What is a throwback you say?
I think webster or some other dictionary calls it a tribute to something old. Wikipedia tells you that it may refer to something “Old School”. In any event I’m giving you, Internet, a throwback.
I was a weeeeee toddler when videogames were introduced into my life. I may have been 3 or 4, but I distinctly remember a Commodore 64 in our den. It was the days where KILObytes were the highest form of computational measurement in user RAM. Real top of the line stuff.
Anyway, there was this game from LucasArts back then called Maniac Mansion. Some of you might remember it (you old farts), it had a bunch of kids snooping around, with a guy named Dave Miller as the protagonist trying to find his girlfriend Sandy Pantz.
Hilarity ensues with tentacle monsters and some evil loopy doctor running around the house trying to feed you to said tentacle monster. Then there’s the evil loopy doctor’s wacko family that has serious serious problems….all this and there’s some radioactive purple thing that is under the doc’s powers. Either way, Dave isn’t alone. No, he comes with a motley team that reeks of 80s: I remember some new wave guy; a surfer; Bernard Bournouli, the quintessential nerd archetype; and some punk rock chick (names obviously forgotten due to the fact I was THREE).
This game FREAKED me out at that time. From all the choices you had to make to the fact that one wrong move could potentially KILL your girlfriend and your friends and that the family that lived in this maniac mansion was clearly full of raging psychopaths and manic depressive plants, made my three-year-old mind whirl around like teacups at Disneyworld. In other words, it scared the shit out of me. I never could understand why my brothers, who were both 7 and 10 at the time, liked playing it to the end. Either way, as much as it was scary it was oddly compelling. I had to watch them play it, I needed to know if they were going to be OKAY!
I think in the end the purple thing was fed to one of the plants…
Fuck the ESRB ratings back then too, it was the happy days before shit like that (THANK YOU JOE LIEBERMAN, YOU JERK).
This throwback is made in tribute to this game that has potentially scarred me for the rest of my life. One of these days I will get my own Commodore 64 and play it, retro style, and appreciate what made me shit scared back in the days of ‘87-’88 and laugh.
To be noted: I haven’t played it ever since it came out because I’m a big pansy.
Oh my god, where is Sandy Pantz?
