[Courtney]

Oh wow. Two games that frustrated me to no end when I was a child, especially Maniac Mansion. This is going to be a tough decision. Very tough.

Gauntlet



vs.

Maniac Mansion

[DevSop]

Gauntlet fucking rocks. I lovehated that game so much.

[bdbdbd]

MADNESS!

Maniac Mansion was so awesome it spawned a crappy TV show with one of the worst openings ever.



Plus, I mean, come on, Day of the Tentacle.

[Jack Quinn]

I think I played Gauntlet, and never really cared for it. Never played Maniac Mansion that I recall though

[bdbdbd]

Would it help if I told you you could microwave a hamster? It was one of the earliest games with multiple endings? And it had references to S&M in 1987?

That's all a tad more awesome than a game that literally takes your life away with every second and doesn't even have a point, isn't it? I think so. I really do. And I can tell you agree.

[salmonjunkie]

As someone who appreciates business and making money, Gauntlet was genius.

[creepy]

Sept 7, 2008 18:00:07 GMT -5 bdbdbd said:

Would it help if I told you you could microwave a hamster? It was one of the earliest games with multiple endings? And it had references to S&M in 1987?

That's all a tad more awesome than a game that literally takes your life away with every second and doesn't even have a point, isn't it? I think so. I really do. And I can tell you agree.

I don't remember the microwaving a hamster thing in Gauntlet. And Maniac Mansion didn't have a point? Thanks. Now I don't have to seek it out and play it.

[bdbdbd]

I see what you did there.

[Lucky]

I remember hearing never ending praise for Maniac Mansion as a kid and really wanting to play it. But for whatever reason I could never get my hands on it. Which is weird because I was big on the game rentals at the time and blew like all my money on after school trips to the video rental place. But I guess it was always out or something. In fact, I vaguely recall that I had the worst timing in that everytime it would be in I'd have some games out or I'd be unable to rent some.

Then I watched the TV show and lost interest in the game and thus have never played it to this day.

Still, I have no idea what Guantlet is so just reading about Mansion in Nintendo Power and hearing about how awesome it was from friends gave me more joy.

[National Champion Chris Cole]

Mansion was so freaking awesome. I spent hours on that game. I never could figure out how to finish it. If that comes out on the VC I'll be buying it again and hopefully I'll figure it out this time. (Thanks Internet!)

[bdbdbd]

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting on Mansion for the VC. You're much better off getting it in rom form. I do believe, if you have LoZ: Twilight Princess, you can hack the Wii and use a homebrew app and get Maniac Mansion (and some other LucasArts adventure games, not to mention straight up homebrew games) on it.

And I forgot about this, reason number 592 why Maniac Mansion rules, this one in hindsight:

The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System - a multi page essay by Douglas Crockford, the LucasArts programmer in charge of porting the game to the NES about how Nintendo tried to scrub the game clean. It's just a fun read about how weird Nintendo's rules were in the late 80s.

[Lucky]

I really don't see how most of those things are "weird." Really, the writer just seems willfully ignorant. To not recognize the difference Nintendo saw with killing humans vs their common themes of killing fictional creatures. To even suggest that they'd find it weird Nintendo would have problems with a rapist character? To not get why they wouldn't want sexually suggestive language or images in a kid's game? I mean, when you do that sort of stuff there's usually some silliness like "suck" being a problem in the context of "suck out their brains." But God do I hate when people act like they can't understand why people have problems with their suggestive material. Hey, I'm not a prude, but if I'm developing something for someone else I know that I'm going to have to abide by their morals and not mine. And I'm not stupid enough to not realize that they MIGHT not like a story about raping and killing teenagers and may need it changed a little.

I mean, the guy actually spends time wondering WHY Nintendo would have a problem with a story about cannibalism. Seriously? You don't know why Nintendo didn't want to sell a game about cannibalism to kids? You don't know why they'd worry about that coming back on them? Then you are in fact an idiot.

[bdbdbd]

Did you actually read it? There was no killing and there was no cannibalism in the game. There was no rape, an he willfully changed the sexually explicit lines (which were suggestive as she locked the characters in the basement) before they could tell him to.

[Lucky]

Yeah, but he writes like he doesn't even know why they had these problems. I mean, yeah, the cannibalism was a misinterpretation on Nintendo's part. But he then clearly says "Even if it was cannibalism, so what? We said it was bad." Really? You expect a billion dollar corporation to be ok with a kid's product containing cannibalism because the message was that the cannibalism was bad?

Like most of these things where a company is running over standards and practices to try and avoid trouble they're going to go over the top on a few things or take a few innocent things like a mummy poster and see potential bad in it. But c'mon, this is the nature of the beast. Fact is that if Nintendo sees cannibalism and nudity in the game then a bunch of Christian mothers with too much time on their hands will when they spend the money to buy the game for their kids.

But even if we had intended that Dr. Fred was a cannibal, what's the harm? He would have been one under the influence of the evil purple meteor. The game recognizes that it is bad, and your mission is to rescue him from this unhappy state. Who would be offended?

Seriously? "Who would be offended?" You're just an idiot, sir.

And its really just ridiculous how the writer keeps mentioning how Nintendo doesn't mind violence against hamster or koopas or goblins or space invaders but has a problem with violence against teenage humans. Isn't the difference there clear? But he keeps pointing it out like its some sort of clear sign of Nintendo's hypocrisy and stupidity. There are no Koopa Defamation Leagues. What do you want Nintendo to say? But somehow "interpreting the standard" required skills beyond the writer's (his words) because he couldn't understand the difference between violence in Super Mario Brothers and Maniac Mansion (again, his example).

I'm dirty minded guy with a filthy mouth who kind of laughed at the 9/11 opening scene from Postal. But it just annoys me when people get bothered by corporations trying to insulate themselves against all those people out there ready to boycott or protest their product or get them called out in the media. Bottom line is that a company with a lot to lose doesn't put its faith in everyone NOT to overreact to stuff, especially from a game that we all agree was out there for the time which is a large part of the reason it WAS so popular with us kids.

Although I admit, your classification of Nintendo's practices as "weird" served to set a tone for the piece when I read it even though he never calls them weird himself. He does make a number of comments that seem to be sarcastic jabs at a policy he thinks is retarded, but