The Gamer's Quarter

[Nana Komatsu]

There was a game called Maniac Mansion for the NES (and PC before it) that people in the last video game online community I used to hang around in loved. I owned this game, once, but I couldn't play it because it was too scary. I would dream that I'd get up in the night and Dr. Fred would come to my bedside and kill me. My guess is you've heard of this game.

This past week I took a Javascript class given at work which was quite good. The gentleman giving it was named Doug Crockford and seemed well versed in JS stuff. Today, there was an email about a software conference where he would be speaking (this is kind of common) so I googled his name and found his Wikipedia page.

I didn't realize he was the person in charge of porting Maniac Mansion to the NES, and the guy who invented JSON. I'm sure you're probably only interested in one of those. He wrote an essay about the Maniac Mansion port and Nintendo being tightwads that you may have already read.

Andrew Toups suggested that I try to interview him for TGQ. I don't know what I'd ask him, and I'm worried it mgiht upset him since he's probably talked about this sort of thing to death already, but I'm not afraid to ask.

So: do you have any questions for the person in charge of bringing Maniac Mansion to the Nintendo that I could ask him? He worked for Lucasarts, so he probably knows about the other SCUMM titles, but I don't know what else he's worked on or how long he was in the gaming industry.

If I get enough questions, I'll see if he'll agree to an interview. Otherwise if someone would be interested in writing an article, I can probably get some insight from the other side of the fence from him.

[Cycle]

maniac mansion is one of my favourite adventure games! I endded have read his essay before. I can't think of any questions right now (I never really played the NES version) but I'll re-read his essay and play the ROM when I get back home and see if I can come up with anything.

I stared at the box for this game everytime my mother took me to the rental store, but I never rented it. I'm not sure if I was scared of the game, or if I was scared my mother would say no.

Likely a combination of both.

Also, high five him for me.

[dessgeega]

i think this is a fantabulous idea.
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[Six]

This is the banner that came up when I clicked on this thread! Uncanny.

[GSL]

This could probably make quite a few peoples' eyes glaze over, but I would be highly interested in knowing if the team porting Maniac Mansion actually had an implementation of SCUMM working on the NES, or if they just coded the single game from the ground up.

[kirkjerk]

questions about the Nintendo enforced censorship of this title are always popular, but may have been done to death

the SCUMM engine question would be cool... just how much of the port was code-centric, and how much was based on reproducing what they were seeing on screen...

[Pijaibros]

I would totally ask him to autograph my MM cart.

[Lestrade]

Fucking Maniac Mansion and its greatness! I prefered the NES version, even with the censorship (luckily, I was still able to microwave the hamster in the version I played). I think I beat that game at least four times with different scenarios. I still prefer using Bernard and Razor, though. Also, the NES music was just great—even today I catch myself humming its catchy tunes now and then.

[ApM]

I am interested in both the NES port of Maniac Mansion and JSON! Tell him he's awesome. Not enough 8-bit hackers that are able to keep themselves relevant like that.

The actual answer to the rewrite-or-SCUMM-port question is actually both! The Japanese version was a total rewrite, but the US version used a port of the SCUMM engine.

And now you know!

[GSL]

Now, the more pressing question is: how difficult would it be getting Secret of Monkey Island or Zak McCraken & the Alien Mindbenders running through the engine code? I can imagine it would be quite the undertaking, and like the port of Doom to the iPod it would most likely be totally impractical, but still pretty damn sweet!

EDIT: Someone on that link already asked that question too! I must have a psychic tendency towards redundancy!

[Cycle]

DooM on the intellivision was more sweet!

[GSL]

There was Doom on the Intellivision? I know there was a big EGM April-Fools hoax quite a few years back about Doom on the 2600, but I never have heard about any Intellivision port. Details, if you please!

[Cycle]

http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/intv/doom/

[Nana Komatsu]

The first part of Douglas Crawford's three part series on Javascript just got put online for the public. If you have any interest at all in javascript, I highly recommend checking it out.

part 1
part 2
part 3

[Nana Komatsu]

HEY

So I was just at a talk by Douglas Crockford (his correct name, which I've been getting wrong) and I asked him if he would be interested in talking about his days at Lucasarts for an article. He introduced me to Chip Morningstar (his real name?) who wrote the original SCUMM compiler as a 3 day hack. They both said they'd be willing to talk although Douglas may be too busy to meet in person but we could do an email interview.

I'm expecting people who have played Maniac Mansion/other Lucasarts SCUMM based games to give me ideas for questions!
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resetbutton.net: videogames for unattractive people

[internisus]

oh man


i am such a SCUMM sucker

what to do