The story begins modestly enough in a simple field overlooked by a starry night sky. Suddenly, a meteor pierces the blackness and crashes into the ground outside the Edison family mansion. Cut to Dave, the hero of this story. Dave is an average sort of guy, denim jeans and jacket, with a saucy girlfriend named Sandy Pantz. Dave cares deeply for his girlfriend, and is rather upset when Fred Edison decides to kidnap Sandy and drag her off to his mansion. He and two of his close friends head off to stop Fred's plan and rescue her.

One of the things I was most daunted by when I was a child was the option to choose who you take with you on your adventure. Dave is a required character, but the other two rescuers are completely up to the player. Each character has individual abilities, which initially left me with the fear that I would not be able to complete the game unless I made the right decision from the get go. In retrospect, this was silly, and the game is solvable with any choice I would have made.

The unique abilities are only important for getting specific endings. It is hard not to be impressed with the ingenuity of the developers, especially for the time it was made. I, unfortunately, would only get a relative few of the endings in my youth. The ones I remember the clearest were the space launch and a simple call to the police. I would later get the remaining endings, and those would be the ones that I am most fond of. Interestingly, this was also the only SCUMM game to allow players to actually die. Twists, turns, false clues and even a little bit of carnage was in store for me.

It is unlikely that anyone would not notice the magnitude of things that don't affect the story: the infamous chainsaw with no gas, the broken stairs that can never be repaired, the presence of the dead Edison, and there is even a plant (who would later become somewhat of a mascot for Lucasfilm Games) named Chuck. All of these thoroughly detailed items serve only to frustrate players. The chainsaw of course does have gas, but not on this planet. A poster in a bedroom states that there is a can of gas on Mars in Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. This would eventually become the next videogame to use the Maniac Mansion game engine, and it does, in fact, contain a can of gas which is "only for use with chainsaws”.

Maniac Mansion serves as the origin for a lengthy series of SCUMM-based, adventure games. SCUMM serves as an acronym for "Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion", and the system allowed the developers at Lucasfilm Games to quickly port titles to other systems. The first revision of Maniac Mansion was for the Commodore 64, given the highly cursor driven interface. The game would eventually be ported to the Famicom, and subsequently the NES, by Jaleco, who was also busy bringing MacVenture titles to the NES. The two versions are almost entirely different. The Famicom edition of Maniac Mansion was the first to be published, and the graphics are notably "Asian": Big, super deformed heads, characters talking with wildly flapping mouths, and graphics which are mostly plain. It also bears mentioning that the game has an insanely long password system which is 104 characters in length. The US audience would never see anything resembling the Japanese version. The entire interface and graphics would be reworked, the password system was removed and smooth scrolling backgrounds were implemented. While the improvements to the interface and graphics were wonderful, Nintendo of America and Europe, at the time, had a rather strict policy on what game content was permitted within their releases.

"Family Friendly" was the theme Nintendo preferred to stick with. They inflexibly enforced a policy that all games released for the NES must be clean and inoffensive. Any reference to religion, sex, violence or adult language had to be removed from any game submitted for approval. Maniac Mansion was by no means an adult game, and
featured violence that was generally tongue-in-cheek. Things such as "brains sucked out" were reworded to "brains removed". An artist's depiction of Michelangelo's 'Dawn' was completely removed because of partial nudity. My favorite removal was that of the scribbling stating "For a good time EDNA 3444" being simplified "Call Edna 3444". The reference to SCUMM in the ending credits was even to be removed. There would be a considerable amount of sanitization to the game, much more than even I have mentioned. Ironically, the most potentially offensive detail would be overlooked by Nintendo's censors. Users playing as Razor or Sid would still be able to steal Ed Edison's beloved pet hamster and microwave it, and the ethical choice of returning the hamster would result in immediate death and the loss of a character. Players of the sequel will notice that this event eventually became canon, perhaps due in part to Nintendo's overreaction. Having discovered the oversight, Nintendo demanded the ability to microwave the hamster be removed. The game never received a second printing, though the scene would be removed for the European release.

After all was said and done, the game was cleaned, polished and turned into a (mostly) family friendly experience. I probably would have never noticed the sanitization of this game had an essay on the alteration not been published by one of the developers. I think that ultimately the lack of anything offensive enhanced the hamster scene to somewhat of a signature element. Everyone who has played Maniac Mansion for the NES has wanted to microwave that hamster and give it back to Ed. I still believe that the silly humor evident through this title is what really makes this game memorable. While I can not condone piracy, those of you that have not played can of course download the free version of the game. Maniac Mansion Deluxe (which I discovered only recently) is a fan remake of the title, and is available for free at the link below.

Maniac Mansion Deluxe

Now, there is no reason for anyone to say that they have not played this wonderful title.