Blast from the past! Remember Day of the Tentacle?
26/6/2023
Translation: Jessica Johnson-Ferguson
The bizarre setting, oddball humour and absurd puzzles. Thirty years ago, Day of the Tentacle took my heart by storm. It’s a love that’s still strong today.
Technically speaking, it’s a sequel. Day of the Tentacle (DOTT) is the successor to the epic point-and-click game Maniac Mansion. Funnily enough, everyone seems to remember the sequel, while the memory of Maniac Mansion seems to have faded over time – if it ever existed in the first place.
DOTT was developed by Lucas Arts. The game studio made a name for itself with the Monkey Island series and the game adaptation of the Indiana Jones movies. After the developers declared both series over (spoiler: they weren’t), they decided to make a sequel to Maniac Mansion.
«Take on the world!!!»
The tentacles bred by Dr Fred all develop their very own personalities. Green Tentacle is his peaceful, somewhat simple-minded contemporary who enjoys doing sweet nothing.
Source: Florian Bodoky
Purple Tentacle has other plans. Subjugating humankind, for example. After drinking some of the toxic sewage in the garden of Dr Fred’s motel, he grows arms. Now, there’s nothing standing in the way of his plans to take on the world.
«That’s why I’ll have to do it...yesterday!.»
Flatmates Bernhard, Laverne and Hoagie want to prevent this. The only way to do this is to stop Purple from drinking the toxic wastewater. Fortunately, Dr Fred’s invented a time machine. But due to a malfunction, Laverne and Hoagie end up 200 years in the future and the past, respectively, instead of being transported to the previous day. Bernhard remains in the present. This has every character dealing with their own problems. Hoagie has to give George Washington a hand founding the USA.
Source: Florian Bodoky
Meanwhile, Laverne’s trapped in a world dominated by tentacles and is forced to constantly disguise or hide. Bernhard’s in charge of coordinating the whole operation and preventing the act of sabotage planned by hostile Dr Fred. Although he doesn’t want a tentacle dictatorship either, he primarily wants to prevent the authorities from finding out about him and his experiments.
Source: Florian Bodoky
The toilet in the time machine (the trip is long, after all...), is the place where the three antiheroes can communicate with each other and «flush» objects at each other. If you use and combine these objects in the right time dimension, you can end Purple’s reign of terror. You use your mouse as a control and work with the list of verbs known from Monkey Island – use, take, push, talk to...
Thinking outside the box
If there’s one time the overdone expression «thinking outside the box» makes sense, it’s in DOTT. Honestly, I don’t see how you can beat the game without using cheats. Apart from being very creative, you’ll have to tap into any borderline wicked traits you might have. To get to the end, you’ll have to paint cats with whiteout, lock hamsters in freezers and push old ladies. It seems that saving the world involves quite a bit of torturing and animal cruelty. So much fun, even 30 years down the line.
Source: Florian Bodoky
Feel like playing this MS-DOS game right away? A graphically reworked version has been available for purchase again on Steam since 2016. It costs 15 francs. It’s also available for PlayStation. If you’d prefer to play the original, you can do so on Archive.org directly in your browser.
I've been tinkering with digital networks ever since I found out how to activate both telephone channels on the ISDN card for greater bandwidth. As for the analogue variety, I've been doing that since I learned to talk. Though Winterthur is my adoptive home city, my heart still bleeds red and blue.
