Maniac Mansion (Commodore 64)

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Maniac Mansion (Commodore 64).

Maniac Mansion was released for Commodore 64 in October 1987. A DOS V1 port followed, and later on versions with upgraded EGA graphics were released for Amiga, Atari ST, and DOS.

Concept Art#

Early concept art for the Edisons, created by artist Gary Winnick.

• Weird Ed is wearing a bloodstained apron over his bare chest, an outfit very different from the military fatigues he wears in the final game.
• Nurse Edna has red hair, which was not possible to implement due to palette limitations, but which was reused for her character design in Day of the Tentacle.

An early sprite sheet for the Edisons, created by artist Gary Winnick. Weird Ed's design would be completely overhauled, and all the sprites would be made taller in the final game.

Weird Ed's design here resembles his sprite work from the Famicom port by Jaleco (most notably the apron worn over his bare chest, which resembles the sleeveless tank top Weird Ed wears in the Jaleco port), possibly implying Jaleco had been given early prerelease material as reference.

GUI Mockup#

An early mockup of the game's GUI. At this point, it was essentially the same as the GUI in Lucasfilm Games' first graphic adventure, Labyrinth. A scroll wheel on the left of the GUI provided a list of verbs, and another scroll wheel on the right showed the inventory objects. At the bottom of the GUI are options to switch between the three player characters. There is only one line allotted to dialogue text, as in the published C64 release.

The background of the mansion exterior seen here was altered in the final game. Four windows are visible on one side of the mansion door, whereas in the final game there are only three on either side. The grating behind the bushes by the front steps has not yet been added. Wendy's sprite, like those of the Edisons, is also notably shorter than in the final game.

Manual Screenshot#

An early cursor design shown in a screenshot of the C64 version in the manual. The unequal width of the bars on the arrows suggests the early cursor might have been animated, with first the horizontal and then the vertical crossbars alternating between fat and thin widths. In the final game the cursor flickers from white to light gray to dark gray, but its shape never changes.

Alpha Test Guide#

An excerpt from a guide for alpha testers preserved by Aric Wilmunder. Apparently, the alpha release had only Syd, Razor, and Bernard as playable characters. Switching between characters was done via function keys, and instead of the "New kid" verb, there was a "Lock" verb that was deleted from the final game.