As an example, I remember playing a text adventure from Interceptor Software in about 1984. I was stuck on a train in a station and couldn't get off. I tried everything I could think of - open door, leave train, etc - and what do you think finally worked? 'Disembark train' was the only phrase that would get the player to the next stage of the game. Yes, honestly.

Anyway, the plot of Maniac Mansion centred on an evil scientist kidnapping Sandy Pantz, the player's cheerleader girlfriend, and the player could select two other characters to help him enter the old house and rescue her. There were six other characters to choose from, each of which excelled and failed in different areas. The geek, for instance, was great at understanding how the nuclear warhead in the basement functioned but he was useless at fending off the bad guys. The whole game just dazzled with the effort that had gone into it. One room, for instance, had five arcade machines, upon which the player could take a break from the adventuring and play a simple game.

One of the inhabitants of the house was a disembodied green tentacle with ambitions of being a rock star. Yes, it was the same Green Tentacle who went on to find fame and fortune in a future Lucus game called Day of the Tentacle - which featured the complete Maniac Mansion game on a home computer which the DOTT player could take a break in.

Future Lucas adventure games, including the Monkey Island trilogy and Sam and Max Hit the Road, all owed their existence to Maniac Mansion, as will the new Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine game released this Christmas. The ironic part is that Maniac Mansion itself was a bit of a flop at first, at least commercially, and the sales figures remained very poor until it was converted to the Amiga platform, where the owners consumed games like this with a spoon.