Day of the Tentacle

One of the greatest of all time. Entertaining, with a great plot, and an excellent follow up to the video game Maniac Mansion. "WKRP in Cincinatti's" Richard Sanders is great as Bernard Bernouli, and gives him the vocal life robbed of him in the video game. Penny Roberts Hope is equally charming in her dual role as the crazed medical student Laverne and kinky nurse Edna Edison. Also of note is Denny Delk, who does a great job as the stereotypical vaudeville villan Purple, a disembodied tentacle. For any kid, for anyone who is a kid at heart, this is recommended to you.

Oh man, I'm not sure which is the best--Maniac Mansion or it's sequel, Day of the Tentacle. They're both fantastic games, although one might be considered better only for graphics value simply because it was released five years later.

Of the six characters from Maniac Mansion, Bernard is the only one who returns (in super nerd format) in the sequel, along with two new friends, Hoagie and Laverne. And, while Dr. Fred was your nemesis in the first game, he returns to help the kids out in their new adventure.

The story begins with Purple Tentacle drinking from a toxic lake behind the old mansion (now an inn), turning him into a power-lusting mutant tentacle with expectations of taking over the world. Bernard learns of this when the Green Tentacle writes to him asking for help. So, Bernard and his friends go to the mansion to figure out what they can do to stop the madness of Purple Tentacle. Only things got out of hand, and now they have to travel through time in Dr. Fred's never-been-tested time traveling porter potties. Once again trouble occurs as Bernard is the only one to return to the present, while Hoagie is transplanted 200 years in the past and Laverne 200 years in the future. Your job is to navigate each friend around the mansion in their respective time periods to collect things that will fix the time contraptions and not only get Bernard's friends back to the present, but also to stop Purple Tentacle.

The game has much funnier qualities than Maniac Mansion because the plot is so outrageous and the characters are so stupid (just take a look at Nurse Edna). You even get to see the Edisons of the past (Red Edison, self proclaimed genius, and his sons) as well as the founding fathers. And, you get to see what a world dominated by Purple Tentacles would be like for us earth bound humans. It's not pretty, but it is funny all the way. This is a game that is sure to deliver good times, even if you've never played the first.

And yes, it is very much like a Saturday Morning Cartoon.

Day of the Tentacle is a point and click adventure made by LucasArts in 1993 at the height of their talents for making this type of game.

The story starts by a tentacle, yes a tentacle, drinking some radioactive waste.

Let that sentence sink in a moment.

A tentacle, the long slimy stick things we normally see attached to an octopus, and doesn't possess a mouth, drinks some radioactive waste.

You see in this game, tentacles are sentient, and able to hop around and talk and generally do the same things as people.

Completely normal you might say... well you'd be wrong!

You see the one thing the tentacles don't have, and thank god, is arms.

You see if they were able to have arms then they might - OH MY GOD!

So yeah, purple tentacle, a tentacle with a power complex, drinks some radioactive waste which causes him to sprout arms. This gives him the power, or probably more accurately, the power of confidence to then take over the world.

Exactly how he intends to do this is unclear, but lets not worry about technicalitis - or should I say TENTACALITIES?????

So anyway, much like returning home to discover you left the bath running, you then try to go back in time to turn off the tap they is spewing out the fluid in order to prevent this future catastrophe.

Which reminds me, I must call that plumber.

In DOTT, you play as one of three different heroes who each get stuck in a different period of time. One in the past, one in the present, and one in a future where humans are pets and tentacles rule the world.

However if back to the future has taught us anything, it taught us that having our own mother's fall in love with us is a terrible idea for our unborn selves, and that trying to alter time is never straight forward.

It also taught us that time travel needs a sweet sweet ride, in the form of a Deloreon.

DoTT doesn't have a Deloreon but it does have the next best thing - a toilet.

So our heroes must help one another to not only get back to the present, but to also alter the future so that humans don't get locked in cells and are forced to eat their food from animal bowls.

(eat out of a cat bowl) Though each character is stuck in a different time frame, the game allows you to sent most items back and forwords between one another by flushing the items down the toilet - though I have toi admit, I'd have to be pretty desperate to use any items I fished out of my toilet.

Additionally, this being a game set in three different time zones, we must once again use our knowledge of time travel to influence different timezones to affect one another. For example, having a tree chopped down in the past, so that it no longer exists in the future, and allows the character in the future to progress.

Due to these time travel based puzzles, and the general quirkyness of the game, some puzzles are quite difficult to solve, or have a somewhat abstract solution. That's not to say the game is too difficult, as the game is entirely placed inside one house, so the area to explore isn't necesserily large, just different in each timezone.

If you have every played a P&C game before, especially by LucasArts, then you will probably have enough experience to understand what the solution is, but maybe struggle on how to implement it. Afterall, part of P&C games IS the fact that you get stuck and will often come up with ideas on how to solve the puzzles later, and in this regard, DOTT is no exception.

Additionally, we now live in an era with this new thing called the Interwebs, so if we can't figure out the solution, we no longer have to go cry in the corner like a baby anymore, like we did back in the 90s.

Another thing to note is that DOTT is technically a sequel to Manic Mansion, a game almost exclusively known for being able to microwave a hamster, a fact that DOTT is accutely aware of, and will make fun of you, should you try to do the same thing here.

Despite being a sequel, and containing some of the same characters and locations, there is no need to have played MM to enjoy DOTT. Infact, the full version of MM is playable inside of DOTT, creating it's own mini metaverse before metaverse was a thing - shhh no one tell Mark Zuckerberg.

Point and click adventures are a genre that were very popular in the early 90s, and this is regarded as an all time classic thanks to its vibrant, cartoony graphics, it's wacky time travel based story, and it's fully voiced cast - something at the time which was a novelty.

DOTT is bold, clever and very funny. It's quirky, original concept is still novel to this day, and I would recommend this to anyone, human or tentacles alike.

Though the statement above probably sounds a bit cliched and exaggerated, it's entirely the truth. DOTT is well-animated, hilarious, and a blast to play. It's got a ton of killer lines in it too, like "You know what they say; If you wanna save the world, you have to push a few old ladies down the stairs!"

Find this game and buy it if you can. Better yet, get the first LucasArts Entertainment Pack. You'll be up to your eyes in funny adventures!

10/10 on My Personal Scale

This a absolute milestone in history of games. When i first played the game, it was 6 years ago i was suprised of the graphics and conversations in the game. It's really like a great movie=, it only takes a little longer and you'll have more fun ...

All i can say is, play it ...