Episode 1:
Maniac Mansion
Okay… NOW our first episode is up!
We chose Maniac Mansion a the first episode because it’s the first LucasArts game that utilized their SCUMM engine that helped make these games to revolutionary in the first place. It opened up a whole new world of point-and-click adventure games like Monkey Island, Day Of The Tentacle, Sam & Max, and so many others. We’ll be covering those games in upcoming episodes, but for now enjoy a deep dive into the who, what, why, and how of Maniac Mansion.
As always, you can find the podcast in these places:
iTunes: https://goo.gl/ddhs94
Android: http://goo.gl/oibiSt
Stitcher: http://goo.gl/VTFQLM
Notes
Jason mentioned an article about Jesper Juul’s book Casual Revolution. It sounded a bit like he was paraphrasing Juul. (Also, he kept calling him “Jaspers.” Wow. Just way off.) Nope, he was paraphrasing Jonathan Lessard, author of “The Casual Revolution of … 1987: Making Adventure Games Accessible to the Masses,” published in Kinephanos. You can read the entire article at Dr. Lessard’s Academia.edu page:
https://www.academia.edu/6433838/The_Casual_Revolution_of…_1987_Making_Adventure_Games_Accessible_to_the_Masses.
Jesper Juul’s book is also quite good and can be purchased here:
http://www.amazon.com/Casual-Revolution-Reinventing-Video-Players/dp/0262517396
Douglas Crockford wrote a great article about his experience porting MM to the NES. It covers all the stuff that kids shouldn’t be allowed to do: http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/maniac.html
We also talked a bit about Rob Smith’s book on LucasArts, Rogue Leaders. It’s super cool and has a lenticular 
cover. Buy it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Rogue-Leaders-The-Story-LucasArts/dp/0811861848
Jason’s beer was Smithwick’s and his song was “Everything You Know Is Wrong” by Weird Al Yankovic.
Ben’s beer was Surly Darkness and his song was “Paul Revere” by the Beastie Boys.
The Men of Low Moral Fiber would like to apologize for some of the lyrical content of “Paul Revere.” The album was their first and they spent much of the rest of their career trying to atone for it’s immaturity. In “Sure Shot,” MCA memorably rapped, “I wanna say a little something that’s long overdue / The disrespect to women has got to be through.” For more information see Mickey Hess’ Icons of Hip Hop page 110 as well as Ben Westhoff’s nuanced rebuttle.