Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle

Platforms: IBM PC/Compatibles, Macintosh

Genres

Main Genre:
Adventure
Perspective:
3rd-Person
Gameplay Style:
Puzzle Elements

Overview

IBM VGA version of Day of the Tentacle
IBM VGA version of Day of the Tentacle
Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle is an adventure game developed by LucasArts and first released in 1993. It is the sequel to Maniac Mansion and features a similar point-and-click interface. In the game, Purple Tentacle (a creature created by mad scientist Dr. Fred in the first game) drinks some contaminated water which causes him to mutate and become an evil genius intent on taking over the world. Players control three different characters with the goal of stopping him. Day of the Tentacle was available in both floppy disk and CD-ROM versions with the CD-ROM version featuring full voiceovers throughout the entire game.

Story and Gameplay

The game begins in the Edison's backyard where Dr. Fred's Sludge-o-Matic machine is polluting a stream. Purple Tentacle drinks some of the water and it immediately transforms him; He grows arms, becomes an evil genius, and announces his intention to take over the world. To prevent this, Dr. Fred captures both the Purple and Green tentacles and is going to destroy them; Bernard learns of this and sets the tentacles free. Now that Purple Tentacle has escpaed, Dr. Fred devises a new plan of going back in time to the previous day to turn off the Sludge-o-Matic and thus prevent the mutation from ever happening. Three friends, Bernard, Hoagie, and Laverne, enter Dr. Fred's time machines (which are called Chron-o-Johns due to their resemblance to portable toilets). However, Dr. Fred used cheap components so instead of being sent to the previous day, Bernard stays in the current time, Hoagie ends up 200 years in the past, and Laverne is sent 200 years into the future.

Similar to Maniac Mansion, players control three characters; in Day of the Tentacle the characters are always Bernard, Hoagie, and Laverne (there is no option to select different characters). Players can switch between characters at any time and many of the games puzzles will require cooperation between multiple characters. Since each character is in the same place but during a different time, they can't interact directly. Instead, items can be transferred between characters by using the time machines or by leaving items hidden in the past to be found in the future. The game uses a point-and-click interface similar to the one found in Maniac Mansion; along the bottom of the screen are a list of verbs that can be clicked on to start a sentence. By clicking on the desired verb followed by an item or person, the requested action will be performed (such is walking to a location, talking to another character, picking up an item, and so on).

As a bonus, the original Maniac Mansion in its entirety can be found and played within the game on a computer resembling a Commodore 64.

Related Games

Maniac Mansion Series

Game Features

This game has been tagged with the following features: