01. Maniac Mansion

(Various Home, Lucasfilm Games, 1987)
Point-and-click adventures are timeless. One of the very few genres that appear ageless and remain fairly unchanged from their original inception to this day are story based adventures games controlled via a small arrow and a series of verbs. Whilst it is very hard to go back to earlier versions of other genres as they can often seem dated or old-fashioned, point-and-clicks appear to be futureproof with Cruise For A Corpse, Sam And Max, Full Throttle, The Monkey Island series and many others all still as enjoyable today as they were on release.

Maniac Mansion set a precedent for this type of game. Released at the end of the 80's, Mansion saw the player take a choice of three super cool teenagers, each with their own awesome theme music, then trespass into a mysterious house in search for a friend of theirs who has vanished into the night. Before long, a bizarre, dangerous and witty story unfolds involving the twisted residents of the house and the mysterious meteor crash site nearby.

The player switches between the three characters of choice and must use each teen's specific skill in order to unlock doors, avoid traps and stay one step ahead of the clutches of the mysterious Edison family residing within the many rooms and corridors of this death trap of a house. By performing a series of tasks ranging from the logical to the downright insane, our heroes can hopefully find their damsel in distress and flee the house before events reach cataclysmic proportions.

Maniac Mansion was the debut of the SCUMM engine (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) which was an arrow and verb based interface which would go on to be used in a variety of fantastic adventure games, all following the same basic principles of problem solving and and witty, well scripted humour, practically each and every one of these games is immensely playable and mind-bendingly challenging.
Maniac Mansion was released on various formats, each having their own pro's and con's, but however you choose to play it, MM is a clever, funny and hard-working title, providing many hours of amusement and brain scratching. MM is another game I could boot up and play through right now, still finding it as enjoyable as I did when I first encountered it nearly two decades ago.

Maniac Mansion is forever. The game has cool characters, cute visuals, great sounds, brain teasing challenges and long term appeal, with multiple endings and various different paths to get there, depending on the characters you took into the foreboding Victorian estate.

Above all, it's simply a fun way to escape your troubles and while away the hours in an unreal world of fantasy and adventure..
That's avoidance? distraction? irresponsibility?
Nah, That's enjoyment, excitement and satisfaction..

..That's videogames.