Hello Darkness! The Official Blog of Helen Keller

Folks,

Firstly, I'm not sure about policy regarding swearing in the Subject Line and I'm too lazy to look it up. I treat the SL (for those in the know) as a teaser. Something to whet your little whistles and cause you to click the fuck on the link to come here. The above line should have more accurately read: "Classic Gaming: What you Cockdongs All Missed".

Flashback to the late 80's, early 90's. Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine has just come out and Trent Reznor's trying to include melodies in his songs, Kurt Cobain has blown his head inside out in the begonias (begonias? How 'bout Wehardlyknewyas!)by the garage, Blossom was about to bloom debates regarding the fuckability of her friend Six (which ultimately settled on the "Only in the ass" option) and a little company called LucasArts was taking computer games in an undervalued direction.

Games were pretty sanitized for the home market in the late 80's, early 90's. Unlike today where I can get bonus points for fucking a hooker up the nose or Mortal Kombatting somebody's butt-cheeks wide open, there were still taboos that hadn't been crossed yet back then.

Sure, the Atari had it's share of porn-games, but fuck, they were terrible. If anybody ever jerked off or got his chick hot one night by playing a shitty game where a guy with a jackhammer dick shoots cum-shots randomly off a building and a couple of hungry hungry ho's at the bottom have to swallow it, he's a fucking champ. You'd be better off fantasizing about getting your left ball caught in the gangplank of a cruise ship headed out to sea. Violent games existed too. Razorsoft's Techno Cop and StormLord come to mind, but the violence was limited to canned animations of crudely understood violence. If it weren't for the red, you wouldn't know they're dead. Britney Spears knows a similar little rhyme, but it's more of a cautionary one about sneezing blood and enough cocaine for the night. Every other game more-or-less consisted of jumping on an enemy's head or shooting him with a pellet-gun.

But LucasArts was doing something totally different. They were going for puzzles and humour. Especially one Ron Gilbert. In the context of a computer puzzle game, sometimes the puzzles just don't make sense. Why would the player need to activate a bus' gear-shift by replacing the broken handle with a toilet plunger they picked up in another area? Isn't anything else substitutable (is that even a word? Who cares? I'm awesome enough to make it substitutable.) for the handle? Essentially, it's an absurd answer to a quasi-realistic problem. So LucasArts turned the absurdity into a joke.

And boy, did the audiences sure follow:

1987: MANIAC MANSION



The very first of the LucasArts (LucasFilm at the time) point 'n click adventure series. Dave's girlfriend Sandy has been kidnapped by Dr. Fred who's under the influence of an evil purple meteor from space! (Of course, shitty premises for hit ideas didn't resurface until Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. What is it with people being captivated by old women craving cock?) Dave has to select two friends to enter Dr. Fred's mansion and get Sandy back! Each friend from a roster of a bunch has special skills which allow them to do different things in the mansion. A clever way to extend the life of the game since each friend combo pushed the player to discover the way to use their unique skills to finish the game and find the multiple endings. If Bernard fixed the radio, he could call the intergalactic police; if Sid helped the Green Tentacle (there's a Green Tentacle in the game) record a demo tape, he'd open the door to Sandy's lair, if Wendy got the meteor's manuscript, she could fudge it more than that loser-shit did who faked A Million Little Pieces and totally got fucking busted on it. The player interacted with the game by combining items in the inventory or on screen with a list of verbs to form instructional sentences. That is, if a player clicked the "open" verb on a rusted gate, the game would prompt "Open rusted grate with" and the player would then have to find the appropriate item to open the goddamn gate. If you were lazy and stupid or a Conservative, you'd conceivably could solve the game by combining all verbs with all items sequentially, but, why play the fucking game then?

1988: ZAK MCKRACKEN AND THE ALIEN MINDBENDERS



What better way to follow up the smash-hit Maniac Mansion than by finally answering the question "Where the flipping fucking hell is the goddamn chainsaw gasoline?" with "On a friendly hostel in Mars where two Yale Co-eds have found it after travelling there in a space-worthy Winnebago!"

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders was the spirit of Maniac Mansion evolved. The evil Caponian aliens are dumbing down Earth's population using a dumbing down machine over the telephone lines at the phone company for an imminent take over but the nice Skolarian aliens have given Zak, too poor to have phone service, dreams on how to save the world by assembling their device! The puzzles in ZMAMB were a step up over Maniac Mansion. The game was bigger by far, so more puzzle areas with more items meant for more convoluted puzzle solutions but the jokes accompanying the answers were much better. Getting the oxygen tank from the airplane involved running a stewardess ragged by clogging a sink and then blowing up an egg in the microwave. You brought the egg from home, natch. Ultimately, Zak finds the Skolarian crystals which give him different powers such as communing with animals or teleporting. By combining all three crystals and making the Skolarian device, the yellow ring of stupidity around earth is reveresed, the Caponians' device explodes (in approximately two frames of animation) and every body lives happily ever after.

But LucasArts didn't stop there. They completed this little "trilogy" with their best game yet:

1990: THE SECRET OF MONKEY ISLAND



Given a major graphical upgrade for both Mac and Amiga versions, this was Ron Gilbert's baby and the humour shone through. Guybrush Threepwood is a young turd in search of becoming a mighty pirate. Arriving at Melee Island, he passes the three piratey tests (including the insult sword-fighting, made shit in later sequels not written by Ron Gilbert) of piratehood. Along the way, Guybrush meets Elaine Marley, the governor, and falls in love. Elaine is kidnapped by the evil ghost pirate LeChuck and taken to Monkey Island. Guybrush, in true adventure style, gathers a mighty pirate crew and sails to Monkey Island to save her. Ultimately, he blows up LeChuck back on Melee Island with voodoo enchanted rootbeer. Whereas in Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken, attempts at seriousness were taken, Monkey Island gives no such quarter. The game is humour from stem to gudgeon, often attacking itself.

Pirate: "What's your name?"
Guybrush: "I'm Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate!"
Pirate: "What kind of stupid name is Guybrush Threepwood?"
Guybrush: "I don't know, what's your name?"
Pirate: "Mancomb Seepgood."

Trying to buy a pirate ship from Stan's Used Ship Emporium was hilarious. Not too often do games even attempt to be "funny games" anymore. Every so often, a game may have a joke in it, but at about the same frequency one might find a joke in King of the Hill. (Why the fuck did that show live while Futurama got cancelled? Fox with its head up its ass at its finest!)

LucasArts went on to make many more fucking awesome adventure games, including two Indiana Jones games, Full Throttle, Monkey Island sequels, Day of the Tentacle: Maniac Mansion II and Grim Fandango. Sierra eventually tried to get in on the action by making Leisure Suit Larry and Space Quest fall into line by focusing on humour, but it was too late. LucasArts championed the cause and for this, they are saluted.

Fuck, I don't have an ending.