We’ve had Day of the Tentacle (in this set, which was an anniversary present one year from my wife, who knows how much of a fan of adventure games I am) for quite a while now,. Unfortunately we couldn’t get it to work until Michelle’s review pointed out that it can be played using SCUMM Virtual Machine (downloadable at www.scummvm.org). I’ve had that installed on my computer for ages but never thought to try this game with it. What do you know, it worked perfectly and even the speech pack was fine. Therefore, onto the game…

Featuring a variety of outlandish creatures and people, the game starts with a short animated sequence that shows you how Purple Tentacle becomes super-intelligent and mega-lo-manic (though he / it may have had tendencies towards that before…) His friend, Green Tentacle, goes back to warn Dr Fred, who at this time is not under the control of extra-terrestrial forces and not planning to do anything evil himself – well, nothing particularly evil. Not for him, anyway. It’s up to the nerdy Bernard Bernoulli, groupie slob Hoogie, and slightly psychotic Laverne to put things right by travelling back in time – and then put that right as the time machine goes wrong. They end up stranded in 3 different time zones, though they can swap items through the time machine – no living creatures can go through until it’s repaired, however. And, of course, Purple Tentacles devious plot to take over the world and rid it of humans must be stopped…

Day of the Tentacle is a 2D adventure game which is completely mouse-controlled. There is a list of verbs always present at the bottom left of the screen, with inventory to the right and the top half of the screen where the action takes place. You simply click on the verb then the object on screen or in your inventory, or possibly with a character. Talking to characters is handled via a series of dialogue prompts that you select. This is designed in such a way that you have some flexibility in what you say to the different characters, you can never completely miss the helpful information, because it will always be available to repeat if it’s important. Naturally as you progress through the game and different events happen, new dialogues may become available. You can swap between the three controllable characters at any time in the game, and (hint – I didn’t realise this for ages!) simply use the “give” command between them to swap items between them. (I thought for ages that you had to go back to the time machine each time…)

Many of the characters and locations of the original ground-breaking adventure game Maniac Mansion are back in this game. The graphics are updated from then (after all the original PC release was CGA – 4 colours!) The graphics look dated but still retain a great comic feel to them, and the animation is superb. As you can see from the above synopsis, the storyline is quite wonderfully insane and the humour doesn’t stop at any point in the game. In fact, Day of the Tentacle is easily among the funniest games I’ve ever played. The puzzles, which of course are the most essential part of any adventure game, are superb – not too tough on the whole but there are some stumpers that’ll have you pondering for a while. Some of the puzzles involving time travel in one form or another are quite inspired. One or two of the jokes were a bit lost on me as a non-American – the ones involving George Washington and others who are drafting the UIS constitution in the manor 200 years ago when it was a hotel – though I thought your character shouting “The British are coming!” to distract them at one point was hilarious. (Messing about with the design of the flag was also great fun.) There were also some in-jokes from other LucasArts games, though they’re usually in the background (like the picture of Sam from Sam and Max), so if you don’t get those jokes it’s not a problem. There was so much humour in the storyline and dialogue that if you don’t find yourself frequently laughing while playing this game, look under the couch – your sense of humour is probably hiding there.

The main characters of Bernard, Hoogie, and Laverne are wonderfully voiced, and all of the voice acting is good quality with good clarity. Sound effects are somewhat lacking but good when they are used, and the music, though not exactly a CD-quality digital soundtrack, fits the game very nicely. Overall, DOTT is a game that any adventure game fan will want to have in their collection.

There are one or two aspects of the game that stop it from quite being perfect though, at least to me. Some of the sequences get rather annoying if you can’t work out exactly what the game wants you to do – once you’ve played the game, think how irritating the “please give me back my hammer!” bit was until you’d solved the puzzle. That’s a bit of an occupational hazard though in this sort of game. The main problem with it was that it’s too short – admittedly I was disappointed when it finished mainly because I’d been enjoying it so much, but we completed it in just under ten hours of playing time, and I expect more from an adventure game. There might have been a few more things that you could do in the game – the packaging states that the original Maniac Mansion was in there as a “game within a game” (a la Macbeth?!?!?, and I never found this. It might also be a problem to some with slow connection to have to download SCUMMVM in order to play this. A very fine game, but I would have liked it to be longer.

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Now we come to Sam & Max – or, more correctly, Sam & Max Hit The Road. This uses a very similar interface to the above game but it’s more graphical and the speech system is slightly different, with icons representing what you want to talk about and exclamations, questions etc for general use. The game worked fine but without speech without SCUMMVM, but using it gets the speech working as well.

The storyline I along the lines of the classic detective noir films (I believe it was based on a series of cartoons), only with some sort of bear and his partner, a completely psychotic little bunny who packs a real punch and uses it at every possible opportunity. The plot has them following the trail of a truly fiendish plot that gets more creatively insane with every passing moment.

Again, the voice acting is very good and the visuals, though dated, have a certain appeal and good animation. The music score is moody detective-style music, which obviously fits in well with the game, and the voice acting is excellent. The dialogue in this game is very surreal at times, and the puzzles were even more obscure. In fact, some of them seemed darn right impossible.

Along with this there are a few mini-games and parts of the game where you have to operate something – like a telescope, for example. The trouble is the game never seems to give you the slightest idea what you’re supposed to be doing, leading to a lot of frustration.

So, while the basic idea is good and the game engine holds up just as well as other LucasArts games, I really couldn’t get into the game to the same extent. It’s just too touch and obscure for its own good – at least, it was to me. It has quite a large cult following on the internet, so maybe it’s my grey cells at fault. Still, an enjoyable game for a time, just very, very frustrating.

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When you take the two games together, this is a very good package for any adventure game fan. While obviously I loved DOTT and had trouble with Sam & Max, it’s still worth having both. I can’t find this collection now on either Amazon.com or .co.uk, or even on LucasArts own website – I think this is actually because they are going to re-release the games individually, though I could be wrong. If you can pick this up second hand for a few quid though you definitely won’t regret it.

Just so you know - both games were originally released in 1993.


Related Links

Bernard’s further adventures saving the world from Purple tentacle are chronicled in a fangame that visits almost every 2D LucasArts game – see http://www.darscom.net/LucasManiac.html for more information.

A fantastic updated freeware version of Maniac Mansion is also available – read about Maniac Mansion Deluxe by LucasFan.

More LucasArts Adventure Games

The Monkey Island Archives (MI1-3)
Escape From Monkey Island (MI4)
Grim Fandango
The Dig




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My Top Ten Commercial Graphical Adventure Games



Recommended: Yes