Maniac Mansion Speedrun: 9 min.

 Ron Gilbert, der Erfinder der SCUMM-Engine und von Monkey Island, fuehlt sich beim Anblick eines Speedruns zu dem Spiel, das er mit-kreiert hat, an seine Kindheit erinnert. Aeh, sagte ich "Kindheit"? Ich meinte "seine fruehere glueckliche Zeit", als er noch Adventure-Games entwickelt und damit die Welt veraendert hat. Was fuer ein Freud'scher Versprecher von mir ...

Jedenfalls lassen wir uns gerne mitreissen in diese tolle Vergangenheit, als Spiele mit Graphik noch ein so ziemliches Novum waren. [...]
(show me)(don't show me)

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Maniac Mansion in 9
Apr 12, 2007 ten to ten am
David Fox forwarded me a link to Maniac Mansion being played through in nine minutes. This is about 2 hours and 27 minutes faster than I could do it.

I found it fascinating to watch this video. It's was like thumbing through an old family album of childhood photos. Memories long forgotten are jarred to the surface by the smallest of details. An old and forgotten toy. The front grill of your fathers car. Things you could never have remembered if you tried become so clear they could have happened yesterday.


I'd see little things like Dave hitting the edge of the porch, turning around, then walking forward and then continuing on his way. I remember this from development. It was a weird bug having to do with the walk-boxes that told the character where they could walk. I knew how to fix it, but it would have broken oh-so-many of other things. It always drove me crazy that he did that.


There is also the scene when Dave walks into Weird Ed's bedroom for the first time. The ladder on the left is just off screen. Scrolling was pretty unique at time (i.e Kings Quest didn't do it), and I wanted players to have to go into the rooms and explore - not just walk in the door, look around, wave the cursor over the screen and leave. Several of the rooms are designed this way. It pushed the player inside.


Seeing Dave walk behind the big dinning room table triggered a flood of memories. Note that he walks behind the table, not in front of it. Clipping behind objects was a big technical achievement back then. I was very proud of the tech behind this, and the dining room was the first room we did. It was the showcase.


The animating clock in the foyer was also the first animation in the game. In todays world of run-a-way particle effects and million polygon scripted animations the simplicity of it seems ridiculous, but seeing that pendulum move in the background really brought the world to life for me.


If you don't blink, you also see the worlds first cut-scene. It's a cut to Sandy and Dr. Fred in his lab. I named them "cut-scenes" (it was also the name of the SCUMM command) because they literally cut away from the action. Games before Maniac Mansion had non-interactive scenes that would play between levels or after a big event, but the ones in Maniac Mansion are different. They cut away. get it? cut-scene. Oh, how I can amuse myself.

Self-amusement aside, I consider the way Maniac Mansion did cut-scenes to be one of the biggest mistakes of the game. In later games like Monkey Island, the cut-scenes happen only in response to an action by the player. They were no longer tied to an arbitrary timer.

As the memories of long weekends and late nights tolling away in the salt-mine we called Skywalker Ranch rush over me, I think: "Hey, I should take this video and do a designer's commentary for it". Then I think: "Hey, that's going to be a lot of work". Then I stop thinking about it.
>> Q: Grumpy Gamer.com

Maniac Mansion Speedrun - 9 minutes

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