WEBSITE

Grumpy Gamer bit.ly/maniacdd On his blog, Ron Gilbert has posted the original Maniac Mansion design document that he and co-creator Gary Winnick used to pitch the title to Lucasfilm’s game division in the mid-’80s. It’s a nostalgia-tinged window into a simpler era of development, including a fascinatingly detailed explanation of how a point-and-click interface might work, and the whole thing is illustrated with charming penand-ink drawings. “It was just the two of us for a long time,” Gilbert writes in his post. “Eventually, David Fox would come on to help with SCUMM scripting. Three people. The way games were meant to be made.” There are plenty of ideas in the document that didn’t survive the transition to the full game as well, most notably Gilbert and Winnick’s original intention to have no player deaths at all.