As many inventors throughout history who have been forgotten could tell you, it's not always about being first to market with an idea so much as it is about the product you package with that idea. Maniac Mansion kicked off the golden age of the Point and Click adventure game with the introduction of Lucasfilm Games' SCUMM engine.

While I love a good low budget horror movie which this was clearly inspired by, it veers too far into the Rocky Horror type of camp that isn't my cup of tea, so I've never been particularly fond of this game's narrative. That said, it's hard to ignore its significance and impact on hundreds of games that would come after; some of which have very much been my cups of tea.

This is a game that is screaming for a real modern remake/remaster, like the one Day of the Tentacle received. In my experience thus far, it pains me to say every version of this game is borderline unplayable. Which is tragic because there's so much greatness that is apparent in it: the way that different characters can beat the game in very different ways, the fact that NPCs carry on actions that the player must react to for different effects, the free roaming puzzle box nature of the mansion. Unfortunately, in the pc versions, it's easy to get to an apparently unwinnable state without even knowing it. For me, this is essentially broken game design and it certainly doesn't fly these days. I've read that the NES version fixes some of this, but it has crippling censorship. There is a hack that reverts this, but the game keeps locking up eventually. I haven't tried it myself, but apparently the version on Steam is just played via ScummVM and is hacked so that the keypads in the game don't work properly. Please! Remaster this game and fix its issues because I think there's a game I could really love in here.