2009 January 15 | Terrible Analogies

Day Of The Tentacle

January 15th, 2009 No comments

From 1989 to the end of ’93 I was serving time in the Air Force as part of an intelligence division stationed in Misawa, Japan. Thanks to my friendship with the guy in charge of the dorms I had a room to myself where everyone would gather and have parties. It was during those stressful indentured days that I fell in love with computers thanks to a one Mr. John Daley (you out there John?), who helped me track down a used 286, then helped me when I upgraded to what at the time was a screaming 486 (with a “turbo button”, baby!). This was back in the day when you had to edit your autoexec and config files to get your hardware and software working properly. Good times.

It was in 1993 when I purchased what was to be one of the best computer games ever to have been produced…Day Of The Tentacle. Published by LucasArts (who at the time were the leaders in adventure games), DoTT featured an entertainingly intelligent story line, full voice dialogue (which was a novelty at the time), and an amazing graphical interface. Bonus points go to this game for casting Richard Sanders (Les Nessman from WKRP In Cincinnati) as the voice for the character of Bernard.

I absolutely fell in love with this game.

This was during the days of BBSs when I hosted my own BBS (called “Twelve Angry Men”, which was rockin’ on a blazing 56k baud modem) out of my military dorm room. I was a local source for (among other things) the original DOOM, Commander Keen, and Trade Wars shareware software. I would stay awake for days playing Loom, Secret Of Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit The Road, The Incredible Machine, etc, etc, etc… Those were some heady days for computer game fans. Day Of The Tentacle still stands out as one of the hallmark games from the 90′s. To this day this game ranks high on many lists as one of the all-time best adventure games ever created.

I still have my entire collection of early computer games. I’ll never throw them away. They currently sit proudly on my book shelf, reminding me of a time when developers were struggling to find a voice, when there were no rules, and when gamers weren’t jaded with ever-increasing visual demands.

Here, in all their full low-fi glory, are scans of the original game manual, box art, and the included LucasArts questionnaire. Perhaps they’ll bring back memories for some of you.

Click the images to enlarge…