Maniac Mansion

Maniac Mansion
Ken Macklin's cover artwork depicts five of the playable characters: Syd, Dave, Bernard, Razor, and Jeff.
Developer(s)	Lucasfilm Games Home computers Lucasfilm Games NES LucasArts[2] Realtime Associates[3]
Publisher(s)	Lucasfilm Games Home computers Lucasfilm Games NES Jaleco
Designer(s)	Ron Gilbert Gary Winnick
Programmer(s)	Ron Gilbert David Fox Carl Mey
Artist(s)	Gary Winnick
Composer(s)	Chris Grigg David Lawrence NES David Warhol George Sanger David Hayes Dave Govett Tsukasa Tawada (Famicom version)[4] Amiga Brian Hales
Engine	SCUMM
Platform(s)	Commodore 64, Apple II, MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, NES, Macintosh
Release	October 5, 1987 Commodore 64 / Apple II October 5, 1987[1] DOS March 12, 1988 December 31, 1989 (enhanced version) NES JP: June 23, 1988 NA: September 18, 1990 EU: October 22, 1992 Amiga / Atari ST July 26, 1989
Genre(s)	Graphic adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player

Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure video game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It follows teenage protagonist Dave Miller as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend Sandy Pantz from a mad scientist, whose mind has been enslaved by a sentient meteor. The player uses a point-and-click interface to guide Dave and two of his six playable friends through the scientist's mansion while solving puzzles and avoiding dangers. Gameplay is non-linear, and the game must be completed in different ways based on the player's choice of characters. Initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II, Maniac Mansion was Lucasfilm Games' first self-published product.

The game was conceived in 1985 by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, who sought to tell a comedic story based on horror film and B-movie clichés. They mapped out the project as a paper-and-pencil game before coding commenced. While earlier adventure titles had relied on command lines, Gilbert disliked such systems, and he developed Maniac Mansion's simpler point-and-click interface as a replacement. To speed up production, he created a game engine called SCUMM, which was used in many later LucasArts titles. After its release, Maniac Mansion was ported to several platforms. A port for the Nintendo Entertainment System had to be reworked heavily, in response to Nintendo of America’s concerns that the game was inappropriate for children.^[5]

Maniac Mansion was critically acclaimed: reviewers lauded its graphics, cutscenes, animation, and humor. Writer Orson Scott Card praised it as a step toward "computer games [becoming] a valid storytelling art". It influenced numerous graphic adventure titles, and its point-and-click interface became a standard feature in the genre. The game's success solidified Lucasfilm as a serious rival to adventure game studios such as Sierra On-Line. In 1990, Maniac Mansion was adapted into a three-season television series of the same name, written by Eugene Levy and starring Joe Flaherty. A sequel to the game, Day of the Tentacle, was released in 1993.