Day of the Tentacle

1993 Lucas Arts ©

E' il seguito del celebre Maniac Mansion, e vi ritroverete nuovamente a dover fronteggiare i tentacoli mutanti del dottor Fred. E' un avventura grafica uscita nel 1993, e pubblicata dalla LucasArts. È l'ottavo gioco ad usare il motore SCUMM. Questa volta, precisamente, i tre protagonisti viaggeranno grazie alla macchina del tempo del folle scienziato, in tre epoche differenti (passato, presente e futuro) e dovranno evitare che la storia dell'umanità possa subire stravolgimenti causati dalla conquista del mondo da parte dei tentacoli, guidati dal tentacolo Viola, divenuto cattivo per aver bevuto dei liquidi tossici. Tutto questo fra battute esilaranti e geniali trovate.

The game was released simultaneously on floppy disk and CD-ROM, the CD-ROM version came with full voice acting and soundtrack. Day of the Tentacle was designed by Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer.
Day of the tentacle begins five years after the story of Maniac Mansion. Of the seven playable characters from the first chapter, only Bernard Bernoulli, the stereotype of a nerd, makes his reappearance with two new friends: the metalhead Hoagie and the medical student Laverne. The story begins when one of Doctor Fred Edison's two creations, the purple tentacle, drinks toxic waste, obtaining two arms and from being evil but harmless because he is not intelligent, he becomes a genius with the goal of conquering the world. The task of Bernard and his friends is to go back in time with a portable toilet transformed by Dr. Fred into a time machine to prevent the purple tentacle from drinking the waste.
Unfortunately, instead of a diamond, Dr. Fred uses a fake diamond, sending Hoagie 200 years back in time, Laverne 200 years into the future, while Bernard remains in the present. Hoagie finds himself at the time of the declaration of independence of the United States and meets historical figures such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, Laverne instead finds himself in a future in which the purple tentacle's dream of conquering the world has become reality, each of them must find a source of energy to make the time machines work, Bernard, on the other hand, helped by his old friend the green tentacle must find a real diamond to make the time machine work and defeat the purple tentacle, preventing it from drinking the waste.
The game also includes the first Maniac Mansion, to play it just use the computer in the madman Ed Edison's room.
The game is therefore composed of a series of puzzles to be solved by the three characters in the three different eras, furthermore the actions carried out in the past can have repercussions on future events.
Day of the Tentacle follows the two-dimensional point-and-click graphic adventure formula first used by the original Maniac Mansion. The player controls the various characters directly with the mouse and, to interact with the game environment, simply click first on one of the actions written on the screen (Go, Use, Talk etc...) and then on an object in the game environment.
Day of the Tentacle was the last game to use the original SCUMM interface, that is, the one with the lower half of the screen occupied by the list of actions and the inventory of objects. In the next SCUMM-based game, Sam and Max Hit the Road, verbs were scrolled through with the right mouse button.
The player can switch between characters at any time. Furthermore, the characters can exchange objects by throwing them down the toilet/time machine toilet and this becomes fundamental for solving various puzzles in the game.
Furthermore, as in all LucasArts graphic adventures starting from The Secret of Monkey Island, the characters cannot die, which could happen in Maniac Mansion. This is due to the philosophy adopted by LucasArts according to which the game must not punish the player for having explored the game environment. There is only one exception to the rule in a Monkey Island sequence.

Album:

• Midi: 1 - 2 - 3
• Demo
• Solution [In Italian]
• Scarica i salvataggi (file zip 200 Kb)

Project management, production, design and lyrics:
Tim Schafer & Dave Grossman

Subject:
Ron Gilbert, Gary Winnick, Tim Schafer, Dave Grossman

Programmers:
Ron Baldwin, Judith Lucero, Jonathan Ackley, Gwen Musengwa, Tim Schafer, Dave Grossman

SCUMM Story System:
Ron Gilbert, Aric Wilmunder, Brad Taylor, Vince Lee

Artistic direction and backdrops:
Peter Chan

Character designer and lead animator:
Larry Ahern

Animators:
Sean Turner, Lela Dowling, Kyle Balda, Jesse Clark

Graphic technicians:
Jesse Clark, Ron Lussier

Music and sound:
Michael Land, Peter McConnell, Clint Bajakian

iMUSE system:
Michael Land & Peter McConnell

Lead Tester:
Jo "Captain Tripps" Ashburn

Testers:
Leyton Chew, Chip Hinnenberg, Brett Tosti, Mark Nadeau, Dan Connors, Wayne "Bo" Cline, Mark Cartwright, Matt Forbush, Dana Fong, Doyle Gilstrap

Direction and production of voices:
Tamlynn Barra

Entries:
Richard Sanders (Bernard), Danny Delk (Hoagie), Jane Jacobs (Laverne)

Packaging:
Soo Hoo Design (package design), Peter Chan (package illustrations), Mark Shepard (manual design), Wayne "Bo" Cline (manual drafting)

Collaborators:
Bill Eaken (graphic collaboration), Justin Graham (sound),
Tony Hsieh, Sean Clark, Mike Stemmle (additional code SCUMM