syntheticgerbil

Honestly, you do look very much like Will Smith.

Ah okay, forgot about the two sets of batteries.

Keep thinking about the Edna angle now that you have the phone repaired. As for the batteries, they may be used up forever. I don't know if they are exactly needed, but I think otherwise you have to pixel hunt in the dark, which is bad design.

I know the feeling Miffy, but from your internet typings over the years, you should know that you are most definitely more competent than any average Joe (or teacher).

I like the Ladykillers remake just so I can keep repeating, "You brought your bitch to the the Waffle Hut?" every time my girlfriend drags me to the Waffle House.

Yeah that part was pretty upsetting. Why Green Tentacle, why?

Haha, wow, I really disliked A Serious Man just because it was so bleak and certain parts confused me. I'd have to see it again. I'm also not a fan of Barton Fink one bit. I think my favorite things by them tend to be their creations after Blood Simple but before O Brother. Hudsucker Proxy is so great. But I watch their output mostly to see people wrestle strange or fun dialect, so it kind of doesn't matter in the end.

I'm gonna cover my eyes for this part if it's okay with you. So horrifying. Also Wave Race 64 gave me the trength to keep enjoying rail shooters.

I honestly was never incredibly interested in this game, but somehow learning that it deals with LGBT issues to some extent has gotten me interested. I mean I already knew of the Riot Grrl connection but have not been paying too much attention otherwise, but this seems even more of something I should not be missing out on.

Bunch of fucking bots in here. Bots killed my brother over in Bottown. Used to think Bottown was a lotta laughs.

Not to be confused with Brynjolfr. I guess. So explain the "identity crisis" part.

More power to you? I liked the identity crisis.

Nooooooo, not allowed! Don't leave.

Mington's games sit on a shelf that is a city for tiny people and tiny cars.

I think Don Jon is a spam bot. I mean, he must be. Please?

Floods scare the hell out of me. I'm glad people are not panicking up there!

Haha, I completed that one on accident, because he was freaking me out and I was trying to escape him in the elevator. I already had the balloons blown up ahead of time just because so I didn't realize I had solved a puzzle. I love that that part has a "safe" area for such a freaky sequence.

I honestly don't think there are any items you can waste and never use again, right guys? Possibly there's some way you can waste something and never get it back but I might be getting it mixed up with Zak McCracken. Definitely getting anyone captured is not going to get you stuck, because I think at some points you have to be captured no matter what. You just have to know how to escape every time. Also isn't there a special ending if you manage to kill Dave at the last minute but then beat the game anyway?

I finished all of those terrible Hugo games with walkthroughs out of boredom as a kid. What a bunch of dumb crap. I can't believe I wasted precious childhood time on those games I hated while I was playing them.

The Monkey Island and Loom ones weren't so amazing as the ones for Full Throttle, Sam and Max, CMI, and Day of the Tentacle outside of the narrated walkthroughs. I actually didn't realize my dad had purchased a Loom hint book the same day as the Secret of Monkey Island one. I had already beaten the game without hints but I guess he didn't know and he was having a hard time. On a fun note, my dad was notorious for pirating a ton of games from his friends at work, so most of my early life was PC gaming and floppy disks with written pen labels. He traveled around repairing systems for this company called Data General (very early laptop makers) who was later eaten in the 90s. They all had a system where someone would buy a game and just copy it for everyone. They would xerox all of the manuals and share them for the copy protection. He never really bought any game unless it was on sale or was something I asked for for Christmas (which always tended to be one LucasArts game). Secret of Monkey Island somehow came with our CD drive very early on. Zak McKracken and Maniac Mansion came on this budget CD with Bill and Ted on PC and some other unrelated game. Sorry, I'm going to be all over this thread with Nostalgia™. Even though I had an NES and even a Genesis later that all the other kids, none of those games had much time spent with them and I could always beat adventures eventually, unlike 90% of my NES games.

Yeah, because, why is there are mummy in the first game? There was one puzzle I could never figure out as a child and it ended up with me begging my dad to buy the hint book from the 1-800 number. He probably could have called the 1-900 number and saved money, but I suppose he wanted the hint book, already having many for Sierra games. After I got my hint, he hid the book and I finished it. He did similar when games started coming with hint books. So I know both Day of the Tentacle and Fate of Atlantis had hint books I never had access to. Curse of Monkey Island had that huge fucking strategy guide though, so I got to keep that. Curse was an easier game though. Anyway, the puzzle was giving the "A head in navigation" leaflet to the Cannibals. I just didn't understand puns. Same here, but the actual manual told me about this puzzle, now that I recall, since it had the "quick walkthrough" thing that explain the first few steps. I guess that makes two hints. Yeah you just have to notice him walking away when you walk outside. I think a lot of this puzzle's brilliance stems from the fact that you can do so many things to piss off the shopkeeper that you just want to try every obnoxious thing you can in his store. I kept bugging him over and over later on about getting credit even though I already had the safe combo written down. But the NES one has cool music! And I think an extra ending or two...? I own it but I have never played this version in full. I mean to one day. I know a lot of people who were nostalgic about adventure games but didn't really have PCs loved Maniac Mansion on NES.

Also, just read this article. I am glad Leigh balanced it with her point of view. I have this conversation with so many people in real life who happened to play one or two adventures in their childhood, one sometimes being a King's Quest (NOT GOOD, AWFUL DESIGN), and then deem the whole genre as a broken mess because apparently all adventures are comprised of cutscenes and doing a bunch of impossible puzzles only the designers could imagine. It's really just not so. I think people miss out of the fun of things like sprawling nonlinear areas with tons of puzzles to reveal, the humor of trying certain impossible or asshole things, and of course the ongoing amusement of messing around with dialogue trees. Boy do I love dialogue tree puzzles by the way. To say a bunch of adventures are just the player trying figure out the designer's moon logic are selling them short. I feel like these people deem puzzles as a chore and just want to get to the next part of story. This doesn't help if someone experienced a completely shit adventure game with tons of bad logic, lack of general character feedback, lack of hints in dialogue, and the uselessness of pixel hunts. Compound those problems with awful story, dialogue, voice acting, art, and music and you easily have a loser. It's a very delicate balance to get an adventure right in my opinion. When I think of my favorite LucasArts adventures, I often try to count how many puzzles I consider illogical or poorly thought out. Grim Fandango has 2-3, Full Throttle has 1, Day of the Tentacle has 1, and Monkey Island 2 has 2. I mean those are my personal counts, but I can't imagine the count varies that much with players. It's really way above par for the course. People pick on Monkey Island 2 because of the infamous monkey wrench, but they don't even stop to think about what a sprawling, organized mess Act 2 is where you can do so many things in any order you like and it's just a tour de force of crafty puzzles. I can only imagine the insane design document for that part. Adventures tend to work poorly when you are trapped in a room, and a lot of bad adventures are a sequence of linear rooms. But that's what people do, they pick out one or two admittedly poor puzzles in a heralded game, or just a terrible game in general (King's Quest! Gah!) and then plug the whole genre for it. I don't think there is any game genre without some aspects of obscure design or has a mass of bad games along with the good ones. It just happens, no one is perfect. Even Gabriel Knight 3 with the famous and awful cat hair puzzle had so many amazing things it did in terms of investigation and research, along with the time system, but that's all it will ever be remembered for (and the trashiest out of date graphics). I hate the adventure game online communities that will play whatever the fuck because they are starving for an adventure game and will call whatever comes out great, but I also hate when non adventure game players just piss on the great ones for minor problems. Rant done. But yeah, on topic, I hope you don't give up after or during playing those first 4, Zeus. If they feel too crappy or difficult, I'd just skip to the later games. Either that or just use a walkthrough every single time you are stuck. Also warning, Zak McCracken and Last Crusade are much easier to put yourself into an unwinnable situation than Maniac Mansion. From Loom and on, there aren't any unwinnable situations. Not sure about Labyrinth.

Do 8, and save games to do the multiple paths! It really is like three games in one. Actually closer to 2 games doing the math in one since it's about 2/3rds of the game that's different every time. Also is anyone against Escape from Monkey Island? I still like that game. I played it again on PS2 a couple of years ago and it was actually even better than I remember. Still ugly as all hell, just as it was the first time. Such awful art direction. At least the animation is good.

I'd definitely skip 1, 3, and 4 and possibly Loom. Zak McCracken is just a mess of bad puzzles, mazes, and situations you can get stuck in. Last Crusade is similar but not near as bad. Unfortunately most of Last Crusade is bogged down by navigating boring mazes and keeping your health up for a billion fist fights. Pretty sure you can get stuck too. There's also an amazingly jerk ass copy protection at the very end of the game, very much within idiotic Sierra style copy protection. Loom, I don't know, I love the game, but it's somewhat boring and the narrative is pretty uneventful. It was made for the purpose of being a trilogy, so it pretty much explains why the game feels gutted in terms of content or storytelling. Very interesting design and interface I completely loved. Hmm, I think the references don't really do anything for the game, outside of the funny references to the hamster in the microwave controversy in the first game. The Edisons just reference some of the events in the first game, but it otherwise works completely alone. Green Tentacle references his band, but he pretty much reexplains his band. Strangest and perhaps the most essential references it makes is to the obscure Maniac Mansion TV show that was incredibly short lived. I have no fucking clue what happened in that show or even what it looked like. I imagine it's a terrible sitcom with a laugh track. I don't think I realized the meta TV show references for Dr. Fred's fortune until it dawned on me a few years ago. Bernard is the only returning playable character, and he might as well not even be the same person. He doesn't speak much about the the original events and may as well not have been involved had you not chosen him in Maniac Mansion. About all he says is, "We must go back to the mansion!" in the intro and acknowledges that Green Tentacle had a band. Really none of this is a major part of the charm of the game and I feel like a lot of the best parts are just derived from colonial humor. The two games are constructed very differently in terms of puzzles as well. Before Day of the Tentacle came out, I had played Maniac Mansion more than a few times NES and PC only to get stuck and lose interest time and time again, no matter how short it is. I tried again in my teens and finished it just for the sake of seeing it all.