
Day of the Tentacle Remastered - doener
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/dayofthetentacle_storefront
======
atemerev
The memories!

Back in 1995, in Russia, where nearly nobody even seen any legal software,
there were countless CDs with titles like "Best 100 adventure games ever",
thoroughly repacked by your friendly Russian pirates, with launchers. On one
of those CDs, I encountered "Day of the Tentacle". I was 12 years old, and I
didn't speak English.

Few months later, when I got to this ending screen with tentacle-shaped US
flag, I understood some English, and knew a thing or two about US founding
fathers, the Constitution (probably not mentioning any vacuum cleaners),
quarter-taking laundry machines and so on. Everyday life in the US seemed no
less strange to me than mad scientist's lab with sapient tentacles and toilets
converted to time machines.

Will definitely play it again.

~~~
tripzilch
A few months ago I ate _kumquats_ for the first time in my life (weird, but
delicious). Before that I only knew the fruit from playing this game when I
was young! (not a very common fruit in the Netherlands).

I had _not_ expected them to be like tiny oranges/tangerines you can eat with
peel and all. From the graphics in the game (IIRC basically yellow circles) I
always assumed they might some kind of small peaches or you know, yellow
cherries ... :)

------
dmit
This is the perfect moment to mention that Ron Gilbert's new game Thimbleweed
Park is coming out this summer.

[https://thimbleweedpark.com/](https://thimbleweedpark.com/)

~~~
pygy_
The dev blog is a treasure trove.

[https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/](https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/)

~~~
Yuioup
Cool! Does it use SCUMMVM?

[Edit] Yes I am aware of the irony.

~~~
pygy_
No, they use a custom engine (Ron Gilbert's pre-existing engine with the
Squirrel language for scripting, augmented with custom sugar around coroutines
to more or less emulate the way SCUMM did threading).

Well, their lead tester is Robert Megone who used to work on ScummVM (and for
Revolution Software), but that's not really using ScummVM.

ScummVM is used by Disney (who bought the copyright of most of Georges Lucas'
stuff) for their GOG re-releases (10 years after LucasArts sent out the
lawyers to try to shut down the project), and by others for non-Scumm games as
well.

Also, the guy who wrote the point and click interface for Grim Fandango on
ResidualVM was hired by DoubleFine as a consultant so that they could adapt
his code for the remastered version.

That's all the ScummVM-related trivia I could remember from the top of my
head.

------
lhl
2PP (the guys that made the Broken Age doc) have also made a "making of"
featurette for the DOTT remaster:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjF4eMrYfG0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjF4eMrYfG0)

It's pretty great - showing everything from how all the artwork was redrawn,
to the remastered audio (pulled from the original DAT recordings), to Peter
Chan's remarkable concept art. (which is included in the game!)

I have the original game packed away somewhere, and I'm sure that I could run
a copy on scummvm, but for me, paying $15 to support the kind of care and
attention that went into this remaster is a no-brainer.

------
giblet
Also, Grim Fandango
[http://www.grimremastered.com/](http://www.grimremastered.com/) and Full
Throttle "Coming Soon"
[http://www.doublefine.com/games](http://www.doublefine.com/games)

~~~
the_af
Grim Fandango is deservedly loved, but Full Throttle has a special place in my
heart.

First, because it was one of the first "talkie" adventure games I legally
owned -- I think it came as a demo game with the Soundblaster card? -- and
also because of the cartoon art style and post-apocalyptic biker gangs theme.
And the voice-overs. I really, _really_ would love to see a sequel done in
glorious 2D. 3D would ruin it for me; the style was everything in this game.

~~~
david-given
And the soundtrack!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doP8gF2rais](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doP8gF2rais)

~~~
leonroy
Ah yes, The Gone Jackals. After finishing Full Throttle and being so smitten
by that tune I resolved to find a copy of their album 'Bone to Pick'. As a 12
year old kid it took me some time to figure out where to buy it but definitely
worth the time and pocket money spent!

An underrated album and still very much worth a listen.

------
tyreater
Also DRM-free on GOG(Good Old Games):
[https://www.gog.com/game/day_of_the_tentacle_remastered](https://www.gog.com/game/day_of_the_tentacle_remastered)

~~~
kuschkufan
It's DRM-free in the Humble Store as well. Look for the DRM-free icon on the
right. I'm pretty sure it's also without DRM on Steam.

~~~
slazaro
Including Steam itself?

~~~
HeadlessChild
Steam can be run in offline mode.

~~~
blub
Unless it decides that it can't and then you either go online or can't play.

Friendly DRM systems like the AppStore or Steam might seem a good idea until
one gets burned by them.

I should know, still haven't learned my lesson.

~~~
pjc50
Many old games like this that are _optionally_ available through Steam don't
actually integrate the DRM, so you can run them outside of Steam as well.

The old UFO/XCOM games for example are sold through steam, but ship as a
DOSBOX.

------
Negative1
Fond (but painful) memories of playing through Maniac Mansion and I remember
seeing DOTT for the first time at a CompUSA display showing off this fancy new
CD-ROM thing. That and Tie-Fighter were jaw dropping for the time. It's funny
because VR is supposed to be this incredible new thing but even the most
impressive demos haven't given me that same amazement as seeing games like
this for the first time.

This looks much better than the Monkey Island "Remasters" but looks like they
broke "lipsyncing"? What a step backwards.

I'm surprised this game even needs a remaster. Played it a few years back and
it still holds up -- timeless style more than makes up for a little bit of
pixelation.

~~~
BurningFrog
> even the most impressive demos haven't given me that same amazement as
> seeing games like this for the first time.

You have probably matured out of the easy amazement age.

~~~
ux-app
I wonder if there's any way to get it back as an adult.

~~~
fit2rule
Have kids. Stand back and watch.

------
CalRobert
I realize they can't always control this, but it's a bummer to see no Linux
option.

~~~
doener
"Mac and Linux versions of Day of the Tentacle Remastered will arrive
fashionably late, but they are still coming…"

[https://mobile.twitter.com/DoubleFine/status/707279700972822...](https://mobile.twitter.com/DoubleFine/status/707279700972822528)

~~~
ekianjo
Why didn't they wait to release everything at once instead of making Mac and
Linux look like fourth class citizens?

~~~
cstuder
And artificially delay the release of a finished product? Why should that be a
good idea?

Additionally, according to Steam and GoG the Mac version is available already.

------
Razengan
Now for a Zak McKracken remake or reboot, please. :)

Also a sequel, even if just in spirit, to The Dig would be amazing.

~~~
rosege
it exists - through space and time

------
tjbarbour
relevant: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/22/11284908/everybody-
loves-j...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/22/11284908/everybody-loves-jar-
jar-binks)

> "Universally beloved character Jar Jar Binks makes surprise appearance in
> new video game"

[https://twitter.com/TronKnotts/status/712317099092398080?ref...](https://twitter.com/TronKnotts/status/712317099092398080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

------
mmanfrin
It occurs to me that DotT, along with Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Curse of
Monkey Island, The Dig, Sam and Max, and a whole bunch of other IPs are now
owned by Disney.

~~~
saganus
Oh those names bring memories.

Grim Fandango, Curse of MI and Sam and max especially. Also Indiana Jones and
the Fate of Atlantis.

I know a lot of that is pure nostalgia, but I sometimes fire them again and
even finish them up yet again and wow. It's just art. It's like re-reading a
book I guess.

------
dismal2
>Players are able to switch back and forth between classic and remastered
modes, and mix and match audio, graphics and user interface to their heart’s
desire.

NICE!

~~~
MaddoScientisto
There are also some new easter eggs that appear in the new graphics, like a
jar jar binks portrait in the past that was very pixelated in the original and
some other "hidden" graphical stuff in previously unintelligible pixelated
text

------
indiefan
Is there a way for me to play maniac mansion legally on a modern computer?

~~~
david-given
Yes --- there's a copy built in to Day of the Tentacle.

Go to Weird Ed Edison's room and use his computer, and it'll start up. Or,
well, it used to. I've only ever played it on ScummVM, which didn't support
that opcode, but it was trivial to haul out the data files and run them
separately.

I have no idea whether the remastered version still contains this. I hope so
(I've never finished Maniac Mansion).

~~~
balls187
> I have no idea whether the remastered version still contains this.

It does.

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/day-of-the-tentacle-remastered-the-
kotaku-...](http://kotaku.com/day-of-the-tentacle-remastered-the-kotaku-
review-1766371712).

~~~
david-given
Awesome.

------
fla
I wonder how much of it was automatically processed vs manually
redrawn/corrected.

~~~
mechazawa
I have played the game for about two hours and it looks like most of it was
automated. It's blatantly obvious at some points.

~~~
Tobold
Yeah, when I saw the screenshots I immediately thought that it looked like the
HQx filter.

~~~
fla
It seems to do a pretty good job btw.

------
cja
"Hey, Laverne. How'd you get upstairs?"

"Am I upstairs? I got lost."

------
neves
I loved so much this game that I stopped games! I could see myself spending
days and days playing games like this and doing nothing in my life.

Does it have a version in other languages? I'd love to play it with my kids.

~~~
tluyben2
Serious remark: I am Dutch and when I was very young and computers and games
were rare I played text adventures and they were English only: I do not think
I can imagine a more efficient way of learning reading and writing as a young
child. Why not let them play the games in English? I live in Spain now and the
major complaint the youth makes about learning English is that everything is
available and usually forced (dubbing in movies and tv shows included) in
Spanish so even if they write/speak English I cannot really understand it; too
little real case practice.

Edit: also I see in daily life how my Portuguese colleagues struggle finding
answers because they read docs/learn and have errors/feedback in PT and so
search answers in Google in PT as well which often works but in some cases
does not and usually I have to figure out what the problem is in English which
will usually provide the answer. I see that the better coders in our team and
switch their computers to EN and follow the English tutorials so why not do
that straight away... For maintenance, even in small companies, comments need
to be in English so why use PT/ES in the first place for codoing. Not saying
you should teach your kids programming (although, why not) :)

~~~
the_af
A thousand times this! I learned English by playing games by LucasArts and
Sierra! (Ok, and also taking classes, but you get the point). Text adventures
were particularly good for learning, since the parser encouraged me to find
synonyms for verbs it didn't understand... I still remember I learned the word
"rub" in Space Quest 2, for the part where you need to rub berries over Roger
Wilco's body so that he wouldn't get eaten by a monster.

Games seem like a particularly good way of encouraging young people to learn
other languages.

------
MaddoScientisto
I played it a lot as a child and replaying it now made me realized just how
much I missed. Since I don't live in america I had zero knowledge of their
history so the whole past section was about some vaguely famous guys I didn't
know. Now as an adult Hoagie's dialogue just cracks me up every time and so
much more stuff is funny that I didn't notice back in the day. Basically
growing up made this game 100% better

------
FloNeu
A classic adventures - i miss them, hope someone is doing Toonstruck too :)
Would like to play this again, without my eyes bleeding.

------
dopkew
I've been searching for this game on and off for years and could never find
it! I've always been searching it as DOT or D.O.T. !!

------
omegote
Not enough bang for the buck when you can get a similar enough result with
scummvm and super sampling. I'm sorry, but I'm not giving any money to Mr.
Schafer again, I already made that mistake with Double Fine and oh God how I
regret it.

~~~
ngoldbaum
Are you talking about Broken Age? What was the problem? You got an excellent
documentary about the realities of game development, the full game, and
whatever additional rewards you pledged for.

If the issue is that the game was split into two parts, I have very little
sympathy for that, since you _still_ got the documentary, and got the full
game. You also received both halves of the game for your original pledge
amount. Games take time and effort to develop and sometimes there are delays.

~~~
omegote
The kickstarter campaign was a mess. The product was delayed a lot, it was way
over budget, and this was not the first time Schafer pulled one of this stunts
only to finally produce a game that many backers disliked (myself included).
There are many articles that explain the kickstarter fiasco better than me, if
you need more details.

~~~
rantanplan
Spot on. I was waiting for years for this game. To be honest I didn't back it
on kickstarter, but I bought it when the first chapter got out.

It was soooo bad, that I didn't even bother to play the second chapter.

2nd experience: I bought Grim Fandango remastered version. Oh my god, what a
smart money-grab move from Mr. Schafer. The game still had a _notorious_ bug,
present even in the original version, where you could lose an inventory
item(your scythe basically) and you couldn't move forward. Only solution was
to load from a previous point. I had to replay 1-2 hours work of game, so I
gave up.

As I'm saying all this... I'm gonna buy this remastered game also. Simply
because Tim Schafer knows that he can manipulate me via my childhood memories
and get away with it.

Oh well.

------
kriro
I wonder if the Maniac Mansion you can play inside DoTT is also remastered :D
Great game, one of the best outros in any game (won't spoil it). I think it is
the perfect sweet spot of an adventure game for me.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Sadly, it is not. But there was a fan remake called Maniac Mansion Deluxe
released a few years ago that has upgraded graphics. Not tried it yet, but it
looks great:
[http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/401/](http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/401/).

------
yarrel
I'm not American, so Day Of The Tentacle is how I learnt about the background
to the Declaration of Independence.

I've since met several Americans who claim this is also how they learnt about
it...

------
WorkingClassDev
I love this! Loved this game back in the day, love that Elite has been remade
and frogger as CrossyRoad now I'm just waiting for ChaseHQ to be the next
tablet blockbuster.

------
shmerl
Linux version is delayed. I'll wait for it to come out.

I wish they'd focus on sequels rather than on remakes though. For instance
Full Throttle 2?

~~~
Symbol
It was in the works after Full Throttle's success, but was cancelled. I don't
know the reasons.

~~~
WorldMaker
There was actually more than one attempt at a sequel (Payback, Hell on Wheels)
which were mostly "cash ins" outsourced by LucasArts and focused on more of
the action-y stuff (FPS were just becoming the overriding rage in games)
rather than the story telling. Tim Schafer, of course, moved on to Grim
Fandango was not involved in the sequel attempts.

New rumors are that Tim himself is considering ideas for a Full Throttle 2
once they finishing remastering Full Throttle, but take those rumors with a
giant grain of salt.

One entry way into the giant rabbit hole of old Full Throttle 2 news:

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=full+throttle+2+site%3Amixnmojo...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=full+throttle+2+site%3Amixnmojo.com&src=IE-
SearchBox&FORM=IESR02)

~~~
shmerl
Here is a good article: [https://quarterly.camposanto.com/the-art-of-
fiction-3-tim-sc...](https://quarterly.camposanto.com/the-art-of-
fiction-3-tim-schafer-dd6de299774d#.sou9mj8st)

------
balls187
First PC game I ever owned.

------
bgruber
i love DoTT, and this _looks_ nice, but I'm disappointed that they don't seem
to have given the same attention to the music they did to the visuals.

------
mike_hock
Not sure what I'd get out of this over playing the original in ScummVM.

Why not make a new game in the same style, with a new story?

~~~
HelloMcFly
Not having to play it in ScummVM, for starters. Second, an updated and much
improved UI, better resolution, improved sound, and in general improved
visuals without losing the charm (though _a few_ scenes come off with a little
less life).

~~~
waxpancake
Developer commentary, too.

------
frik
Day of the Tentacle is one of the best adventure games.

On the one side it's great that a slightly improved is now available. On the
otherside, the new "remastered" version uses the SCUMM (open source Lucasarts
game engine virtual machine) that was made by fans and can be used to run the
old games on modern systems. And those "remastered" versions are only very
slightly improved due the lack of original game art graphic files. It was
certainly easy to vectorize the vector-art style of DoT, but the "remastered"
Grim Fandango basically featured blown up background pictures out of
Photoshop. A low point of the "remastered"/"HD" versions is certainly Age of
Empires 2 HD where Microsoft closed their former studio and lost all its game
arts and therefor the HD re-release featured the same graphics and just
provided higher screen resolution as single feature that come from a fan patch
years ago. Or Age of Mythology which hasn't been improved graphical wise at
all, was already used as base for Age of Empire Online and later re-released
as HD edition again. Or the Turok remastered release, which still looks like
the 1998 3D game even with all the fog that was needed with early 3D cards but
not in 2016. Beside all these cheap rehashes, the Monkey Island 2 re-release
was great, one could switch between the old and the new graphics art on the
fly by pressing a key. (Sure the new art wasn't that lovely done and could
have been a lot better.) What I want from HD re-releases are more polished
improved games, not just cheap rip-offs often based on fan patches and mods.

~~~
vernie
SCUMM is actually the name of the original LucasArts engine. ScummVM is the
open source interpreter for SCUMM games.

