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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: Florida on December 05, 2012, 01:57:34 PM

Title: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to share
Post by: Florida on December 05, 2012, 01:57:34 PM
I found this On-Line. Was it only true: "Rumours and legends were spun around the chainsaw in the kitchen that has no gas.
One of the most complete ones goes like this:
1.) a leaf of the rubber tree can be used to pump gas from the car to the chainsaw,
2.) the chainsaw can be used to remove some of the wodden planks blocking the window in the secret room,
3.) the planks can be used to repair the staircase in the library,
4.) Above is a secret room by Ted

All this is pure hoax, there is no gas for the chainsaw in Maniac Mansion. Actually, you can find the gas on Mars in Zak McKracken, but when trying to pick it up, the player is responded "This is for a different game"
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: weirdami on December 05, 2012, 04:01:12 PM
I gave up on maniac mansion after a while because pixel hunting makes for a sucky experience on any game. :-(
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: Bamiga2002 on December 05, 2012, 04:08:17 PM
weirdami, don't be such a tuna head :smack:
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: commodorejohn on December 05, 2012, 04:23:18 PM
I liked the NES version, myself. Sweet soundtrack, and a bit nicer graphics. Though it does suck to not have a mouse.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: Bamiga2002 on December 05, 2012, 04:35:55 PM
The first version I ever played was C-64 with a joystick. The game had great atmosphere and a good sense of spooky adventure. But with a mouse it was way better (and good-looking) on Amiga.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: Dragster on December 05, 2012, 05:07:30 PM
Maniac Mansion.. one of my all time favorites! Used to play it on the Commodore 64.. then switched to the Amiga and as already been mentioned it was much easier/comfortable to play with a Mouse...  it just has a great atmosphere.. I luv it!

Cheers,

Dragster
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: nyteschayde on December 05, 2012, 06:57:00 PM
Quote from: Florida;717601
I found this On-Line. Was it only true: "Rumours and legends were spun around the chainsaw in the kitchen that has no gas.
One of the most complete ones goes like this:
1.) a leaf of the rubber tree can be used to pump gas from the car to the chainsaw,
2.) the chainsaw can be used to remove some of the wodden planks blocking the window in the secret room,
3.) the planks can be used to repair the staircase in the library,
4.) Above is a secret room by Ted

All this is pure hoax, there is no gas for the chainsaw in Maniac Mansion. Actually, you can find the gas on Mars in Zak McKracken, but when trying to pick it up, the player is responded "This is for a different game"


Wow, I really never knew there was a way to get up the stairs in the library. I loved all of those games. Great stuff.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: XDelusion on December 05, 2012, 07:07:18 PM
The NES version originally allowed you to put the hamster in the Microwave.

Once Nintendo became wise to this, they forced lucas Arts (or who ever) to remove that option. :)


I am currently playing through maniac Mansion Deluxe via ScummVM on my DSiXL.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: lassie on December 05, 2012, 07:13:53 PM
Quote from: commodorejohn;717616
I liked the NES version, myself. Sweet soundtrack, and a bit nicer graphics. Though it does suck to not have a mouse.


I still play the NES version from time to time :)
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: lassie on December 05, 2012, 07:17:39 PM
Quote from: XDelusion;717631
The NES version originally allowed you to put the hamster in the Microwave.

Once Nintendo became wise to this, they forced lucas Arts (or who ever) to remove that option. :)


I am currently playing through maniac Mansion Deluxe via ScummVM on my DSiXL.

Yes Nintendo had some strange rules back then, the same when i play Wolfenstein on the SNES, the dog are rats, and Hitler has no mustage, it looks quite weird :)
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: XDelusion on December 05, 2012, 08:50:26 PM
Quote from: lassie;717635
Yes Nintendo had some strange rules back then, the same when i play Wolfenstein on the SNES, the dog are rats, and Hitler has no mustage, it looks quite weird :)


And they later removed Hitler's exploding head from the end of Bionic Commando too. :/
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: lassie on December 05, 2012, 08:56:02 PM
Quote from: XDelusion;717659
And they later removed Hitler's exploding head from the end of Bionic Commando too. :/


Yes that is right :) But Nintendo realised that they made a mistake when they released Mortal Kombat without the blood, the Sega Genesis sold more than 3 times the copies than the SNES, so when they released Mortal Kombat 2 there was all the blood in it :)
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: CritAnime on December 05, 2012, 11:50:05 PM
Nintendo's policies have been all over the place when you look back through their history. But thats just nintendo for you and I suppose, depending how you look at it, they did help shape some of the current policies in gaming.
 
As for Maniac Mansion.
 
I never finished it. The only Lucas game that I couldn't do.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: lassie on December 05, 2012, 11:55:14 PM
Quote from: CritAnime;717697
Nintendo's policies have been all over the place when you look back through their history. But thats just nintendo for you and I suppose, depending how you look at it, they did help shape some of the current policies in gaming.
 
As for Maniac Mansion.
 
I never finished it. The only Lucas game that I couldn't do.

What policies do you mean?
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: CritAnime on December 06, 2012, 12:00:26 AM
Stuff to do with what can be shown in a game and what can't. I have a book somewhere with a history of Nintendo and about the early days but it was only the sort of early ish days of it all upto the mid 90's. it was also well known that Nintendo would lock developers into some pretty ridgid clauses in order to get an approved by nintendo sticker.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: lassie on December 06, 2012, 12:03:59 AM
Quote from: CritAnime;717705
Stuff to do with what can be shown in a game and what can't. I have a book somewhere with a history of Nintendo and about the early days but it was only the sort of early ish days of it all upto the mid 90's. it was also well known that Nintendo would lock developers into some pretty ridgid clauses in order to get an approved by nintendo sticker.


Yes that is right, they did do a lot of things, when one look at there history.

What is that with your Amiga 600??
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: CritAnime on December 06, 2012, 12:07:59 AM
I don't have it any more. I had been strugelling with it a while and in the end I decided to trade it in and get some cash for pimping out my 1200. Kind of miss it but I was strugelling with ECS for the things I wanted to do.
 
Nintendo where real hard arses back in the day. I have an article in which Rare were talking about how they where handed a development system and then told to code for it without any technical manuals.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: lassie on December 06, 2012, 12:12:19 AM
Quote from: CritAnime;717709
I don't have it any more. I had bee strugelling with it a while and in the end I decided to trade it in and get some cash for pimping out my 1200. Kind of miss it but I was strugelling with ECS for the things I wanted to do.

Okay i hope you got some good money for it, so you can give your 1200 an upgrade :)
But still i can understand you miss it. Do you need AGA for the things you want to do?
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: CritAnime on December 06, 2012, 12:31:48 AM
Yeah. Some of the games I want to play perform better with AGA plus I want to play some of the Doom clones.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: lassie on December 06, 2012, 01:02:58 AM
Quote from: CritAnime;717713
Yeah. Some of the games I want to play perform better with AGA plus I want to play some of the Doom clones.


I must admit i play a lot of those Doom clones, and many are quite good. What will you put in your A 1200? an 030 CPU maybe
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: CritAnime on December 06, 2012, 01:07:06 AM
Yeah thats what I am looking at.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: lassie on December 06, 2012, 01:10:21 AM
Quote from: CritAnime;717723
Yeah thats what I am looking at.


I have an Apollo 1230 35 Mhz and 34 MB RAM in mine and it runs many Doom clones quite well. I could not afford something bigger, but i am happy with it :)
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: kd7ota on December 06, 2012, 02:19:37 AM
Quote from: commodorejohn;717616
I liked the NES version, myself. Sweet soundtrack, and a bit nicer graphics. Though it does suck to not have a mouse.


You bet! Like the soundtrack especially... I play it using ScummVM. Much easier to use the mouse to click.

Proud to say that I am probably the only one that found out about a bug in the game that I never found anywhere else on the internet. I brought it up to the ScummVM team to let them know its not a bug in the programming, but just a bug in the actual game...

So if you are quick about navigating the game and rush into using the telescope to get the combination the safe above Edna's room, No numbers are there......

This is because if you dont actually go upstairs into Edna's room and actually TRY TO USE the safe, the NES won't generate it a random number..... ;)

So if you are ever wondering why the stupid number isnt being shown by the window when you use the telescope, now you know!

I think the same holds true for many of the Maniac Mansion versions.  If you don't use the safe, it wont generate the number. :)
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: commodorejohn on December 06, 2012, 02:41:19 AM
Oh, I didn't know ScummVM ran the NES version. I'll have to give that a try :)
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: CritAnime on December 06, 2012, 03:07:23 AM
ScummVM can run the sound modes for all the major computer platforms. On an intersting side note the version of Maniac Mansion that comes with day of tenticle can't be played from within Day of the Tenticle on scummvm. you have to load it as a sperate game in order to play it. ScummVM simply says you can't play it from inside Day of the Tenticle.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: Minuous on December 06, 2012, 03:28:09 AM
@commodorejohn:

The NES version is unfortunately crap, see http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/maniac.html for a list of some of the "improvements".
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: commodorejohn on December 06, 2012, 03:33:18 AM
Quote from: Minuous;717743
The NES version is unfortunately crap, see http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/maniac.html for a list of some of the "improvements".
Yeah, that's Nintendo for you. Censorship aside, though, I totally dig the soundtrack (you just can't go wrong with "Fat Man" Sanger) and the sort of Archie Comics-stylized versions of the character sprites.

Actually, I'm going to give a try to running the uncensored prototype NES version that showed up on the 'net in 2005...

This is the perfect excuse to set up ScummVM on my 1200...
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: NovaCoder on December 06, 2012, 03:41:26 AM
Quote from: commodorejohn;717745
Actually, I'm going to give a try to running the uncensored prototype NES version that showed up on the 'net in 2005...

This is the perfect excuse to set up ScummVM on my 1200...


Let me know if you get it to run, I've never tried to run a NES game with it.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: commodorejohn on December 06, 2012, 04:05:38 AM
Quote from: commodorejohn;717745
Actually, I'm going to give a try to running the uncensored prototype NES version that showed up on the 'net in 2005...
Well, poop, the extraction tool doesn't support the prototype ROM. I'll have to drop 'em a line about this...
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: XDelusion on December 06, 2012, 06:13:50 PM
Quote from: commodorejohn;717749
Well, poop, the extraction tool doesn't support the prototype ROM. I'll have to drop 'em a line about this...


Please do, I'd love to see the prototype supported as well, if not for historical reasons.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: Lord Aga on December 06, 2012, 06:16:12 PM
Regarding Zac McKracken and Maniac Mansion.... what comes first timelinewise ?
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: XDelusion on December 06, 2012, 06:34:52 PM
Maniac Mansion came out in 87, Zac in 88.


Hmmm, can't seem to load up Maniac Mansion.nes in ScummVM. What gives?
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: Lord Aga on December 06, 2012, 06:40:41 PM
Thanx :) So I should first finish Maniac.
Pretty hard though, didn't manage to do it many years ago.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: commodorejohn on December 06, 2012, 06:50:56 PM
Quote from: XDelusion;717813
Please do, I'd love to see the prototype supported as well, if not for historical reasons.
:/ I looked it up in the feature-request list, and aggravatingly, Quietust refuses to do it, since the prototype can't be had legally (as if anyone playing the released version is so likely to have bought a NES copier and stuck their cartridge in it, instead of just downloading it from a ROM site!) I recompiled it to assume it's the prototype if it fails the CRC check, but it's complaining about resources being the wrong length and in the wrong place, and I don't know enough about SCUMM to build an index for it...
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: CritAnime on December 06, 2012, 07:35:29 PM
I thought scummvm was just an emulator for the scumm interpreter. I have never known scummvm to run NES games. If you have a NES Rom then surely the best way to run it would be through a NES emulator. And I know prototype roms can be played with any if them.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: commodorejohn on December 06, 2012, 08:16:49 PM
Yes, you can run it through an emulator, but then you have to use the D-pad to move the cursor, which is a pain. ScummVM can run the SCUMM data files if you extract them from the ROM, but the extractor utility uses one of several built-in indices for the game resources, corresponding to the different-language releases of the NES version. It doesn't support the prototype, and Quietust apparently refuses to add support. The source is available, and if I knew enough about SCUMM I could just construct an additional index, but I don't.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: XDelusion on December 06, 2012, 08:42:24 PM
Agh ha, I have no need to fire it up then. I presumed they somehow managed to add Mouse support to the old NES version.

Back to Maniac Mansion Deluxe I go. ;)
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: CritAnime on December 06, 2012, 09:04:44 PM
Ah fair enough. I thought the NES version was just a complete rework I didn't know that the scumm stuff was in there.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: commodorejohn on December 06, 2012, 09:19:31 PM
Quote from: XDelusion;717839
Agh ha, I have no need to fire it up then. I  presumed they somehow managed to add Mouse support to the old NES  version.
They did. It runs the NES version, complete with customized graphics and  music, but it has mouse support. It's quite nice, except for the  censorship.

Quote from: CritAnime;717844
Ah fair enough. I thought the NES version was just a complete rework I didn't know that the scumm stuff was in there.
Yep. The Japan-only Famicom version uses a different engine, but it's crappy anyway so who cares.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: CritAnime on December 06, 2012, 11:03:53 PM
Never noticed the Famicom version. It's got a completely different look to it.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: commodorejohn on December 06, 2012, 11:34:18 PM
Hardcore Gaming 101 compares it to the comic strip Cathy; I can't really disagree with that assessment :lol:
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: XDelusion on December 06, 2012, 11:43:37 PM
Awesome, it excites me to think that Japanese players were experiencing American classics back then! :)

Strange port indeed!!!!
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: XDelusion on December 07, 2012, 02:47:59 AM
Quote from: commodorejohn;717871
Hardcore Gaming 101 compares it to the comic strip Cathy; I can't really disagree with that assessment :lol:


I just read the review. I take back my previous comment. Too bad for the Japanese, they didn't get to experience it in near it's full glory. :(
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: XDelusion on December 12, 2012, 06:57:39 AM
The Maniac Mansion Famicom sprites. :)

http://spriters-resource.com/nes/maniacmansion/index.html
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: commodorejohn on December 12, 2012, 08:26:33 AM
Nope, those are from the NES version.
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: XDelusion on December 12, 2012, 08:36:17 AM
Even the naked Satue?
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: Bamiga2002 on December 12, 2012, 08:36:49 AM
Quote from: commodorejohn;718681
Nope, those are from the NES version.

What's the difference? :)
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: XDelusion on December 12, 2012, 08:41:19 AM
Quote from: Bamiga2002;718683
What's the difference? :)


I thought they took the naked statue out of the US version?
Title: Re: Has anyone discovered anything in Maniac Manzion and Zak McKracken they want to s
Post by: commodorejohn on December 12, 2012, 06:19:03 PM
Quote from: Bamiga2002;718683
What's the difference? :)
The difference is that the Famicom release is a completely different  port that doesn't even use NES SCUMM and has  a drastically  different, loosely anime-inspired graphics style. (http://home.comcast.net/~ervind/mmjpnes.html) Doesn't have  Team Fat's music, either.

The naked statue I think is ripped from the uncensored prototype ROM; it's not the one from the Famicom release, in any case.