For those unfamiliar with Maniac Mansion, Ron Gilbert, or anything of any importance from the last thirty years, here's Doug's synopsis of the game:
The original version of Maniac Mansion was designed by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick. It is a graphic story game, in which you manipulate three teenagers in order to save Sandy the Cheerleader from Dr. Fred, whose mind is being controlled by an evil purple meteor from Outer Space. I didn't contribute much to the original version beyond the package slogan: His ambition was to rule the world...one teenager at a time!
He fails to mention how utterly hilarious the title was. It was a brand new world when you came in contact with characters capable of gallows humor or sexual innuendo, and Maniac Mansion -- like Sam and Max and the Monkey Island games -- proves once again that Ron Gilbert is much funnier than any of you.
Even with all the dark humor and vague references to sex, all of the Lucasfilm Games' adventures were tame. Nothing contained within them would have upset the censors at ABC or CBS, and sitcoms of the time regularly went much further. Of course, Nintendo ruled with an iron fist, and that iron fist just so happened to be made of soft-shelled crabs, and sensitive young girls. To wit:
The mansion contains a number of arcade video games. One was called KILL THRILL. The name had to be changed. Doug Glen, our Director of Marketing, suggested that we change it to MUFF DIVER, which I thought was a pretty good idea. Unfortunately, I later became aware of the NES Game Standards Policy, which stated in part:
"Nintendo will not approve NES cartridges...with sexually suggestive or explicit content"
Yikes, MUFF DIVER had to be changed again. In order to minimize the impact on the artwork, I needed to substitute MUFF with another four letter word that was less suggestive that could make sense with DIVER. We settled on the word TUNA.
Of course, it was Nintendo's game to play as they saw fit, but they didn't even seem to have a good idea of what their own standards were, or if they did they certainly had no ability to adequately explain them. Doug continues:
"Also, there are several places where nudity needs to be removed: the posters in the gym, and the statue in the hall."
There were two posters in Dead Cousin Ted's room: A swimsuit calendar, and a mummy poster. The mummy is in a playmate pose, completely wrapped in bandages, no skin visible. We ended up removing both.
The statue was a classical reclining nude. I told one of the Nintendo minions that it was a Michelangelo (the sculptor, not the turtle). There was a glimmer of hope that we could keep it if it was really art, so I sent Gary to find a book of Michelangelo's work, in the hope that he had made a statue that was similar. In fact he had, a work called Dawn, for the Medici Chapel.
Nintendo's minions said we could keep the statue if we did something about the crotch. But if they could see pubic hair where there is none, what would they see if we tried to hide it?
We removed the statue.
If that wasn't enough to cause devs to tear their hair out in bloody clumps (which would also have to be censored), Nintendo seemingly went batshit insane from time to time:
"There is also a reference at the end of the game to an "NES Scumm System" that we're not sure we understand. Please advise as to the meaning of this reference."
In the credits, which are shown after the conclusion of the game, there are two occurrences of the word Scumm, which stands for Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion. Scumm is the story game development system which was used to produce Maniac. They understood, and asked "What is NES SCUMM?" That is the version of Scumm that we did for the Nintendo. "Yeah, but it says NES SCUMM. What will people think?"
I don't know what people will think. And we will never know what people will think. I took it out.
Obviously working under the old regime was no fun. Now developers are allowed to go to much greater lengths with sex, violence and statues with landing strips, and we can thank the powers of capitalist competition for that. If you ever find yourself hoping for a day when we once again only have one console to choose from, or you become frustrated over the violence-in-games debate, take a few moments to read over how it used to be, and pray to the ghost of Lenny Bruce that we'll never again go down that route.
I never played Manic Mansion, but I always wanted to. Maybe it's better that I didn't play this lame NES version...
No wonder LucasArts abandoned putting their Scumm games on Nintendo consoles.
With the moderately good first week sales of Zack and Wiki on the Wii, and censorship no longer an issue, I hope that LucasArts has a change of heart about Nintendo and Scumm. They area perfect fit.
I want a new Monkey Island game on the WIi so very badly indeed.
I'd totally play an arcade game called TUNA DRIVER.
I want a new Monkey Island game on the Pee Ess Three!
Damn, I know Ninty was that hardcore about censorship, but not that hardcore
I remember reading about this a while back. It was pretty hilarious.
My first exposure to Maniac Mansion was the PC version that was playable by using Ed's computer in Day of the Tentacle. I never played the NES port, and had never even heard of it really, until years later.
As a semi-related aside, where in the bloody blue hell is Monkey Island 5?
Wow...nintendo....
At the time when I was a kid, I was too young to understand what sexual references were missing until I learned about the whole Final Fantasy numbering debacle and the vast differences between the JP and US versions. I thought it was part of why the ESRB exists. The ratings protect little Timmy and at the same time allow developers more freedom.
Now looking back some of the games that were more text heavy had places that made no sense because of the censorship issues, and I don't know how Nintendo could have thought THAT would be better.
As much as I miss the awesomeness that is the SNES or NES, I wouldn't want to go back to the pre-ESRB days.
Yeah, Nintendo sure used to have a knack for doing these sort of things. They even removed cigarettes from the crow enemies, blood from zombies, and even forced Ness to wear pajamas in his own dream in Earthbound.
It's kinda odd now how got the US got the uncensored RE4 and will be getting the No More Heroes uncut, unlike the rest of the world. But when so much as a nipple shows up, red flags go up everywhere.
I don't understand Nintendo sometimes it tries to embrace the casual market with cute little cartoon characters then tries for the hardcore market with games like Manhunt 2.
Douglas Crockford!? I met him at a web developer conference in September, where he (and other prominent developers) talked about the future of the web. He also invented something called JSON, which web developers now use extensively now for fancy web applications. I had no idea he worked on Maniac Mansion!
Somebody already had a story about this a while ago. A long while ago.
You can play the entire Maniac Mansion game in Day of the Tentacle?
Is there a way to get my hands on old LucasArts adventure games for legal download? Or do I just raid Ebay/garage sales/bargain bins looking for them?
Sorry to double post-- I meant like a download service like Steam or something.
Oh well, Day of the Tentacle was the superior game anyway.
Does anyone remember that there are two versions of the NES game, one where you can put the hamster in the microwave and one where you cant?
I had so much fun popping that hamster as a kid.
Uncut Maniac Mansion on the Virtual Console, please.
I think naia makes a good point about this being a pre-ESRB game. While today the average gamer is an adult, that wasn't necessarily the case in the NES days. While I agree that the content in question here doesn't seem particularly offensive, I think it's worth recalling that this was a time before the "mature" rating existed and before the "mature" audience was sizable enough to make a game targeted at adults profitable.
I'm not sure this is so much an example of censorship run a muck at Nintendo as it is an illustration of one of the challenges both developers and platform holders faced in the infancy of console gaming.
Ladies and gentlemen, I want you all to notice something. A comment like:
[b] Gamechamp
(# 11) on 11/04/2007 19:07
Somebody already had a story about this a while ago. A long while ago.[/b]
Is easily the lamest thing you can post. I'm not saying dupes never happen, but unless you can go find it and provide a link, you're only serving to piss me off. As a matter of course, I ran a search over DToid's entire archives for anything including the words "Maniac" or "Mansion," and despite Gamechamp's assurances, this was never covered before. While we have done stories on the game, and the game's periphery in the past, the experiences of Doug Crockford (and for that matter, Nintendo's horrid censorship), were never brought up. I'm glad he's been reading long enough to think it has, but more often than not, those of us writing these things have better memories of what came before than you do.
In closing, either provide proof or stop acting like this is fucking Fark.com. That goes for all of you.
And I swear to God this is the only time I'm going to respond to the jabs of the faux people of the Internet, but seriously, don't be cunts.
I remember reading the interview on a different website (not even a blog) a long while back. I was pleased to revisit the highlights of that interview through this post.
Also, seeing anything related to Lucasarts point and click adventures is sure to tickle my fancy - so keep up the good work.
Final note: this is another good reason to hate nintendo. Where's my Mother 1+2 compilation, assholes?!?!
"I remember reading the interview on a different website (not even a blog) a long while back. I was pleased to revisit the highlights of that interview through this post. "
Much better. Well done Grimspoon. Wheel your cart around back to pick up your complimentary fish tank.
Gotta love those spoony bards from back in the day
My dad bought this game when it first came out on the NES. I think I was four. My brother helped me beat it (he was 7, and could read)...it took us about 3 weeks to beat it and is still one of my favorite games.
Even though Nintendo censored it...it's still really great.
Here WDot
I own the Hamster Exploding version of the cart :)
And that ended up being the far limit of how much play I gave this game.
Damn, Nintendo were real jerks back then. I'm glad to hear some actual developer quotes about how they had to deal with them.
when i was playing maniac mansion i was young enough that all taht stuff went right over my head anyway
I think I stumbled upon this while looking up Maniac Mansion on Wikipedia or something... good read. Good thing Nintendo decided to stop pulling this shit in the SNES days after they fucked up with the first Mortal Kombat.
I remember a friend of mine from Insert Credit did an interview with several names from the early nes days. Surprising to see more things follow. And I cant disagree, it would be a "one trick pony" to see an uncut NES version of Maniac Mansion on the Wii Library.
Maybe with enough fan support, it could definitely happen.
Btw here's an interesting bit of notes on Nintendo's "Censorship"
http://www.filibustercartoons.com/Nintendo.php
Maniac Mansion: Best Game Evar.
"The mansion contains a number of arcade video games. One was called KILL THRILL. The name had to be changed. Doug Glen, our Director of Marketing, suggested that we change it to MUFF DIVER"
That's fucking brilliant.
"I'm not saying dupes never happen, but unless you can go find it and provide a link, you're only serving to piss me off."
Nex, don't sweat it. For everyone who yaps about a web site being mentioned before, there's always someone who never saw it the first time around. If this was posted earlier, I never saw it. This was new to me and it was a great read. So, even if this was a dupe I thank you for posting it.
I've been playing Zak & Wiki lately. Great game, but I really miss the story and writing of the old LucasArts stuff. I'd love to see some rereleases on WiiWare (if it ever shows up). Better yet, LucasArts should get off their asses and license the Z&W engine and make me a new Monkey Island.
"Better yet, LucasArts should get off their asses and license the Z&W engine and make me a new Monkey Island."
Well, don't go wishing things that would probably suck. What made the games good in the first place was the talent of the dudes that made them, mainly Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer. Unless they are involved, it's probably better not to revive the franchise at all...
This game was so much fun on my Apple IIGs!!!
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