Zeusthecat

The Big LucasArts Playthrough

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Day of the Tentacle is the one I played the most as a kid. I think it's probably peak sociopathic protagonist for LucasArts adventure games.

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Holy shit, I've never seen that. I always thought that Sam and Max scene added to the CD version was complete ass, but the rest of his reel is full of awesome scenes. Looks like everything he animated for The Dig didn't make the cut.

 

I wonder if the depicted animations are from the Moriarty version?  Several of the backgrounds from that iteration survived the shipped product.

 

Also, are you saying that the Raiders spoof in Sam & Max Hit the Road was CD-exclusive?  I never knew that.  I also thought it was great.  Nothing about your statement makes sense to me!

 

To anyone interested in anecdotes from the artists on Fate of Atlantis, we were provided with some by Bill Eaken and Anson Jew on Mojo several years back for our big retrospective feature.  Jew clears up some misconceptions about his supposed "Art Deco" style clashing with the more realistic backgrounds in the doomed Iron Phoenix project.  Basically, the jarring contrast was brought on by unreasonable tech limitations imposed upon him rather than a deliberate stylistic choice on his part.

 

 

Awwww hells yeah! Wife and kid are away this weekend so I'll play some Day of the Tentacle along with you. One of my absolute favorites. Hope you're not disappointed after all the hype.

 

DOTT lives up to its reputation.  The only qualifier I'd hang on it for someone coming off of Maniac Mansion is that it is in no way faithful to the tone of the original game, instead opting for a Saturday morning cartoon vibe and taking a meta approach to its predecessor (Maniac Mansion is a video game in the universe of DOTT).  It's a pretty unique sequel in that sense.

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Also, are you saying that the Raiders spoof in Sam & Max Hit the Road was CD-exclusive?  I never knew that.  I also thought it was great.  Nothing about your statement makes sense to me!

Yus. I actually can't confirm it's on the CD version only having only ever played that version, but I feel like I've read multiple times that it was. Maybe someone who experienced the floppy version knows better? I can't seem to turn up anything on a Google search.

 

Basically my problem with that scene is not that it's animated that terribly, the foam darts going in to Sam's head are particularly good bits of animation, but that the characters are way too off model and the timing is a bit strange and slow.  Also when Max's hands go up to his face, they look disembodied and not a part of his body. And the background is mostly just a solid gaudy orange. Just always struck me as somewhat cheap even though there is a lot of frame by frame animation going on there, taking up precious megabytes.

 

My guess is since Mobygames does not list a credit for Anson Jew for anything on Sam and Max Hit the Road, he may have done this scene as something on the side near the end of the game and therefore was not experienced enough with the characters to match a lot of the other solid and well constructed close ups in game. It definitely feels like something done by someone outside the main production pipeline. This is assuming if the scene was only released on the CD version since it could spare the extra space.

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Yus. I actually can't confirm it's on the CD version only having only ever played that version, but I feel like I've read multiple times that it was. Maybe someone who experienced the floppy version knows better? I can't seem to turn up anything on a Google search.

The Raiders spoof puzzle was definitely on the floppy disk version, as that's the one I had. Looking at that video though, I didn't recognise the scene; either my memory is failing me, or the animated close-up was only on the CD version. I think the floppy disk version only showed the cut scene from the normal room perspective.

 

 

I threw out my last computer with a floppy drive less than a year ago. Now I can't check!

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Yus. I actually can't confirm it's on the CD version only having only ever played that version, but I feel like I've read multiple times that it was. Maybe someone who experienced the floppy version knows better? I can't seem to turn up anything on a Google search.

 

Basically my problem with that scene is not that it's animated that terribly, the foam darts going in to Sam's head are particularly good bits of animation, but that the characters are way too off model and the timing is a bit strange and slow.  Also when Max's hands go up to his face, they look disembodied and not a part of his body. And the background is mostly just a solid gaudy orange. Just always struck me as somewhat cheap even though there is a lot of frame by frame animation going on there, taking up precious megabytes.

 

 

The Raiders spoof puzzle was definitely on the floppy disk version, as that's the one I had. Looking at that video though, I didn't recognise the scene; either my memory is failing me, or the animated close-up was only on the CD version. I think the floppy disk version only showed the cut scene from the normal room perspective.

 

Yep, this is all correct. It was only the CD-version and it looked horrible, especially compared to the other close-ups in the game. I guess it's because it's a different kind of animation - rather than drawing a single picture then just animating the mouth or whatever, the Raiders one is fully animated and therefore doesn't achieve the same quality of colouring, shading etc.

 

Hey, look! If you go to Anson Jew's own posting of his video, you get my comment from years ago saying the exact same thing!

 

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Hah, wow Ben, kind of gutsy you said that on his video. I'm really curious now why this individual scene was made and Anson Jew is not credited on Hit the Road. He should respond to you comment, even if it was four years ago.

 

Also on a similar note, if I recall correctly I read an interview where Steve Purcell's nearly full screen animation in Monkey Island 2 of Rapp Scallion being resurrected from ash took up nearly one whole disk. Luckily it was brilliant enough that it had to stay since that is one of my most favorite pieces of animation ever. Too bad the HD crew decided they needed to cut half of the frames of that animation so that they didn't have to redraw as many.

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I am just about to start

 

Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle

 

and I am giddy with anticipation. This game might just blow my mind.

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Wonderful follow up.

 

So I just got to the point where the other two kids got sent back in time. I just have to say, god damn this game is not anything near what I expected. It definitely comes off as a bit of a drug induced fever dream. And I mean that in the best way possible. The things that Bernard says when you 'Look At' things are just too fucking perfect. Him saying "1952" when you look at the dime is also the best.

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Welp. I'm playing DOTT again. Gonna start it up tomorrow.

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That happens to me every time I stare at "string" for a while. There are others that have bothered me in the past, but that's the one I always remember.

 

Also goddamn I can hear the exact inflections of Green and Purple Tentacle as I read those lines. FUCK I love DOTT. On the one hand, I'm sad Disney will probably never, ever let it out of the LucasArts vault they now own. On the other hand, it's probably for the best. My memories of that game are way too good to let New Games tarnish them.

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Hah, wow Ben, kind of gutsy you said that on his video. I'm really curious now why this individual scene was made and Anson Jew is not credited on Hit the Road. He should respond to you comment, even if it was four years ago.

 

Also on a similar note, if I recall correctly I read an interview where Steve Purcell's nearly full screen animation in Monkey Island 2 of Rapp Scallion being resurrected from ash took up nearly one whole disk. Luckily it was brilliant enough that it had to stay since that is one of my most favorite pieces of animation ever. Too bad the HD crew decided they needed to cut half of the frames of that animation so that they didn't have to redraw as many.

 

Not that gutsy! Besides, I couched it in high praise in hopes of not coming across as a typical YouTube arsehole. I don't think there's much for him to respond to, really.

 

I think I heard somewhere that the Rapp Scallion animation took up as much memory as the entirety of the first Monkey Island. Maybe that's what you're thinking of?

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So this game is really good. The dialog options when talking to the founding fathers are some of the best I've seen in a game. 

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I started Day of the Tentacle as well.  Then I finished it a few hours later.  Still really good.  DotT was one of the few games I played without voices, so I kept it off this time as well since the voices are still weird to me.  And man, I really love the music in the past.

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I think I heard somewhere that the Rapp Scallion animation took up as much memory as the entirety of the first Monkey Island. Maybe that's what you're thinking of?

Possibly. If so that's still pretty hilarious.

 

So this game is really good. The dialog options when talking to the founding fathers are some of the best I've seen in a game. 

This is my favorite portayal of George Washington. He's so in to himself here. And just hearing each founding father bicker about the other just cracked me up by the time I was taking more in depth history classes in middle school and high school, imagining all of them motivated by these stupid personality quirks.

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Man I am absolutely in love with this Hoagie guy. I just spent five minutes talking to Betsy Ross and his flag suggestions were hilarious. I think my favorite was when he recommended a demon head with red, white and blue flames.

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The Hoagie parts are probably my favorite as well.  The past sections are so much more interesting and amusing.  The future is very restrictive even after you're able to walk around freely and the present just isn't as interesting.  And of course being in the past, Hoagie has the most potential to impact the other eras, so it's just a lot more fun.

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After making some decent progress on this game last weekend, my first impressions are that it is really fucking awesome. For some reason it reminds me of watching Animaniacs as a kid. The writing and voice acting are amazing and this might be my favorite game yet. Since there are so many different rooms and spaces for each character (as opposed to the more distinct and closed off areas in FOA), I'm not going to attempt to go into great detail on every step that I took. Instead I think I'll just mention all of the awesome shit I'm seeing in this game and some of the more interesting puzzle stuff.

 

This game had me right from the start. From the choking bird at the very beginning to the dialog between the tentacles it is just oozing with personality (and ooze). From what I had heard previously I didn't expect this game to have much to do with Maniac Mansion but I immediately started noticing the references. I love that Bernard is the main character, that he is friends with the two tentacles, and that the two tentacles more or less have the personality I would expect them to have based on their representation in Maniac Mansion. And the hamster coming to tell Bernard about the tentacles was pretty awesome too. I'm definitely glad I played Maniac Mansion first because I think it adds a lot to the experience. And goddamn, the voicework is so good. I would have gone apeshit over this game if I had played it as a kid. The comparison made to Saturday morning cartoons earlier was definitely apt.

 

Once the intro credits finished rolling I finally gained control of Bernard and made my way down to the lab through the secret clock entrance. After Bernard freed the tentacles, purple went off to take over the world and I had to try to stop him by using a time travelling toilet. This left Bernard, Hoagie, and Laverne stranded in different eras with no way to get back. Once I gained control of Hoagie, I found that he had ended up in colonial times near an inn (i.e. the historical version of the mansion) that was run by Red Edison. After receiving battery blueprints that Dr. Fred flushed through the time toilet I headed into the inn to locate Red and do some exploring.

 

After heading inside, I found that the founding fathers were staying at that same inn. I spent quite a bit of time talking to each of them and in the process found out that Hoagie might be one of my favorite video game characters ever. The way the founding fathers are portrayed and the way Hoagie talks to them is pretty damn clever and funny. That Betsy Ross conversation was probably my favorite one and Hoagie's recommendations for the flag were awesome. I think I went through that loop enough times to see every one of Hoagie's ideas and holy shit that must have taken a lot of time to come up with that many. I also talked to an asshole horse. And did Jake Rodkin do the voice for Ben Franklin? I almost expected him to start talking about puffins at one point.

 

As far as puzzles go, I gave the battery blueprints to Red and obtained a number of items as I was exploring the area. At one point I was talking to George Washington about cutting down a cherry tree (which he refused to do since there were no cherry trees) and realized that I had red paint and a kumquat tree. So in typical cartoon fashion I ran out and painted the kumquats red to trick him into cutting the tree down which ended up freeing Laverne in the future. I also ended up finding a bucket (which I filled with water) and a brush and tried to clean the carriage but saw that I needed to obtain soap. Then I messed around with the cat in the upstairs bedroom for a little while but was never able to get it to leave the toy mouse alone long enough for me to grab it. Shortly after this I switched back to Bernard. I think by this point I had given two of the battery components to Red.

 

Because I had played Maniac Mansion, I found the present time period to also be pretty entertaining. My favorite part was talking to Ed (I think that was his name?) about his stamp collection and hearing his vague recollections of what had happened to his hamster five years earlier (I'm glad that outcome became canon). I really liked seeing the 'normal' side of the Edison's in this game since they were possessed in MM. I also got a kick out of the depressed novelty item guy trying to kill himself with a fake gun and seeing how gullible Bernard was when talking to the car thief. The present time period overall isn't quite as interesting as the past but I'm still really enjoying it.

 

I didn't end up making too much progress with Bernard since I was mostly exploring and talking to people but I did figure out a few things. First, I was able to switch out Dr. Fred's coffee with decaf to get him to open the safe. However, he kept shutting the door too quickly so I still need to figure out how to get the contract out of there. I also found that I could use my dime on the vibrating bed but it looks like I need another one to completely free the item stuck under the sleeping dude. I tried blasting green tentacle's music to shake the dime loose that is stuck to the floor in the lobby but didn't have any luck. I think that is about where I stopped playing.

 

I like this game. A lot.

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I don't know if they went over this yet, but Dr. Fred's fortune comes from the TV show of Maniac Mansion, which I guess they were paid some sum for their likenesses. It's pretty amazing to me that such a meta reference is canon to the actual game. I have never seen this sitcom though. I imagine it's terrible.

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