Maniac Mansion remaster/remake

[Toymafia88]

Ron just made a comment on twitter about being open to doing a Maniac Mansion remaster with David Fox.

 

It would be fun to do a Maniac Mansion remaster that was the same story and setting but 50% new puzzles and maybe a new playable character. You in

@DavidBFox

?

 

I really hope this happens. That game is begging for a remake! Imagine a remake with all the benefits of Thimbleweed Park!!!

 

Plus Maniac Mansion deserves some love too.

 

P.s I'm glad Ron isn't turned off doing more Lucasarts related games after the backlash.

 

 

Edited July 2, 2022 by Toymafia88

[OzzieMonkey]

8 minutes ago, Toymafia88 said:

 

P.s I'm glad Ron isn't turned off doing more Lucasarts related games after the backlash.

 

 

I've been thinking about this, and I came to the realisation that while I'm sure Ron wants the fans to enjoy his games, he also is clearly making the game for himself as much as anyone else. RMI is something he's wanted to do for decades. He's also talked a lot about how ultimately, he's ok with not everybody loving what he does and being proud of his own accomplishments independent of an audience. He talks a lot about this in his PAX Australia speech when he refers to a statement Spielberg said about being confident enough in what you create that you will "dance naked on top of it", using The Cave as an example of a game he made that had a mixed response but he is nevertheless extremely proud of. It might take time and serious consideration, but I can see Ron taking this experience and becoming tougher from it and maybe just engaging with fans in a different, more controlled way the next time he tackles one of his old IP. I wish that last part wasn't necessary but you've gotta protect your own mental health; the shit he recieved can do some serious damage to a person's confidence, hell it made ME depressed.

 

Now on the idea itself: hell yeah! A fully voiced, prettier looking Maniac Mansion with tighter design and more puzzles? Hook it into my veins yesterday!

[MichaelSon]

2 hours ago, Toymafia88 said:

Ron just made a comment on twitter about being open to doing a Maniac Mansion remaster with David Fox.

 

It would be fun to do a Maniac Mansion remaster that was the same story and setting but 50% new puzzles and maybe a new playable character. You in

@DavidBFox

?

So, same setting we had already - remember DOTT.

 

50% new puzzles? 
Then the other 50 would be a fan pleaser?

 

Seems like an entirely new game to me.

 

I’ve enjoyed everything Ron made so far. 
Like his humor.

 

So I believe whatever he’ll do next, will be great as well.

 

Just hope if a new MM then please with NEW graphics. 
The Thimbleweed Park style is already retro.

 

And open Thimbleweed Park source code so fans can do another MM remake with Thimbleweed Park style graphics themselves.

[madmardi]

I would be surprised if he wanted to share what his next project was in advance. Seems like keeping RTMI secret until it was almost complete was the right choice

[Garystu]

He's just taunting us, isn't he? lol we all do a little trolling.

 

I'd be happy to eat these words, mind you.

Edited July 4, 2022 by Guybrush Transmasc

[Toymafia88]

I mean to me it makes sense. The two series Ron wanted to buy back from Disney was Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion.

 

I feel like maybe Thimbleweed Park was them accepting they won't get the license back and doing a spiritual successor.

 

But now... theres a chance...

 

Edited July 3, 2022 by Toymafia88

[Toymafia88]

17 hours ago, Guybrush Transmasc said:

He's just taunting us, isn't he? lol we all do a little trolling.

 

I'd be happy to eat those words, mind you.

Don't forget that Ron was very open about wanting to do a 3rd Monkey Island game. It was only when it was offered to him that he went quiet.

 

I'm guessing he's seeing if there is much interest and testing the waters before he pitches. 

[Marius]

I would LOVE another Maniac Mansion that is closer to the first game. Since Resident Evil 7 I wish for a new MM with an advanced "resident AI", where everyone inside moves around and you feel that constant tension that you have when breaking into a place. That was my favorite part of Maniac Mansion.

[MichaelSon]

You guys really think this is coming?:
https://mixnmojo.com/news/Return-to-WHAT

[Alexandra IDV]

I think Return is doing well enough that Lucasfilm will look into doing more adventure game revivals, and that if not only Ron wants to do it but Craig as well, it very well might happen. Keeping my fingers crossed!

 

(Also hoping that this is finally the time when Loom's sequel(s) happen!!)

[LuigiHann]

15 hours ago, MichaelSon said:

You guys really think this is coming?:
https://mixnmojo.com/news/Return-to-WHAT

 

I do wonder. "Back to the mansion!" is a direct quote from the beginning of Day of the Tentacle, so it could just be a joke. But I wouldn't put anything past him at this point, he seems to be doing what he can to pay respect to the legacy of LucasArts.

[MichaelSon]

15 hours ago, Alexandra IDV said:

(Also hoping that this is finally the time when Loom's sequel(s) happen!!)

Yeah, would be nice.

But LOOM wasn't that successful commercially.

So I think IF then they will bring some stronger horses onto the race track to generate some momentum and then, when the ball is rolling they come up with LOOM and such.

[deevan]

Personally, I would be more interested in a direct sequel to Day of the Tentacle with a new twist. It was a truly special game. We already got TWP from Ron in the style of Maniac Mansion. I can imagine that a direct sequel to Maniac Mansion in the same style would also be very exciting for many.

[MichaelSon]

2 minutes ago, deevan said:

I can imagine that a direct sequel to Maniac Mansion in the same style would also be very exciting for many.

Yeah, but for that Ron would need to team up with Tim Schafer as the IP of DOTT is with him I guess.

And Tim Schafer is with Microsoft now I doubt that will happen very soon.

But I do hope I mixed sth up here and am wrong. 

[Alexandra IDV]

12 minutes ago, MichaelSon said:

Yeah, would be nice.

But LOOM wasn't that successful commercially.

So I think IF then they will bring some stronger horses onto the race track to generate some momentum and then, when the ball is rolling they come up with LOOM and such.

Of course. Loom is my favorite Lucasfilm adventure game after Monkey Island, so sequels or a remaster of that is what I'm hoping for the most - but really, I'd be stoked to see more classic adventure game revivals in general.

 

2 minutes ago, MichaelSon said:

Yeah, but for that Ron would need to team up with Tim Schafer as the IP of DOTT is with him I guess.

And Tim Schafer is with Microsoft now I doubt that will happen very soon.

But I do hope I mixed sth up here and am wrong. 

Disney owns Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle - Double Fine just got the license to develop and publish the DotT remaster.

[Wally B.]

I would love a "remaster" of Loom, but mostly to have the audio drama and the book of spells in-game.

Of course if there has to be a switch from new graphics to old they have to use the EGA graphics for the old, and of course for the new style a nice Sleeping Beauty inspired painted style would be perfect.

 

I'm personally more interested in a remastered Maniac Mansion than a sequel. To me Thimbleweed Park was already a good spiritual successor of the original, and I'm plenty happy with that. Plus, a remastered would (and should) add the possibility to toggle dead ends on or off and (possibly) to alert you when you reached a dead end.

 

But most of all, I hope this whole ReMI situation can bring more original ideas for adventure games that can have more support and budget from big publishers. As much as I would love to see my favourite games being remastered or get sequels, I'd love more for the adventure game genre and industry to evolve further.

I hope I'm not getting my hopes up too much, but eh, a guy can dream...

[Alexandra IDV]

35 minutes ago, Wally B. said:

But most of all, I hope this whole ReMI situation can bring more original ideas for adventure games that can have more support and budget from big publishers. As much as I would love to see my favourite games being remastered or get sequels, I'd love more for the adventure game genre and industry to evolve further.

I hope I'm not getting my hopes up too much, but eh, a guy can dream...

Absolutely. I recently finished the sci-fi mystery adventure AI: The Somnium Files, and as I played it I thought about how grateful I was that writer/director Kotaro Uchikoshi had been given the chance to make such an original and interesting game, on a bigger scale than any of his previous works.

[LuigiHann]

Loom was SO ahead of its time that I think it'd be perfect for the current era. It was a post-adventure game too soon.

 

The game probably isn't notorious enough to sell a sequel with the assumption that players would recall the first, so a remaster would make a bit more sense, but... Honestly, my dream would be a full game that has the story of the original Loom as its first act, then adapts the plans for the sequel(s) into acts 2 and 3. The Dinky engine from RtMI, implemented with a more painterly and less angular art style, would probably work really well.

 

I am curious what kind of art style you'd land on for a Maniac Mansion remake. Ron's speculation about doing it with live action FMV is extremely appealing to me, especially if the cutscenes were FMV but the gameplay was point + click using live action sprites in a CG environment. I don't think that's really been attempted much in the HD era, and a kludgy b-movie grain filter could help paper over the seams. 

[Lagomorph01]

50 minutes ago, LuigiHann said:

Ron's speculation about doing it with live action FMV is extremely appealing to me, especially if the cutscenes were FMV but the gameplay was point + click using live action sprites in a CG environment. I don't think that's really been attempted much in the HD era, and a kludgy b-movie grain filter could help paper over the seams. 

I love this idea! And it really fits in with the whole B horror esthetic that Maniac Mansion is build around. I’d love for it to have hammy acting with C grade actors as well. Phantasmagoria comes to mind! But the whole thing should be really polished, like we’ve come to expect from LucasArts/Film Games.

[backtothemansion]

18 hours ago, LuigiHann said:

Loom was SO ahead of its time that I think it'd be perfect for the current era. It was a post-adventure game too soon.

 

The game probably isn't notorious enough to sell a sequel with the assumption that players would recall the first, so a remaster would make a bit more sense, but... Honestly, my dream would be a full game that has the story of the original Loom as its first act, then adapts the plans for the sequel(s) into acts 2 and 3. The Dinky engine from RtMI, implemented with a more painterly and less angular art style, would probably work really well.

 

I am curious what kind of art style you'd land on for a Maniac Mansion remake. Ron's speculation about doing it with live action FMV is extremely appealing to me, especially if the cutscenes were FMV but the gameplay was point + click using live action sprites in a CG environment. I don't think that's really been attempted much in the HD era, and a kludgy b-movie grain filter could help paper over the seams. 

I personally perfer a more 2d cartoon style but i'll have to get used to it if its live action

[Aro-tron]

Whoa, Maniac Mansion with FMV feels like a very wild idea in 2022...I dunno. Live action FMV cut scenes seem like such a late '90s kind of thing. Do any modern games use them?

 

The idea of using a grainy filter to make the games feel like a low-budget horror film could work, but I think most video game live action FMVs already feel kind of uncanny and low budget.

 

There were some live action cut scenes in Jedi Knight that made the game feel like a big-budget ordeal, but somehow even with the full weight if ILM music and SFX it kind of felt like the game was playing dress-up with the license. It would be a different case with a license like Maniac Mansion, but I don't know if it would work. Maybe they could re-create the sets of the old TV show while they're at it ...

[LuigiHann]

1 hour ago, Aro-tron said:

Live action FMV cut scenes seem like such a late '90s kind of thing. Do any modern games use them?

 

Very few, but not none, and generally mostly still in the Adventure/Puzzle/Mystery genre. 

 

"Her Story" was a fairly significant indie game played by examining live action footage. "Contradiction" was a quirky British detective mystery done in live action. Throwback adventure games like Tesla Effect (Tex Murphy) and Obduction (in the vein of Myst) made use of live actors in their cutscenes. 

 

In 2018 Netflix put out "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch," an "interactive film" that was functionally a choose-your-own-adventure game.

 

So it is rare and somewhat gimmicky, but not unheard of, and depending on the techniques used it doesn't always feel retro.  

 

Now, one thing I really haven't seen since the 90s is the Toonstruck-style use of a live action character being used as the player character in a digital environment during actual gameplay. Occasionally a stop-motion animated game comes out and works just well enough to convince me that you could incorporate photographic sprites in that manner, but it is hard to imagine it looking right with a real person. But it would kind of fit Maniac Mansion's schtick. 

 

Edit: also worth noting how many modern games since like L.A. Noire have incorporated real actors using 3D facial scans and motion capture. It always still looks a bit uncanny to me, but nowadays you could probably pair gameplay made that way alongside live-action cutscenes without it looking totally dissonant. 

Edited September 26, 2022 by LuigiHann

[Udvarnoky]

On 9/25/2022 at 8:21 AM, MichaelSon said:

But LOOM wasn't that successful commercially.

 

As with the commercial success of most of these games, the data is too sketchy to be confident either way. By some accounts, the game sold half a million units over its life, which if true is quite a hit for an adventure game. I don't know that I buy that number.  But I definitely wouldn't be surprised if the game sold at least as well in its time as Monkey Island 1 did.

 

I think it's possible that both things can be true: that Loom was a genuine hit in its time, but the IP being left fallow allowed it to be forgotten to the point where its own studio was cracking jokes about its obscurity in The Curse of Monkey Island. Awareness is largely a matter of continued exploitation. Monkey Island got sequelized, and Loom did not. In 1990, I doubt that Loom was necessarily considered less fit for a sequel than Monkey Island. But its creator wasn't interested right away, and other attempts to get a design greenlit didn't work out. When the moment passed, inertia had its way.

[Aro-tron]

When my family got out first PC with a CD-ROM, it was packaged with the CD versions of Loom, The Secret of Monkey Island, and like ... the Encarta encyclopedia. I know this is not the preferred version of Loom among aficionados, but it had voice acting and was in some ways more technically impressive than the CD version of MI. I liked both games, but Loom was generally confusing to me, and it seemed so solemn. To me it always felt like more of a niche title than Monkey Island. I would be surprised if it sold as well as Monkey Island did!

 

On the other hand, maybe if they had made Loom 2 instead of LeChuck's Revenge, history would regard Monkey Island as the forgotten niche title. Hindsight is weird.

[bishopcruz]

I'm sure the new ending will be amazing and totally not a troll, can't wait.