After a meteor hidden underneath their home takes over the minds of Dr. Fred and his wife Edna, Dr. Fred kidnaps Sandy, a high school student with terrible fashion sense, for a heinous experiment. Nobody is sure what his plans were, but Dave, her boyfriend, doesn’t plan to find out. With the help of his friends, a mix of people so diverse that they would only ever speak to each other on a special episode of an ‘80s sitcom, they break into Dr. Fred’s home.

While this may sound like the plot of a B-movie I would probably enjoy, it is actually a 1987 Lucas Arts point-and-click video game. Maniac Mansion takes the basic model of role-playing games and drops it into the horror genre unlike most horror plots—in this case nobody, including the hamster who apparently lives through being cooking in a microwave, is murdered.

Although there are 7 playable characters in all, only 3 can be used for any playing of the game, and one of these is always Dave, a character with no actual skills to help players in the game, but is always required for the sheer fact that Sandy is his girlfriend. Based on Sandy’s lackluster response at the end of the game, he could have probably stayed home. The other characters—Syd (a new wave musician), Michael (a photographer), Wendy (a writer), Bernard (the geek who can fix everything), Jeff (surfer dude who is even more useless than Dave), and Razor (a punk rocker). Each character has their own unique skills that help solve puzzles on the game in their own way, but any variety can complete the game (unless you pick Jeff- really, who uses Jeff?)

Throughout each room of the house are interesting characters and items to find that ultimately help unroll the plot and reveal cut scenes. Edna grabs the first person who comes into the house, threatening to certain things to male characters. Weird Ed wants to fight against the meteor but doesn’t know how. Purple Tentacle is Dr. Fred’s obedient servant but Green Tentacle has his own plans of getting his punk rock band off the ground. Cousin Ted is still dead and Chuck is always the name of the houseplant.

I always loved this game when I first acquired the NES as a kid, never understanding the satire hidden throughout, or why Green Tentacle would hate disco so much. The most annoying part of the game was the 4-page booklet that came with each platform’s version of the game which included every possible code to open the upstairs door security lock. This code changes each time a person closes the door. This does not make casual playing easy.

The game was so popular in its heyday that there was even a television show on the Family Channel loosely based on the game. Based on the clips and promos found on youtube, the key word here is “loosely” as the only aspects that finally were used was the name and the fact that Dr. Edison is a mad scientist.

Now I’m sure you’re asking- This game is from the ‘80s. How can I even play it now?

Well 5 years later Lucas Arts released a sequel—Day of the Tentacle. This game has better graphics and a more animated graphics style. In this game Bernard (the stereotypical geek) and his friends Hoagie and Laverne get a message that Purple Tentacle has plans for world domination. The gang travel to Dr. Fred’s home, only for Hoagie and Laverne to get transported through time in opposite directions, leaving Bernard to solve the puzzle of bringing them home and stopping Purple Tentacle. Within the game hides an easter egg of the entire original game on the computer in Weird Ed’s bedroom. Even better is that Day of the Tentacle was recently remastered and released on Playstation and Steam networks.

So why not download the game and get two treats of the price of one. Just do yourself a favor- whichever characters you pick, don’t pick Jeff.