldn't find anything about the legal issues. Wouldn't LucasArts have a valid complaint about them distributing a game that they have the rights to?
If some of you don't already know, ScummVM (available at scummvm.sf.net) is "a 'virtual machine' for several classic graphical point-and-click adventure games. It is designed to run: Adventure Soft's Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2; Revolution's Beneath A Steel Sky, Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2; Flight of the Amazon Queen; and games based on LucasArts' SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) system. SCUMM is used for many games, including Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max and more. Compatibility with supported games is continually improving, so check back often." -- from www.scummvm.sourceforge.net.
With ScummVM you can play Maniac Mansion (original), Maniac Mansion (enhanced), Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (original), Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (enhanced), Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (256 - FmTowns), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (256), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (256 - FmTowns), Loom, Loom (256 - FmTowns), The Secret of Monkey Island (EGA), Passport to Adventure (Indy3, Monkey and Loom demos), Loom (256 color CD version), The Secret of Monkey Island (VGA Floppy), The Secret of Monkey Island (VGA CD), The Secret of Monkey Island (Alternative VGA CD), The Secret of Monkey Island (Sega CD), Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's revenge, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's revenge (DOS Demo), Indiana Jones 4 and the Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones 4 and the Fate of Atlantis (Demo), Putt-Putt Joins The Parade (DOS Demo), Putt-Putt Joins The Parade (DOS), Putt-Putt Goes To The Moon (DOS Demo), Putt-Putt Goes To The Moon (DOS), Putt-Putts Fun Pack,
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
This is my all time favorite ending of any video game ever. I love it so much it's my sig...
Ah, Maniac Mansion was such a great game...Now life would be perfect if only someone would make a freely available version of Zork--oh.
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
Yep. I even use SCUMM VM to run Day of The Tenticle and Full Throttle on my G5. I love those games.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Doesn't anyone read my sig? :)
:)
There are usually a dozen or so adventures in development at any given time. Just because you don't buy them doesn't mean they don't exist. A few of them suck outright (usually the MYST clones), but there are a lot of great ones. Click through to Adventure Gamers and have a look at games like Dreamfall, Fahrenheit, and The Westerner among others. The adventure genre is not dead by quite a ways. It's just moved to Europe
Whatever happened to the series. I remember playing Kings Quest V and thinking it was the best game ever, I remember it came on something like 9-12 big floppy disks. And then the franchise losts its graphics edge and looked more like a cartoon than a great adventure game.
Can you even find those around the Internet, I'd love to play it again...
Find a list of alternative mirrors here, there is also an Emule-Link.
Tried three times now and the game won't let me use the paint thinner on the paint splotch. Tried two different characters, restarted game, etc.
What am I missing that's making this game kick my ass?
(Been playing for the past two hours... at work.)
END OF LINE.
I think I can honestly say I wholeheartedly agree with you. It took me over two hours to write, finding all of the relevant links and manually formatting the HTML, but I didn't do all of that hard work--very hard work, I might add--only to get moderated as Score:5, Informative--not at all!--but rather to provide some useful information to the Slashdot community. Please don't thank me. I only did my duty as a Slashdotter. I am glad I could be helpful. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Yeah, MI3 is actually pretty good (although MI2 remains my favourite). But, remember the *WEIRD* ending of MI2? (I won't spoil it here) Ron Gilbert said he had it all thought and that he would explain it in the sequel. I just wanted to know what was all that about... :)
V and VI,
Best games in the genre I ever played. Day of the tentacle wasn't bad either. Plus it had Maniac Mansion hidden in it (on the computer, duh).
Too bad Kings Quest started to suck at No. 7.
Hated the interface. And I wasn't a fan of the puzzles.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
This happened before, with Tie-Fighter, by far the best space-based combat game of its time. They basically abandoned it by releasing a half-baked update (X-Wing Alliance) before moving onto trashy episode 1 & episode 2 merchandise games. They had a real chance to own the genre, but they deliberately threw it away.
How comes none of the characters have their CD players with the original music. I don't remember all that well, but it doesn't seem to be right. (could the music being played in the house from the DOTT?)
Are there any other inconsistencies with the game that I should be aware of?
THAT SONG RULEZ!!!
since this discussion seems to be about old adventure games, I might as well ask: I'm trying to get through indy 4 on scummvm, but it's the mac version. I'm in the jungle scene with the tree and the parrot on the other side. I'm supposed to "use the tree", but it doesn't work, possibly because the Mac version has slightly different puzzles than other versions. I can't even click on the tree, e.g. it's not a game object.
anyone knows the solution?
Thank you, I was finding the freecache mirror of it to be rather slow.
Windows is only $500 if your time is worthless.
Huh?
"A lot of people don't realise that 8-bit graphics can actually look better than 16-bit graphics under the right circumstances(e.g there are only 32 shades of red in 16-bit). "
And there are even fewer shades of red in 8-bit colour, so what's your point?
The only reason I'd see for limiting the game to 256 colours is if it's a limit in the engine their using. Otherwise it seems like extra work for the artists who do the graphics to limit themselves to a smaller palette.
"And using 32-bit graphics for simple 2D is just plain silly..."
Riiiight... Someone should tell that to all those painters and photographers out there.
"Renoir was an idiot! Look at all those colours he used!"
Anonymous Game Developers Interactive (Formerly Tierra Entertainment) have 2 great adventure game remakes, Sierra On-Line's Kings Quest I and II, both done in KQ5-ish VGA graphics -- and KQII+ (as they call it) have some new stuff thrown in... very good games. They are also working on a remake of the 2nd Quest For Glory (a.k.a. Hero's Quest), in SVGA.
But Maaa! Everyone else has a
The trouble with a lot of these fan games is, hopefully through ignornace rather than design, the makers keep the closed source, for whatever reason. This eliminates half the point of doing something like this, because in a few years time fans will face exactly the same problem that caused this generation of fangames to appear - "Noone's making any more Foobar Quest games! I'd better get a team of people together and write one from scratch over several years!".
oops...
The daily bandwidth limit for this customer has been exceeded. Try again after midnight, EST.
Try the Google cache instead.
Oh, wait, it's only small. They can't possibly... yes, master... yes, master... ot once, master...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The game's only just got a Linux player port (how hard is that? his graphics engine is already ported, the rest of the game or editor shouldn't take more than a couple of hours) and no Linux editor, yet Commander Keen here thinks that Linux is only 2% of his market. How often does he expect Linux visitors to return when they gan't use his game? And now that there's a game (but no editor) that they can use, does he expect his Linux visitor count to instantly redline?
On top of this, he's apparently unaware that many Linux users will be visiting his site from their (MS-Windows, for now) work computers.
To really ice his cake with a deep layer of naivete, he believes the UserAgent headers are all accurate. Hellooo...? Evidently the firelight of his experience doesn't extend its glow as far as the sites that won't even let you in unless they think you're running IE under MS-Windows. For others with the same handicap, a common reaction to that situation is to set your browser to always identify itself as (for example) "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)" (IE 5.5 on 'doze2000 or 'dozeXP).
His real-world exposure to Linux - with Linux ports of the game and editor available - would probably be closer to 10% already, and steadily growing.
As for the work involved in defending a GPLed program, let the FSF do it for you. They enjoy that sort of thing.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
There was a newspaper style insert with the game when it first came out that contained a lot of clues to various puzzles, including the key under the doormat.
One critical hint is make restoring electricity a priority. The clock is running and if the doctor can't play the video game machine when he goes to the game room, you're screwed, AFAIK.
I knight you "Master of Ignorance".
"And there are even fewer shades of red in 8-bit colour, so what's your point?"
No there isn't. You can choose your 8-bit palette from 2^32 colours of which there are 256 shades of red.
ok so,
...what does Jeff do?
Syd and Razor can get the green tentacle a music contract. Michael can develop the undeveoped film, thus making Wierd Ed a friend. Wendy can fix the manuscript making the meteor a star. Bernard can communicate with the meteor police to arrest the meteor.
Hee hee.
... ... oh wait a second.
What makes you think you...
Egad, there IS a door behind that paint splotch.
Okay, nevermind. It's been WAY too long since I last played that game. I was about to liken the mysterious paint thinner scenario to Chuck the Plant (which is mysterious, but does nothing.)
For a good time, pour the paint thinner on the monster plant upstairs... >:)
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