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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
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...
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
The FAQ says that the game was remade in AGS (Adventure Game Studio), a no programming required adventure game creation tool. Check Here.
The Kerr Divine: My wife's battle with a mysterious illness.
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.
Yep. Finished the NES version, though, which was a bit censored for content. Then went back and did it every way - launch the Meteor in the Weird Edsel, summon the Meteor Police, get the Meteor a book publishing deal... Then I looked for all the ways to blow up the house, and all the different ways of getting the Edisons to murder the kids.
Remember, Maniac Mansion was back before adventure game designers saw the light and took out all the ways you could get into a no-win situation and not realise it for weeks... Accidentally wasted the paint remover, or the developer fluid? Too bad - you can't win. The nice thing about later games like Day of the Tentacle was that you could play as you saw fit, and know that no matter how badly you treated the NPCs you could _never_ get into an unwinnable position.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Most of the kids would say 'How sick!' if you tried to microwave the hamster. But one of the girls would say 'No way - those things are, like, FULL of cholesterol!' Nice touch. A few other censored elements included 'Chewy Caramel Centre' becoming 'Pretty brains' on the medical chart, and the 'Muff Diver' game becoming 'Tuna Diver'...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The chainsaw could be fueled by the Chainsaw Fuel container found in Zak McKracken, which was useless without the Chainsaw, which only was found in Maniac Mansion.
..So: It's only a cross-game joke. ;)
By the way, I'm selling these fine leather jackets..
Cheers!
Zawash.
File not found. Fake it(Y/N)? _
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.
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...
>
> 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!)
There were several ways to win.
1) Summon the Meteor Police. Involves fixing the big radio using the vacuum tube from the one in the lounge. They arrive, and if you've opened the lab doors they'll storm right past Purple and Dr Fred, and arrest the Meteor. Then you just have to go in yourself and switch off the Meteor's mind control machine to release Dr Fred.
2) Dispose of the Meteor yourself. Persuade either Green or Weird Ed to help you beat Purple, then go into the Meteor's lair, take it and launch it into space in the trunk of the Weird Edsel.
Both (1) and (2) get much the same ending sequence: don't be a tuna head.
3) Get the Meteor a publishing deal. Have Wendy improve the Meteor's manuscript using the typewriter, and send it off. Get past Purple (with either Weird Ed or Green's help) and go into the Meteor's lair. Give the Meteor the contract, and he realises he doesn't have to be evil any more. This gets a really cool ending where the Meteor's on the sofa in some TV interview show.
4) Nuke the house. Several ways to do this: draining the pool, for instance, and letting the reactor overheat, or pressing the Red Button (which is marked 'Do Not Press - Under Any Circumstances)
5) Get all the kids killed. Weird Ed will kill you if you mutilate his hamster, Green will kill you if you get a publishing contract for either yourself or the Meteor, radioactive steam will kill you if you microwave water from the pool, and if you refill the pool while someone's in it they drown.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
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."