11 ms·

Day of the Tentacle

347 points by doppp 7y ago

jammygit 7y ago
This game taught me that humour and story can be conveyed extremely effectively through player choices. It was eye opening (and hilariously satisfying). The strong coherence between story, time, and gameplay was really really striking
sebastianconcpt 7y ago
I had unforgettable fun with this game. I think only 2 games provided me with so much laugh, this one and The Curse of Monkey Island
- hoodwink 7y ago
  Same. The dueling challenge in Monkey Island is my all time favorite.
- Dirlewanger 7y ago
  Yup, hate how Curse of Monkey Island is almost always forgotten when talking about the series because Gilbert wasn't involved. The game is incredibly beautiful, voice talent flawless and impeccably casted. I wish they had created other adventure games with that iteration of the SCUMM engine.
  - kristiandupont 7y ago
    I loved CoMI as much as the first two games. It seemed to ignore the basic premise of the story which was a hard pill to swallow (still is), but apart from that I found the humor, graphics and everything else to be at least on par.
NamTaf 7y ago
Probably my favourite LA adventure game, though Sam & Max really does give it a run for its money. I played it at what I suspect was a very formative time of my pre-teens, and I think it did a lot to shape not only my humour, but also my understanding that games could be challenging yet satisfying in how they deliver a story through puzzles and obstacles. I think it struck a very good balance between a hand-holding push-over and being so challenging that you needed to dig out a cheat guide every few minutes. That's largely a credit to its story-telling and design, and I think I was just getting to the age where I was able to appreciate that.
- tomlong 7y ago
  I'm 35 years old and had a similar experience. What you said about it shaping your humour really struck a chord with me (particularly Sam & Max). Maybe because it was the first LA game I played, but I think DoTT is the best, but it led to me playing all the rest. I got the talkie on CD-ROM for a christmas present one year. I struggled with a lot of it, but my Dad before giving me the present removed the hint/solve book from the box and watched us (me and my younger brother) play and try and figure everything out and just gave us enough of a hint at the right times to make it feel like a really satisfying experience. I'll RTFA after work.
- isostatic 7y ago
  So much of my U.S. knowlege came from things like DotT and Sam&Max -- from balls of twine to Washington's dislike of Cherry Trees.
tus87 7y ago
Yet to play this one. Recently played Full Throttle and it was great. I guess I have to go back and replay Maniac Mansion since the 90s?
- chimpburger 7y ago
  Just play Day of the Tentacle. I've been playing games since the Atari days. Day of the Tentacle is one of the greatest games of all time.
theli0nheart 7y ago
This is one of my favorite games from my childhood. If you haven't ever played it, you owe it to yourself to purchase the remastered version [1] and play it through (it's only $3.79). It's incredibly entertaining and witty. I doubt this game will ever get stale. [1]: https://www.gog.com/game/day_of_the_tentacle_remastered https://www.gog.com/game/day_of_the_tentacle_remastered
- johnmw 7y ago
  And if you just want to give it a try first, you can play the old version online [1] [1]: https://playclassic.games/games/point-n-click-adventure-dos-games-online/play-maniac-mansion-day-tentacle-online/play/ https://playclassic.games/games/point-n-click-adventure-dos-...
- Svip 7y ago
  It's not necessary to have played Maniac Mansion beforehand? I'll admit this has been my main hesitation. I remember when Monkey Island III was big in the late 90s, I was hesitant because I hadn't played the two games that came before it. I ended up doing it anyway at the time, but later I would play all three, and the third one really benefits - in my view anyway - from having played the first two ones, even though they can all stand on their own. So I wonder whether Day of the Tentacle is similar?
  - mherrmann 7y ago
    I played DotT without ever having played MM and really enjoyed it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - cliff 7y ago
    DOTT is a totally free-standing game -- and amazing. They address this in the linked article (also from personal experience) -- you really don't need any context from Maniac Mansion to thoroughly enjoy DOTT and they are really totally different games in style and substance.
onemoresoop 7y ago
Favorite game of mine too. I remember when I was a 14 year old playing this game.
FTA 7y ago
Site seems down...archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20190610020009/https://www.filfre.net/2019/06/day-of-the-tentacle/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190610020009/https://www.filfr...
BuckRogers 7y ago
I spent my childhood and formative years playing adventure games. While I played more Maniac Mansion than the sequel, this is one of the best.
mr-ron 7y ago
This game captured a magical point in gaming where me my brother and my mother were playing on our PC, and my cousin and uncle were playing on another at the same time, keeping each other up to date on progress. We all were blocked at the same point until my uncle found the puzzle where you have to close a door to get the keys, and as soon as he found it he phoned my mom and we all progressed. That type of puzzle discovery hasn't happened since. Amazing game and amazing memory.
- lr4444lr 7y ago
  The key action to getting Ben Franklin his thunderstorm was a bit too much, no?
  - mr-ron 7y ago
    No the keys were given to the masked man in the present day, who was breaking into the car. He gives you the crowbar for the keys.
    - leshokunin 7y ago
      I believe he meant the action needed to trigger the rain.
      - mr-ron 7y ago
        To trigger the rain you needed the whole setup: gold, vinegar, and oil. The puzzle we were stumped at had nothing to do with that.
        Forbo 7y ago
        I thought you needed to wash the carriage? That was a bit obscure for me as a kid.
        mr-ron 7y ago
crazygringo 7y ago
Another commenter linked to the remastered (hi-res) version for desktop, but it's also available for iPad for $4.99... and if tablets aren't the perfect medium for original point-and-click adventure games then I don't know what is: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/day-of-the-tentacle-remastered/id1114170869?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/day-of-the-tentacle-remaster...
- baxtr 7y ago
  Nice. Any clue if other games are also available like Monkey Islands, Maniac Mansion, etc?
  - bjconlan 7y ago
    A little more 'evolved' (not scumm) but 'Grim Fandango' was also recently updated (well in the last few years) for newer platforms. Ron Gilbert & Co's Thimbleweed Park perhaps deserves a mention here too .
- toyg 7y ago
  I wonder if it will last. A lot of games got ported to iOS at one point or the other, then fell by the wayside with OS updates. This happened even to big titles like Lego Harry Potter.
pier25 7y ago
I have so many good memories of playing this game with friends back in the 90s. I played it again recently with my teenager nephews and they loved it. The humor still works and the puzzles are challenging.
aidenn0 7y ago
While Loom will always have a special place in my heart, DotT is possibly the best all-around adventure game from my childhood; particularly considering that the LA games have aged far better than most of the others.
- protomyth 7y ago
  The funny thing about Loom for me is that I remember the situation and people that were playing the game more than the actual game's story. It was a blast playing after school with a group that argued and explored together. I'm not even sure we finished the thing.
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    Loom just clicked with me for some reason. It was the first adventure game I completed 100% on my own, and I did so fairly quickly. The other adventure games I had played to that point I was only able to finish by playing in parallel with several friends and when one of us got stuck, we would help each other. Hero's Quest was the first game I completed in this manner (we were stuck on King's Quest until someone downloaded a hint guide from a BBS; that game was primarily difficult because how easy it was to get in an unwinnable state).
MobileVet 7y ago
My best friend and I played Maniac Mansion and DotT for hours. So funny and great puzzles. Thanks for the memories buddy, you are missed, RIP
Maro 7y ago
Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, floppy disks and dreaming of one day getting a huge 17" CRT monitor on a Pentium, that was my early teenage years.
- milesward 7y ago
  Full Throttle!!
- agildehaus 7y ago
  The Dig was one of my favorites. Conceived by Spielberg with a script by Orson Scott Card of all people.
  - jaredlightman 7y ago
    I've got the CD-ROM version of that kicking around somewhere. I'm surprised they haven't made a movie of it or all the other old LucasArts properties. If they can make a movie about The Magic 8-Ball...
  - hnick 7y ago
    It was really good but I think it came out at a time where people were moving away from the genre. I don't remember it getting the attention it deserved.
- Timberwolf 7y ago
  I had a 17" CRT monitor on a 286, with a Trident 8900 SVGA card driving it. Hard to credit in these days, where even using a non SSD equipped computer is painful, I used to happily wait several seconds for Program Manager to repaint itself.
- theandrewbailey 7y ago
  I built a retro system a few years ago for old games. It's more for late 90s/2000 (Windows 98) era games, but it can do DOS, too.
johnramsden 7y ago
Also one of my favorite games. Such interesting characters and puzzles. Another gem from this era is Grim Fandango, which also has a recently remastered version.
kerouanton 7y ago
I still love all those games, and play them from time to time using ScummVM [1], which I installed on my PC and Mac. Back at the time, I bought them in boxed editions and was so thrilled to get them! I still have those original games as part of my greatest 80's collection items. The SCUMM engine is also very interesting to look at, internally. [1|: https://www.scummvm.org/ https://www.scummvm.org/
Perlizo 7y ago
Is this the one that contains that easter egg where you can play a full other game within the game?
- 0xADEADBEE 7y ago
  That's it. You can get to a terminal and play Maniac Mansion pretty early on in Day of the Tentacle.
  - ido 7y ago
    ...As the article explicitly mentioned?
akavel 7y ago
To people considering buying it, given so much praise here and in the article, I would like to just ask you to take note of the following quote: > "Of course, there’s no accounting for taste. If you loathe cartoons, perhaps you might not like this game. If you prefer more serious plots or more rigorously cerebral puzzles, perhaps you won’t love it. [...] It remains at the end of the day a slapstick cartoon comedy" Personally, this caveat did apply so much to me. I bought and played the game, all way to the end, trying to give it a chance, but in my case, I found it plain boring. If you like slapstick, that's probably your gold nugget indeed, based on the glowing reviews. Me, I don't; I need at least some substance (?). I loved Loom, I enjoyed The Monkey Island (esp. the 1st one in the series), as well as the Indiana Jones games. I found amusement in their lightheartedness and casual humour. I liked Grim Fandango too. But DoTT fits the same place in my mind with Psychonauts: I plainly don't get why so many people are so stoked about them. To me, they're both just super boring.
- chillydawg 7y ago
  I think it's probably to do with the fact that many of us here played it when it was first out and were either kids or much younger than we were now. My memory of that game is amazing, but I highly doubt I'd pick it up off the shelf today as my tastes have changed.
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    I replayed it (the remastered version) some 20 years after initially playing it. It was still amazing.
  - Chazprime 7y ago
    It still holds up even now; I've got the iOS version on my current iPhone X.
  - hnick 7y ago
    After trying The Witness recently, I came to the realisation that I only really enjoy puzzle/adventure games when playing with friends. Probably because I was playing all these old games with friends standing around a PC when I grew up.
scandinavegan 7y ago
> One of the few negative things I can say about Day of the Tentacle is that it’s more fun than it is truly innovative; it doesn’t break any new formal or thematic ground The time travel aspect and that you control three characters in the past, present, and future, where things you do in the past affect the future was truly innovative to me. I realize now that it's not as magical design or programming wise as it appears. It's not that hard to have something done in one room affect something in another room in the game, but as a player having to think across time as well as space was really cool. The article goes on to talk about the time travel, so it's not ignored, but it seems that I found it more innovative than the author.
- coroxout 7y ago
  I think the site author comes from an interactive fiction background, so I suppose there were text adventures that did switchable playable characters and time travel before DotT [1], but I don't know of a graphic adventure that beat DotT to it. I found the interaction between the 3 timezones pretty innovative as a kid too and think he does the game a disservice here. It also opens the game up in terms of how many puzzles you can be thinking about at once; if you're stuck in a traditional 1-protagonist game you might only have one or two things you think you need to do next, at least in a pretty linear game, but now you always have at least 3 things to work out at once... [1] I'm not a big IF buff, but I guess Infocom's "Suspended" (1983) is a classic game where you can control different "characters" at once, and I really loved "T-Zero" (1991), where you also open up 3 different timezones you can travel between at will, and changes in the past affect the present/future in a slightly DOTT-esque manner - although it's a very different game. Suspended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_(video_game) T-Zero: https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u8qqrwutdugkexpr https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u8qqrwutdugkexpr or reviewed on filfre.net here: https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/the-text-adventures-of-1991/ https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/the-text-adventures-of-1991/
  - ilikehurdles 7y ago
    Chrono Trigger was a really good old SNES RPG that had gameplay centered around time travel, where actions in one timeline affected outcomes in another. Not an adventure game, but it's something that your comment reminded me of.
amelius 7y ago
For anyone wondering what the (remastered) game looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW283uY3sLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW283uY3sLI
leibnitz27 7y ago
One of the things that's interesting to me is the resources available at the time - in terms of help. With a game like this now (Say, the excellent Thimbleweed Park - you played it, right?), if you get truly, epically stuck, there's a walk-through no more than a few clicks away. And you'll probably admit defeat and go there after a few hours. When I picked DoTT up (a few seconds after release ;) ), no such thing. You were in it alone. Maybe there was a magazine write in for hints, and if you were lucky you knew a guy on a BBS, but other than that, you were on your own. That made the puzzles so much sweeter when you got them.
- theli0nheart 7y ago
  > When I picked DoTT up (a few seconds after release ;) ), no such thing. You were in it alone. Maybe there was a magazine write in for hints, and if you were lucky you knew a guy on a BBS, but other than that, you were on your own. That made the puzzles so much sweeter when you got them. Completely agree. Unlike today, there was really no alternative to really thinking "deep" and trying to figure something out on your own. If push really came to shove, you went to the local bookstore and hopefully they had a magazine or guide available. I miss those times. :)
  - coroxout 7y ago
    On one hand, I don't 100% miss those times unless I can have as much spare time as I did aged 14 to spend walking round a game without necessarily progressing. (It helped that I only got a new commercial game every few months and maybe a couple of mostly short shareware games, so plenty of time to explore each one. Now I have a massive backlog of unplayed Steam games and still keep buying more.) But not having hints and walkthroughs to fall back on definitely enhanced how much attention I paid to the game. I replayed various Lucasarts games from my teenage years recently and remembered a little bit from each section of each game, until I got halfway through Grim Fandango. I knew I'd finished it before but the last two or three areas seemed completely unfamiliar, I think because I first bought it in the UHS Hints era, looked a hint up halfway through, and started leaning way too heavily on hints for the rest of the game.
  - 7y ago
Chazprime 7y ago
Man, this takes me back. For me, the two pinnacles of my childhood PC gaming were easily Monkey Island 2 and Day of the Tentacle. I was so thrilled when Ron Gilbert announced his Kickstarter for Thimbleweed Park. Hopefully Disney one day sells him back the rights to Monkey Island, I'd love a true sequel by its creator.
- coroxout 7y ago
  I'd love that too - although I have to say I didn't really like the endings to MI2 or Thimbleweed Park, so I might love it even more if RG writes everything except the ending...
  - Chazprime 7y ago
    Yeah, the MI2 ending was definitely bizarre, but for me it was an off-the-wall way that made me really interested to see what happens next... Kind of like the ending of Nightmare on Elm Street 2. Apparently Ron had a final chapter in mind for Monkey Island, but with Disney/Lucas owning the rights, we'll probably never see it. I'm guessing the last chapter might do a bit of retconning on the final moments of Part 2, but no one outside of Ron apparently knows how it ends. :(
protomyth 7y ago
One of the few negative things I can say about Day of the Tentacle is that it’s more fun than it is truly innovative; it doesn’t break any new formal or thematic ground So, friggin what. I dearly wish more game designers (and not a few critics) would remember that a lot of these games are meant to be fun. I don't want some message or insight or innovation all the time. I often want to sit down and spend some time having fun and unwinding. Its not a negative, its like the comfort of an old book that I've decided to reread. Plus, fun and funny are damn tough to get right. Its so much easier to do drama than comedy because a so-so drama is still ok, but a so-so comedy is just bad.

347 points by doppp 7y ago

This game taught me that humour and story can be conveyed extremely effectively through player choices. It was eye opening (and hilariously satisfying). The strong coherence between story, time, and gameplay was really really striking

sebastianconcpt 7y ago

I had unforgettable fun with this game. I think only 2 games provided me with so much laugh, this one and The Curse of Monkey Island

hoodwink 7y ago
Same. The dueling challenge in Monkey Island is my all time favorite.
Dirlewanger 7y ago
Yup, hate how Curse of Monkey Island is almost always forgotten when talking about the series because Gilbert wasn't involved. The game is incredibly beautiful, voice talent flawless and impeccably casted. I wish they had created other adventure games with that iteration of the SCUMM engine.
- kristiandupont 7y ago
  I loved CoMI as much as the first two games. It seemed to ignore the basic premise of the story which was a hard pill to swallow (still is), but apart from that I found the humor, graphics and everything else to be at least on par.

NamTaf 7y ago

Probably my favourite LA adventure game, though Sam & Max really does give it a run for its money. I played it at what I suspect was a very formative time of my pre-teens, and I think it did a lot to shape not only my humour, but also my understanding that games could be challenging yet satisfying in how they deliver a story through puzzles and obstacles. I think it struck a very good balance between a hand-holding push-over and being so challenging that you needed to dig out a cheat guide every few minutes. That's largely a credit to its story-telling and design, and I think I was just getting to the age where I was able to appreciate that.

tomlong 7y ago
I'm 35 years old and had a similar experience. What you said about it shaping your humour really struck a chord with me (particularly Sam & Max). Maybe because it was the first LA game I played, but I think DoTT is the best, but it led to me playing all the rest. I got the talkie on CD-ROM for a christmas present one year. I struggled with a lot of it, but my Dad before giving me the present removed the hint/solve book from the box and watched us (me and my younger brother) play and try and figure everything out and just gave us enough of a hint at the right times to make it feel like a really satisfying experience. I'll RTFA after work.
isostatic 7y ago
So much of my U.S. knowlege came from things like DotT and Sam&Max -- from balls of twine to Washington's dislike of Cherry Trees.

tus87 7y ago

Yet to play this one. Recently played Full Throttle and it was great. I guess I have to go back and replay Maniac Mansion since the 90s?

chimpburger 7y ago
Just play Day of the Tentacle. I've been playing games since the Atari days. Day of the Tentacle is one of the greatest games of all time.

theli0nheart 7y ago

This is one of my favorite games from my childhood. If you haven't ever played it, you owe it to yourself to purchase the remastered version [1] and play it through (it's only $3.79). It's incredibly entertaining and witty. I doubt this game will ever get stale. [1]: https://www.gog.com/game/day_of_the_tentacle_remastered https://www.gog.com/game/day_of_the_tentacle_remastered

johnmw 7y ago
And if you just want to give it a try first, you can play the old version online [1] [1]: https://playclassic.games/games/point-n-click-adventure-dos-games-online/play-maniac-mansion-day-tentacle-online/play/ https://playclassic.games/games/point-n-click-adventure-dos-...
Svip 7y ago
It's not necessary to have played Maniac Mansion beforehand? I'll admit this has been my main hesitation. I remember when Monkey Island III was big in the late 90s, I was hesitant because I hadn't played the two games that came before it. I ended up doing it anyway at the time, but later I would play all three, and the third one really benefits - in my view anyway - from having played the first two ones, even though they can all stand on their own. So I wonder whether Day of the Tentacle is similar?
- mherrmann 7y ago
  I played DotT without ever having played MM and really enjoyed it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- cliff 7y ago
  DOTT is a totally free-standing game -- and amazing. They address this in the linked article (also from personal experience) -- you really don't need any context from Maniac Mansion to thoroughly enjoy DOTT and they are really totally different games in style and substance.

onemoresoop 7y ago

Favorite game of mine too. I remember when I was a 14 year old playing this game.

FTA 7y ago

Site seems down...archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20190610020009/https://www.filfre.net/2019/06/day-of-the-tentacle/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190610020009/https://www.filfr...

BuckRogers 7y ago

I spent my childhood and formative years playing adventure games. While I played more Maniac Mansion than the sequel, this is one of the best.

mr-ron 7y ago

This game captured a magical point in gaming where me my brother and my mother were playing on our PC, and my cousin and uncle were playing on another at the same time, keeping each other up to date on progress. We all were blocked at the same point until my uncle found the puzzle where you have to close a door to get the keys, and as soon as he found it he phoned my mom and we all progressed. That type of puzzle discovery hasn't happened since. Amazing game and amazing memory.

lr4444lr 7y ago
The key action to getting Ben Franklin his thunderstorm was a bit too much, no?
- mr-ron 7y ago
  No the keys were given to the masked man in the present day, who was breaking into the car. He gives you the crowbar for the keys.
  - leshokunin 7y ago
    I believe he meant the action needed to trigger the rain.
    - mr-ron 7y ago
      To trigger the rain you needed the whole setup: gold, vinegar, and oil. The puzzle we were stumped at had nothing to do with that.
      - Forbo 7y ago
        I thought you needed to wash the carriage? That was a bit obscure for me as a kid.
        mr-ron 7y ago

crazygringo 7y ago

Another commenter linked to the remastered (hi-res) version for desktop, but it's also available for iPad for $4.99... and if tablets aren't the perfect medium for original point-and-click adventure games then I don't know what is: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/day-of-the-tentacle-remastered/id1114170869?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/day-of-the-tentacle-remaster...

baxtr 7y ago
Nice. Any clue if other games are also available like Monkey Islands, Maniac Mansion, etc?
- bjconlan 7y ago
  A little more 'evolved' (not scumm) but 'Grim Fandango' was also recently updated (well in the last few years) for newer platforms. Ron Gilbert & Co's Thimbleweed Park perhaps deserves a mention here too .
toyg 7y ago
I wonder if it will last. A lot of games got ported to iOS at one point or the other, then fell by the wayside with OS updates. This happened even to big titles like Lego Harry Potter.

pier25 7y ago

I have so many good memories of playing this game with friends back in the 90s. I played it again recently with my teenager nephews and they loved it. The humor still works and the puzzles are challenging.

aidenn0 7y ago

While Loom will always have a special place in my heart, DotT is possibly the best all-around adventure game from my childhood; particularly considering that the LA games have aged far better than most of the others.

protomyth 7y ago
The funny thing about Loom for me is that I remember the situation and people that were playing the game more than the actual game's story. It was a blast playing after school with a group that argued and explored together. I'm not even sure we finished the thing.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  Loom just clicked with me for some reason. It was the first adventure game I completed 100% on my own, and I did so fairly quickly. The other adventure games I had played to that point I was only able to finish by playing in parallel with several friends and when one of us got stuck, we would help each other. Hero's Quest was the first game I completed in this manner (we were stuck on King's Quest until someone downloaded a hint guide from a BBS; that game was primarily difficult because how easy it was to get in an unwinnable state).

MobileVet 7y ago

My best friend and I played Maniac Mansion and DotT for hours. So funny and great puzzles. Thanks for the memories buddy, you are missed, RIP

Maro 7y ago

Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, floppy disks and dreaming of one day getting a huge 17" CRT monitor on a Pentium, that was my early teenage years.

milesward 7y ago
Full Throttle!!
agildehaus 7y ago
The Dig was one of my favorites. Conceived by Spielberg with a script by Orson Scott Card of all people.
- jaredlightman 7y ago
  I've got the CD-ROM version of that kicking around somewhere. I'm surprised they haven't made a movie of it or all the other old LucasArts properties. If they can make a movie about The Magic 8-Ball...
- hnick 7y ago
  It was really good but I think it came out at a time where people were moving away from the genre. I don't remember it getting the attention it deserved.
Timberwolf 7y ago
I had a 17" CRT monitor on a 286, with a Trident 8900 SVGA card driving it. Hard to credit in these days, where even using a non SSD equipped computer is painful, I used to happily wait several seconds for Program Manager to repaint itself.
theandrewbailey 7y ago
I built a retro system a few years ago for old games. It's more for late 90s/2000 (Windows 98) era games, but it can do DOS, too.

johnramsden 7y ago

Also one of my favorite games. Such interesting characters and puzzles. Another gem from this era is Grim Fandango, which also has a recently remastered version.

kerouanton 7y ago

I still love all those games, and play them from time to time using ScummVM [1], which I installed on my PC and Mac. Back at the time, I bought them in boxed editions and was so thrilled to get them! I still have those original games as part of my greatest 80's collection items. The SCUMM engine is also very interesting to look at, internally. [1|: https://www.scummvm.org/ https://www.scummvm.org/

Perlizo 7y ago

Is this the one that contains that easter egg where you can play a full other game within the game?

0xADEADBEE 7y ago
That's it. You can get to a terminal and play Maniac Mansion pretty early on in Day of the Tentacle.
- ido 7y ago
  ...As the article explicitly mentioned?

akavel 7y ago

To people considering buying it, given so much praise here and in the article, I would like to just ask you to take note of the following quote: > "Of course, there’s no accounting for taste. If you loathe cartoons, perhaps you might not like this game. If you prefer more serious plots or more rigorously cerebral puzzles, perhaps you won’t love it. [...] It remains at the end of the day a slapstick cartoon comedy" Personally, this caveat did apply so much to me. I bought and played the game, all way to the end, trying to give it a chance, but in my case, I found it plain boring. If you like slapstick, that's probably your gold nugget indeed, based on the glowing reviews. Me, I don't; I need at least some substance (?). I loved Loom, I enjoyed The Monkey Island (esp. the 1st one in the series), as well as the Indiana Jones games. I found amusement in their lightheartedness and casual humour. I liked Grim Fandango too. But DoTT fits the same place in my mind with Psychonauts: I plainly don't get why so many people are so stoked about them. To me, they're both just super boring.

chillydawg 7y ago
I think it's probably to do with the fact that many of us here played it when it was first out and were either kids or much younger than we were now. My memory of that game is amazing, but I highly doubt I'd pick it up off the shelf today as my tastes have changed.
- PeterisP 7y ago
  I replayed it (the remastered version) some 20 years after initially playing it. It was still amazing.
- Chazprime 7y ago
  It still holds up even now; I've got the iOS version on my current iPhone X.
- hnick 7y ago
  After trying The Witness recently, I came to the realisation that I only really enjoy puzzle/adventure games when playing with friends. Probably because I was playing all these old games with friends standing around a PC when I grew up.

scandinavegan 7y ago

> One of the few negative things I can say about Day of the Tentacle is that it’s more fun than it is truly innovative; it doesn’t break any new formal or thematic ground The time travel aspect and that you control three characters in the past, present, and future, where things you do in the past affect the future was truly innovative to me. I realize now that it's not as magical design or programming wise as it appears. It's not that hard to have something done in one room affect something in another room in the game, but as a player having to think across time as well as space was really cool. The article goes on to talk about the time travel, so it's not ignored, but it seems that I found it more innovative than the author.

coroxout 7y ago
I think the site author comes from an interactive fiction background, so I suppose there were text adventures that did switchable playable characters and time travel before DotT [1], but I don't know of a graphic adventure that beat DotT to it. I found the interaction between the 3 timezones pretty innovative as a kid too and think he does the game a disservice here. It also opens the game up in terms of how many puzzles you can be thinking about at once; if you're stuck in a traditional 1-protagonist game you might only have one or two things you think you need to do next, at least in a pretty linear game, but now you always have at least 3 things to work out at once... [1] I'm not a big IF buff, but I guess Infocom's "Suspended" (1983) is a classic game where you can control different "characters" at once, and I really loved "T-Zero" (1991), where you also open up 3 different timezones you can travel between at will, and changes in the past affect the present/future in a slightly DOTT-esque manner - although it's a very different game. Suspended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_(video_game) T-Zero: https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u8qqrwutdugkexpr https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u8qqrwutdugkexpr or reviewed on filfre.net here: https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/the-text-adventures-of-1991/ https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/the-text-adventures-of-1991/
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  Chrono Trigger was a really good old SNES RPG that had gameplay centered around time travel, where actions in one timeline affected outcomes in another. Not an adventure game, but it's something that your comment reminded me of.

amelius 7y ago

For anyone wondering what the (remastered) game looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW283uY3sLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW283uY3sLI

leibnitz27 7y ago

One of the things that's interesting to me is the resources available at the time - in terms of help. With a game like this now (Say, the excellent Thimbleweed Park - you played it, right?), if you get truly, epically stuck, there's a walk-through no more than a few clicks away. And you'll probably admit defeat and go there after a few hours. When I picked DoTT up (a few seconds after release ;) ), no such thing. You were in it alone. Maybe there was a magazine write in for hints, and if you were lucky you knew a guy on a BBS, but other than that, you were on your own. That made the puzzles so much sweeter when you got them.

theli0nheart 7y ago
> When I picked DoTT up (a few seconds after release ;) ), no such thing. You were in it alone. Maybe there was a magazine write in for hints, and if you were lucky you knew a guy on a BBS, but other than that, you were on your own. That made the puzzles so much sweeter when you got them. Completely agree. Unlike today, there was really no alternative to really thinking "deep" and trying to figure something out on your own. If push really came to shove, you went to the local bookstore and hopefully they had a magazine or guide available. I miss those times. :)
- coroxout 7y ago
  On one hand, I don't 100% miss those times unless I can have as much spare time as I did aged 14 to spend walking round a game without necessarily progressing. (It helped that I only got a new commercial game every few months and maybe a couple of mostly short shareware games, so plenty of time to explore each one. Now I have a massive backlog of unplayed Steam games and still keep buying more.) But not having hints and walkthroughs to fall back on definitely enhanced how much attention I paid to the game. I replayed various Lucasarts games from my teenage years recently and remembered a little bit from each section of each game, until I got halfway through Grim Fandango. I knew I'd finished it before but the last two or three areas seemed completely unfamiliar, I think because I first bought it in the UHS Hints era, looked a hint up halfway through, and started leaning way too heavily on hints for the rest of the game.
- 7y ago

Chazprime 7y ago

Man, this takes me back. For me, the two pinnacles of my childhood PC gaming were easily Monkey Island 2 and Day of the Tentacle. I was so thrilled when Ron Gilbert announced his Kickstarter for Thimbleweed Park. Hopefully Disney one day sells him back the rights to Monkey Island, I'd love a true sequel by its creator.

coroxout 7y ago
I'd love that too - although I have to say I didn't really like the endings to MI2 or Thimbleweed Park, so I might love it even more if RG writes everything except the ending...
- Chazprime 7y ago
  Yeah, the MI2 ending was definitely bizarre, but for me it was an off-the-wall way that made me really interested to see what happens next... Kind of like the ending of Nightmare on Elm Street 2. Apparently Ron had a final chapter in mind for Monkey Island, but with Disney/Lucas owning the rights, we'll probably never see it. I'm guessing the last chapter might do a bit of retconning on the final moments of Part 2, but no one outside of Ron apparently knows how it ends. :(

protomyth 7y ago

One of the few negative things I can say about Day of the Tentacle is that it’s more fun than it is truly innovative; it doesn’t break any new formal or thematic ground So, friggin what. I dearly wish more game designers (and not a few critics) would remember that a lot of these games are meant to be fun. I don't want some message or insight or innovation all the time. I often want to sit down and spend some time having fun and unwinding. Its not a negative, its like the comfort of an old book that I've decided to reread. Plus, fun and funny are damn tough to get right. Its so much easier to do drama than comedy because a so-so drama is still ok, but a so-so comedy is just bad.