~Fun with Day of the Tentacle - Let's Get Crackin!
ALRIGHT I said I'd do this fer like a few weeks now so NOW WE'RE DOIN IT. HURRAY.
Why did I choose Day of the Tentacle instead of another Sierra game? Well, fer one thing I DO wanna branch out and show ya guys lots of various old DOS games by various companies, and DOTT fits right in that.
Second, I mentioned before that I was copying old CDs to my harddrive and my DOTT CD refused ta copy. SO I downloaded a huge LucasArts game torrent (by the way I totally recommend downloading that, it's a fantastic torrent, it has everything you could want from these games) so I could play it again. Once it finished, I gave it a runthrough ta make sure it worked and all at once a ton of memories all came flooding back. I enjoyed playing through the game so much that I decided that I should definitely do this one. It was one of the games I was obsessed with on par with Star Control 2. While Starcon2 holds the key to my heart, DOTT definitely holds a copy of that key.
It amuses me that Sierra Quest games, Starcon2, and DOTT are some of the games that I hold really close to my heart and they're all so different.
Anyway, I'll try to keep my mushy rambling about this game a little short. Day of the Tentacle is the sequel to Maniac Mansion, a very old Commodore 64 game that was also ported to the NES and various operating systems back in the day. I never beat Maniac Mansion myself (I got close tho, but I never went all the way *badumching*) but you really don't have to to understand DOTT. My fragmented memories of Maniac Mansion were enough to let me understand the characters in DOTT.
I'm not sure what it was exactly about DOTT that captured me so intensely. The animation in DOTT is completely stunning. It's smooth and cartoony and really, it's beautiful. I, like I do with most of these games, really recommend you play the game yourself. There are so many small animations and details that get lots in these. The animation in DOTT in particular is so well-done, it's a shame that I can't show you more of it more easily.
But anyway, I loved the characters, the music, the plot, how goofy everything was. I just really deeply loved this game. I played it over and over. I memorized how characters did their lines. To this day I can still imitate them all.
Anyway, playing through this game again just brought up all these happy, fuzzy memories. SO HERE WE ARE.
As usual, first, some history! Maniac Mansion was made by an entirely different company than any other game we've done so far. What company? Why, LucasArts of course!
That's right, LucasArts used to make Adventure Games. Not only that, they made some good adventure games. LucasArts games make it easily on to my list of top games to play. It's a shame they stopped, because they were good stuff. I weep for the lost Sam & Max sequel.
Anyway, LucasArts games are notably different than most Sierra games, and this is mostly because of their engine and their philosophy behind it.
Maniac Mansion first came out in 1987 and it ran on a script called SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion). I'll explain more on how this system works when we get into DOTT, but it's vastly different than how Sierra does their games. Maniac Mansion, for one, supported a mouse among other things.
The thing about LucasArts games (at least, the ones that I've played) is that most of the time, they are very non-lethal puzzles. There's a bit in the DOTT instruction book which basically sums up why...it went something like "We don't think that a player should be punished everytime they make a mistake or click something they aren't supposed to. Therefore, feel free to experiment without the threat of death hanging over your head!"
I liked this a lot because while I DO love Sierra games madly with a deep passion, man can dying get old REAL fast. I liked being able to goof around and do random stuff without saving constantly. Maniac Mansion wasn't forgiving, but DOTT, Monkey Island, and Sam & Max Hit The Road (unrelated, but does anyone know where I can pick up a copy of the Sam & Max comics anywhere? I used to have the compendium but I sadly lost it, and I'd love ta read em again) both were kind in this department. It's refreshing! Maybe you weren't entirely safe, but most of the time you wouldn't die for making a mistake.
Problem arose later when the SCUMM system (which was later used as the foundation for almost all of LucasArts adventure games) wasn't exactly compatible with newer systems. Leave it to the fans to make a work-around...you can now use ScummVM to run old LucasArts games, but I've found that thankfully, DOSbox works just fine. It actually runs with almost no problem in DOSbox at all, which is great. I frigging love DOSbox.
Anyway, I think that might be enough history now. If you want to read more about Maniac Mansion so you can get a good idea of what we're getting into, you can read about it here. I'd recommend browsing through it just for the heck of it, but most of Day of the Tentacle is pretty self-contained.
Day of the Tentacle is entirely done through speech (and done very well, I might add) but for the sake of the screencap adventure, I turned off speech and sound so you can see the text. I don't recommend doing that because the sound and speech in this game are great. Seriously.
And for a limited (?) time only, you can download Day of the Tentacle complete with speech here on filefactory. You may hafta jump through some hoops for it, but it's so, so worth it. Seriously. Download it and enjoy.
Previous Screencap Adventures
So let's get this party started!
Here's the music for the intro sequence.
Ah, the old LucasArts logo.
Here you can get a good feel for the style. All the lines and angles in this game are loopy, which is part of why I love it so much. It's all so stylized.
GOOFY BIRD AHOY
I'm sure you have an idea of where this is going, right?
HURRAY TOXIC WASTE
Green and Purple! When a tentacle moves, they make this great shhhluck sound.
Purple has this deep, evil voice. It's great.
Green has this kind of surfer dude voice. It's cute. I always liked Green.
I still occasionally bust out an imitation of how Purple says this.
I didn't really capture it here but you can imagine Purple thrashing around and being silly.
GASP
DUN DUN DUUUUUUN lightning flash
MEANWHILE
THERE'S LAVERNE I love Laverne. More on her in a bit.
THERE'S HOAGIE I love Hoagie as well.
Those who played Maniac Mansion know the hamster well.
Laverne is rather bizarre. She's not like a total psycho or anything, but she just seems a little unhinged. You'll see more of what I mean later. She's an overworked med student if I recall. Her voice is kind of hard to describe...it's kind of like...floaty. Kind of like how I'd imagine Luna Lovegood's voice actually.
Hoagie is yer typical non-too-bright roadie. He's got a kind of accent...I can't think of exactly where it's from...maybe Californian. But I'm pretty sure that you can imagine what he sounds like from how he looks. Hehehe.
BERNARD YAAAY darn it. Imagine the most nerdy voice ever and VOILA BERNARD. And yet, it's not annoying at all. Bernard Bernoulli is just a great big nerdy doofus. He was in the original Maniac Mansion too. His walk is hilarious.
Darn it I can still hear them saying this in my head aaaa
Their reactions are beautifully timed with the speech. Shh.
DRAMATIC FANFARE
WOOOOO this title sequence is great.
These sequence is lots of fun to watch. The animation like I said is really smooth. I dunno if it really comes across here.
Pwiiiing
WATCH OUT FOR THE BARN
BAM into a tree
Cow: Pfff screw this.
NURSE EDNA IS WATCHING YOU
Alright, now we're talking!
You giant nerd, Bernard.
WHERE INDEED
Alright, here we go! I didn't think this would be so darkly colored so this might be a bit hard to see, but this is how a SCUMM game tends to work. On the bottom of the screen there's a list of verbs. You can see Look At there. There's also Push, Pull, Open, Close, Pick Up, Give, that kind of thing. What you do is mouse over a part of the screen (here, I'm mousing over Chuck the Plant) and see if you can do something with it. If you can, it'll show the name of the object. Then you click the verb you want to use (let's say, Look At here) and click on Chuck. Then you look at Chuck! Simple stuff. This can be tricky to get used to, but once you get the hang of it it's very intuitive. In DOTT, most objects have a "default" verb attached to them. Fer most it's Look At, but fer doors and the like it's Open. Fer people it's Talk To. In that case, you just right click and it'll automatically do that action for you.
I didn't know this game was at 320x200. Maybe DOSbox is messing with me.
Look at Flier! Simple stuff.
Even tho it has Look At highlighted, you can see the sentence I constructed above it, "Pick Up Flier"
You can make fairly long sentences, like "Use brush with soapy water on carriage" or something like that. It depends on what ya hafta do.
Might as well pick up this stuff while I'm here.
Most of the challenges in these games come from missing small details. I know I got stuck on the first Monkey Island fer a LONG time because of that. You can miss this drawer pretty easy if yer not paying attention.
YEAH WHITE OUT FLUID YEAAAH
Bernard, Laverne, or Hoagie will comment on most of the things they see. I didn't do too much of that here, but if you download it and play it yerself feel free ta experiment with it. Fun stuff.
Can you make out the Vader on the Calendar?
NURSE EDNA IS WATCHING YOU
HMM.
Yeah, let's crack this sucker open.
Change of music! Tadaaah.
Smooth, Bernard.
MEANWHILE, UPSTAIRS
Hoagie says this like, "Upstaars" hehe
WATCH OUT LAVERNE
Dr. Fred! I love Dr. Fred. He's constantly wringing his hands and he has this great angry mad scientist voice. Dr. Fred's voice is perfect in my opinion.
For those who didn't skim the Maniac Mansion thing, Dr. Fred was possessed by a space meteor in that game that made him do crazy stuff, including kidnapping some doofus named Dave's girlfriend Sandy, prompting him and two friends to go after her. Bernard was one of the potential people you could bring along. NOW YOU KNOW.
Would you want a tentacle as a pet? I'd like having Green around.
Here, Fred's started his handwringing thing.
OH NO
Bernard says this in this great way. Hee hee.
WE'LL SOON FIND OUT
This always made me laugh because it says Click, but the sound effect for it was the sound of someone getting punched in the face. BAM.
A bit underwhelming? NONSENSE.
An appropriate reaction.
I love the Sludge-o-Matic machine because it's only purpose is to dump toxic waste into the river. For some reason I find that hilarious. One function - POLLUTE.
NOW THINGS ARE REALLY STARTING TO PICK UP
Laverne sounds so annoyed when she says this. Hee hee. I'll hafta see if I can rip some voice clips fer ya guys later.
:D
zap zap
This sequence is also really fun to watch.
Familiar swirls!
I love Bernard's face.
Hee hee.
I didn't get this for a while until I was doing my impression of this line fer Mom and she was like "Hahaha, that's great." and explained it a bit more.
Einstein was a swirl.
Nurse Edna looks a little psycho back there.
HI PURPLE
This line amuses me way too much.
Aaaaand
HI HOAGIE
Dr. Fred ignores him. Hehehe.
I knooow wheeere
I love how Dr. Fred says this. Hee hee.
AND SO OUR TIME-TRAVELING ADVENTURE BEGINS.
Next up, getting those plans to Hoagie!
Why did I choose Day of the Tentacle instead of another Sierra game? Well, fer one thing I DO wanna branch out and show ya guys lots of various old DOS games by various companies, and DOTT fits right in that.
Second, I mentioned before that I was copying old CDs to my harddrive and my DOTT CD refused ta copy. SO I downloaded a huge LucasArts game torrent (by the way I totally recommend downloading that, it's a fantastic torrent, it has everything you could want from these games) so I could play it again. Once it finished, I gave it a runthrough ta make sure it worked and all at once a ton of memories all came flooding back. I enjoyed playing through the game so much that I decided that I should definitely do this one. It was one of the games I was obsessed with on par with Star Control 2. While Starcon2 holds the key to my heart, DOTT definitely holds a copy of that key.
It amuses me that Sierra Quest games, Starcon2, and DOTT are some of the games that I hold really close to my heart and they're all so different.
Anyway, I'll try to keep my mushy rambling about this game a little short. Day of the Tentacle is the sequel to Maniac Mansion, a very old Commodore 64 game that was also ported to the NES and various operating systems back in the day. I never beat Maniac Mansion myself (I got close tho, but I never went all the way *badumching*) but you really don't have to to understand DOTT. My fragmented memories of Maniac Mansion were enough to let me understand the characters in DOTT.
I'm not sure what it was exactly about DOTT that captured me so intensely. The animation in DOTT is completely stunning. It's smooth and cartoony and really, it's beautiful. I, like I do with most of these games, really recommend you play the game yourself. There are so many small animations and details that get lots in these. The animation in DOTT in particular is so well-done, it's a shame that I can't show you more of it more easily.
But anyway, I loved the characters, the music, the plot, how goofy everything was. I just really deeply loved this game. I played it over and over. I memorized how characters did their lines. To this day I can still imitate them all.
Anyway, playing through this game again just brought up all these happy, fuzzy memories. SO HERE WE ARE.
As usual, first, some history! Maniac Mansion was made by an entirely different company than any other game we've done so far. What company? Why, LucasArts of course!
That's right, LucasArts used to make Adventure Games. Not only that, they made some good adventure games. LucasArts games make it easily on to my list of top games to play. It's a shame they stopped, because they were good stuff. I weep for the lost Sam & Max sequel.
Anyway, LucasArts games are notably different than most Sierra games, and this is mostly because of their engine and their philosophy behind it.
Maniac Mansion first came out in 1987 and it ran on a script called SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion). I'll explain more on how this system works when we get into DOTT, but it's vastly different than how Sierra does their games. Maniac Mansion, for one, supported a mouse among other things.
The thing about LucasArts games (at least, the ones that I've played) is that most of the time, they are very non-lethal puzzles. There's a bit in the DOTT instruction book which basically sums up why...it went something like "We don't think that a player should be punished everytime they make a mistake or click something they aren't supposed to. Therefore, feel free to experiment without the threat of death hanging over your head!"
I liked this a lot because while I DO love Sierra games madly with a deep passion, man can dying get old REAL fast. I liked being able to goof around and do random stuff without saving constantly. Maniac Mansion wasn't forgiving, but DOTT, Monkey Island, and Sam & Max Hit The Road (unrelated, but does anyone know where I can pick up a copy of the Sam & Max comics anywhere? I used to have the compendium but I sadly lost it, and I'd love ta read em again) both were kind in this department. It's refreshing! Maybe you weren't entirely safe, but most of the time you wouldn't die for making a mistake.
Problem arose later when the SCUMM system (which was later used as the foundation for almost all of LucasArts adventure games) wasn't exactly compatible with newer systems. Leave it to the fans to make a work-around...you can now use ScummVM to run old LucasArts games, but I've found that thankfully, DOSbox works just fine. It actually runs with almost no problem in DOSbox at all, which is great. I frigging love DOSbox.
Anyway, I think that might be enough history now. If you want to read more about Maniac Mansion so you can get a good idea of what we're getting into, you can read about it here. I'd recommend browsing through it just for the heck of it, but most of Day of the Tentacle is pretty self-contained.
Day of the Tentacle is entirely done through speech (and done very well, I might add) but for the sake of the screencap adventure, I turned off speech and sound so you can see the text. I don't recommend doing that because the sound and speech in this game are great. Seriously.
And for a limited (?) time only, you can download Day of the Tentacle complete with speech here on filefactory. You may hafta jump through some hoops for it, but it's so, so worth it. Seriously. Download it and enjoy.
Previous Screencap Adventures
So let's get this party started!
Here's the music for the intro sequence.
Ah, the old LucasArts logo.
Here you can get a good feel for the style. All the lines and angles in this game are loopy, which is part of why I love it so much. It's all so stylized.
GOOFY BIRD AHOY
I'm sure you have an idea of where this is going, right?
HURRAY TOXIC WASTE
Green and Purple! When a tentacle moves, they make this great shhhluck sound.
Purple has this deep, evil voice. It's great.
Green has this kind of surfer dude voice. It's cute. I always liked Green.
I still occasionally bust out an imitation of how Purple says this.
I didn't really capture it here but you can imagine Purple thrashing around and being silly.
GASP
DUN DUN DUUUUUUN lightning flash
MEANWHILE
THERE'S LAVERNE I love Laverne. More on her in a bit.
THERE'S HOAGIE I love Hoagie as well.
Those who played Maniac Mansion know the hamster well.
Laverne is rather bizarre. She's not like a total psycho or anything, but she just seems a little unhinged. You'll see more of what I mean later. She's an overworked med student if I recall. Her voice is kind of hard to describe...it's kind of like...floaty. Kind of like how I'd imagine Luna Lovegood's voice actually.
Hoagie is yer typical non-too-bright roadie. He's got a kind of accent...I can't think of exactly where it's from...maybe Californian. But I'm pretty sure that you can imagine what he sounds like from how he looks. Hehehe.
BERNARD YAAAY darn it. Imagine the most nerdy voice ever and VOILA BERNARD. And yet, it's not annoying at all. Bernard Bernoulli is just a great big nerdy doofus. He was in the original Maniac Mansion too. His walk is hilarious.
Darn it I can still hear them saying this in my head aaaa
Their reactions are beautifully timed with the speech. Shh.
DRAMATIC FANFARE
WOOOOO this title sequence is great.
These sequence is lots of fun to watch. The animation like I said is really smooth. I dunno if it really comes across here.
Pwiiiing
WATCH OUT FOR THE BARN
BAM into a tree
Cow: Pfff screw this.
NURSE EDNA IS WATCHING YOU
Alright, now we're talking!
You giant nerd, Bernard.
WHERE INDEED
Alright, here we go! I didn't think this would be so darkly colored so this might be a bit hard to see, but this is how a SCUMM game tends to work. On the bottom of the screen there's a list of verbs. You can see Look At there. There's also Push, Pull, Open, Close, Pick Up, Give, that kind of thing. What you do is mouse over a part of the screen (here, I'm mousing over Chuck the Plant) and see if you can do something with it. If you can, it'll show the name of the object. Then you click the verb you want to use (let's say, Look At here) and click on Chuck. Then you look at Chuck! Simple stuff. This can be tricky to get used to, but once you get the hang of it it's very intuitive. In DOTT, most objects have a "default" verb attached to them. Fer most it's Look At, but fer doors and the like it's Open. Fer people it's Talk To. In that case, you just right click and it'll automatically do that action for you.
I didn't know this game was at 320x200. Maybe DOSbox is messing with me.
Look at Flier! Simple stuff.
Even tho it has Look At highlighted, you can see the sentence I constructed above it, "Pick Up Flier"
You can make fairly long sentences, like "Use brush with soapy water on carriage" or something like that. It depends on what ya hafta do.
Might as well pick up this stuff while I'm here.
Most of the challenges in these games come from missing small details. I know I got stuck on the first Monkey Island fer a LONG time because of that. You can miss this drawer pretty easy if yer not paying attention.
YEAH WHITE OUT FLUID YEAAAH
Bernard, Laverne, or Hoagie will comment on most of the things they see. I didn't do too much of that here, but if you download it and play it yerself feel free ta experiment with it. Fun stuff.
Can you make out the Vader on the Calendar?
NURSE EDNA IS WATCHING YOU
HMM.
Yeah, let's crack this sucker open.
Change of music! Tadaaah.
Smooth, Bernard.
MEANWHILE, UPSTAIRS
Hoagie says this like, "Upstaars" hehe
WATCH OUT LAVERNE
Dr. Fred! I love Dr. Fred. He's constantly wringing his hands and he has this great angry mad scientist voice. Dr. Fred's voice is perfect in my opinion.
For those who didn't skim the Maniac Mansion thing, Dr. Fred was possessed by a space meteor in that game that made him do crazy stuff, including kidnapping some doofus named Dave's girlfriend Sandy, prompting him and two friends to go after her. Bernard was one of the potential people you could bring along. NOW YOU KNOW.
Would you want a tentacle as a pet? I'd like having Green around.
Here, Fred's started his handwringing thing.
OH NO
Bernard says this in this great way. Hee hee.
WE'LL SOON FIND OUT
This always made me laugh because it says Click, but the sound effect for it was the sound of someone getting punched in the face. BAM.
A bit underwhelming? NONSENSE.
An appropriate reaction.
I love the Sludge-o-Matic machine because it's only purpose is to dump toxic waste into the river. For some reason I find that hilarious. One function - POLLUTE.
NOW THINGS ARE REALLY STARTING TO PICK UP
Laverne sounds so annoyed when she says this. Hee hee. I'll hafta see if I can rip some voice clips fer ya guys later.
:D
zap zap
This sequence is also really fun to watch.
Familiar swirls!
I love Bernard's face.
Hee hee.
I didn't get this for a while until I was doing my impression of this line fer Mom and she was like "Hahaha, that's great." and explained it a bit more.
Einstein was a swirl.
Nurse Edna looks a little psycho back there.
HI PURPLE
This line amuses me way too much.
Aaaaand
HI HOAGIE
Dr. Fred ignores him. Hehehe.
I knooow wheeere
I love how Dr. Fred says this. Hee hee.
AND SO OUR TIME-TRAVELING ADVENTURE BEGINS.
Next up, getting those plans to Hoagie!