Day of the Tentacle

1993 · Point-and-Click Adventure · PC/DOS

Overview

Day of the Tentacle (1993) is LucasArts' time-travel adventure and sequel to Maniac Mansion, in which three friends in three different eras work together to stop Purple Tentacle from taking over the world.

Deep Dive

Purple Tentacle, a mutant created by Dr. Fred Edison, sets out to take over the world, and Bernard, Hoagie and Laverne try to stop him with a faulty time machine that scatters them across three eras. The player switches between the three heroes and passes items between time periods through the "Chron-o-Johns", so that a change in the past solves a puzzle in the present or future. The complete original Maniac Mansion can be played on a computer inside the game.

Developer Story

Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman directed and wrote the game, their first time leading a project, with early help from Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick. Built on the SCUMM engine, it was released on 25 June 1993 on floppy disk and CD-ROM. Double Fine released a remastered version in 2016.

Did You Know?

It was the first LucasArts adventure released with voice acting, around 4,500 lines of dialogue.
Adventure Gamers ranked it the best adventure game of all time in 2004.
Its art took inspiration from Chuck Jones's Looney Tunes cartoons.