Maniac Mansion

Maniac Mansion is the game that invented the engine most adventure games were built on for the next decade. You pick three teenagers from a group of six, walk them into a mansion owned by a mad scientist, and try to free his girlfriend, Sandy, from the basement - and who you bring changes what you can actually do.

That is the design idea that keeps it interesting. Each character has one skill: one can fix a fuse, one can pick a lock, one can play an instrument, and the mansion's puzzles are gated behind those abilities, so a playthrough is a plan rather than a sequence of steps. There are several ways to finish it and several endings. The NES conversion is faithful in structure but was trimmed for Nintendo's content standards, losing some text and options present in the computer originals - worth knowing before you compare notes with someone who played it on a Commodore 64.

• ▸Choose any three of six characters, each with one unique skill
• ▸The SCUMM engine - the scripting system later reused for Monkey Island and beyond
• ▸Multiple routes through the mansion and multiple endings
• ▸NES conversion trimmed for Nintendo's content guidelines