I get that Maniac Mansion was very important for video games as a storytelling medium at the time of its release. I also understand that there are plenty of people who like to play ‘classic’ video games to better understand how the medium’s developed or just out of sheer curiosity. If you’re one of these people then you’ll get out of Maniac Mansion exactly what you expect to get out of it. For everyone else – especially those unfamiliar with just how primitive and unpleasant a lot of old video games can be – this game will be an irritating exercise in ridiculous, unknowable puzzle design and finicky controls that you’d really just be better off avoiding altogether
Obviously this isn’t to say LucasArts was a bad developer or that they could have done a better job of developing this game considering what tools were available in the late ‘80s, but I really don’t think saying that this game is ‘good for its time’ is helpful to anyone living in the modern day. Sure, maybe this game is fantastic for 1987 but since that was more than 30 years ago that means less than nothing to anyone looking to pick it up today. I don’t hate this game, or even think that its importance is overstated, but I do very much think that people who are playing it just now for the first time are going to regret doing so.
Dylan's Morsels 