Game

Game

Game

Game

More masteries! Been powering through the PCE this week, and this game is one that REALLY caught my eye. I’ve been wanting to look at this game for years. This is The Manhole, an early game made by Cyan, the Myst devs. And I am a HUGE Myst fan. We have this game to thank for Myst, essentially, and practically the whole first person point and click style.

This was originally on Macintosh (as you can tell from the UI, which is VERY mac), using the Hypercard format, and was revolutionary for the time. A few years later, it was ported to the PCE-CD by Japanese devs, and released only in Japan. Despite being a JP exclusive, this version DOES have an English setting, and is still basically 100% in English. All the text you see in the game is in English, it’s just narrated by Japanese voices. But again, you can turn it back to English in the menu.

So what is the Manhole? Well it’s a point and click…. not adventure, really. Did you ever exist in the early 90s? Did you go to the library and see those lines of macintoshes, and sit down to play a game, and it’s just like, an animal mascot’s house, and you click on things and little animations happened? Those were EVERYWHERE, and I think they still exist, from my experience as a librarian (usually involving Elmo now). They were “educational” games, though really there’s no educational quality to them in any way. You wander around, click on things, see the funny thing happen. They’re bizarre nonsense. But they’re entertaining, if you’re 4.

I am not 4. My enjoyment of this game is purely historical, for the most part. Well I say that, but I found myself enjoying a lot about it. The weird animations, all the hidden stuff, the arcade cabinets, all the BOPPIN’ music. It reminded me of LSD Dream Emulator, actually. There’s no gameplay, no point, just… experience it. And sometimes, that’s a thing you wanna do. You just wanna experience things.

This set took me a shocking amount of time considering all I had to do was click on all the things in this game, and it’s not that big. But there’s NO documentation on this game, really, shockingly considering its historical importance. Like, people talk about it, its history, how it inspired a genre, but no one explains “click this to get this animation”. No one cares about that. So when my emulator was busted and I wasn’t getting achievements when I was supposed to, I assumed I just missed stuff. I actually FOUND THINGS that the achievement maker missed, because I was searching so thoroughly lmao

Still, a cool game I’m glad I spent time with.