95 - Day of the Tentacle

Please do a whole episode about the Monkey Island series. Even just for the sake of Earl Boen appreciation!

"I didn't know you could skip dialogue pressing period key" You didn't read the manual? When I was 8 would read the manuals of my schoolmates games and explain the mechanics to them. I see that the game hits very differently if you are not audhd

Wait: timed puzzles were a thing? King's Quest had them? No wonder I have not managed to finish it in 20 years. Also "I didn't realise you could click on X" is WILD to me. Point and click adventures were about entering a screen, select a verb, and then click on the whole screen in a 3 pixel grid. How else would you fill your days when you are 8?

I am really puzzled about y'all being perplexed about the "if you wash a car, it rains, and a carriage is like a car" gag. 8 year old me in the 90s found the logic seamless

I have played this game for hundreds of hours, and, having played it in Italian, I have never even suspected it had voice acting until today.

LucasArts not being able to rest on their laurels w Star Wars IP, forcing them to get creative… something something undoing copyright / dismantling intellectual property encourages innovation, capitalism does not thoughts?

I live for y’all and your intersections of interest in theater, film, sociopolitical context and video games … thank you for this ….. … pleeeeeeease do Lorelei and the Laser Eyes ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️👀

I could never and did never get into old adventure games because of how obtuse they could be, but I loved watching people who knew them show me why they loved them. That's what this episode was kind of like. It was nice! As a big fan of Night in the Woods, I'd love to hear y'all talk about it sometime. I like that the adventure game genre is still alive, but different. I'm sure you've heard of it, but you might want to look at The Procession to Calvary.

I joined patreon just for this episode and it did not disappoint. The game is one of the greatest and I loved the conversation about it, but also appreciated the discussion about the place of adventure games in the history of this artform. Not to advocate turning y’all into a retro point n click gaming podcast, but I would LOVE an episode on The Dig or even Myst (I still can’t believe what a cultural phenomenon THAT game was)!!

For as anti player as most of the puzzle design in the Sierra games was I actually really liked the Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory series. Its noteworthy for being i think the first time Sierra games considered soft locking to be a bug rather than it feature so they did as much QA as they reasonably could to make sure it was impossible. It also gets around most of the issues people have with adventure games by adding in multiple classes and rpg elements. Puzzles need to have multiple solutions because every class needs to be able to beat the game so like if you cant figure out how to get past a door as a wizard you can still just break it down like the fighter if you have enough strength or pick the lock if you decided to give your wizard thief abilities. Also I think that series is the reason I love puns because it has a lot of them.

I’ve never heard of this game, but I love how clever the puzzles are. Also, I snorted laughing at George Washington, saying “whoa, indeed !”

brian is a leftie?!?

I guess i should feel proud that i figured out "washing the carriage" pretty quickly. but only because i happened to find the "Wash Me!" clue RIGHT before i got the soapy water.

The wars, dear George, are not in our stars, but in ourselves.

It's too bad thoughs vibrating beds probably don't exist anymore. I bet Morman teens who're into soaking are going nuts trying to track them down

New patron new patron new patron

I've only yet listened through the cold open, but I have to say, as a fan of that franchise: Six hour recap videos of Danganronpa on covid brain sounds like some weird form of torture. (but also please share which videos AJ, I'm curious now and also not currently down with the 'vid so it's fine)

Wonderful game that has a very special place in my heart. As a huge fan of adventure games that played these titles when they were new, who also experienced the arrival of 3D I have to slightly disagree with your diagnosis of why Grim Fandango and the MI game weren't such big successes. I think it's no coincidence that both these games were in 3D. That is exactly what turned me off for many years. Even as a kid, the early clunkily and plain ugly graphics of early 3D just didn't do it for me. The 2D artwork was stunning, I still remember scenes from these adventure games. Early 3D just wasn't able to create the same sense of wonder. That's also why I did not play Simon 3D, a sequel to my favorite games back then, Simon the Sorcerer 1+2.

I grew up with Day of the Tentacle and Curse of Monkey Island and still have some of the puzzle solutions memorized, like using a rubber tree trunk for the caber toss in CoMI. Also my mom had to help me with the washing the carrage puzzle because she also knew the joke about it always raining when you wash your car. Regarding left-handed scissors, the position of scissor blades is designed so that when you hold them in the correct hand, the lower blade is closer to you so you can see the line that you are trying to cut as you are using them. Also some pairs have grips designed to fit in one hand better than the other.

I played so many point and click adventure games as a kid because my dad would get me one from the bargain bin almost every time we went to Office Depot…. I don’t know why we went so often. He did not have an job that would seemingly require it.

This game was deeply formative to my sense of humor, so excited to see it be covered on the pod