The version of Maniac Mansion on the DOTT remaster has no save slots.

Double Fine say here it is as intended:

http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/17836/

All it has is a "resume" mode, which given that Maniac Mansion has lots of dead ends is not really helpful at all - as soon as you make a mistake you'd have to restart the whole game. Personally I feel this makes it the worst version of Maniac Mansion ever released in the west.

There's a change request here:

http://support.doublefine.com/forums/300498-day-of-the-tentacle-remastered/suggestions/13074210-maniac-mansion-save-slots

DF have said if it gets enough attention they'll see if it can be changed, so it could do with some upvotes if you too feel this is an issue.

James spafford (Community Manager, Double Fine Productions) commented · March 22, 2016 17:01 · Flag as inappropriate

@Funduke We don't have the license to do that I'm afraid.

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At least there don't need to be any more questions about why they can't include the originals. ;)

Yeah, this is the one thing that's souring my purchase. At least the game isn't terribly long, so starting over isn't totally painful. Ridiculous.

If they don't have a license to add proper save slots, could "save states" be added instead. Namely taking a snapshot of where you are in the game without a proper save system. That would essentially accomplish the same thing. There are a ton of dead ends in this game (e.g. two party members dead and the third locked in the dungeon without a key) and you may not even realize it until it's too late.

The save state idea sounds good, depending of course on how the engine actually works for it. They injected a new main menu to the game. Maybe they actually reimplemented it into the main game engine, at which point you'd be saving a snapshot of DOTT +MM rather than just MM.

When I saw the launch screen for Maniac Mansion I were afraid they'd pulled a UbiSoft. I were ready to buy Flashback day one. I were ready to buy it even when it turned out the remake was apparently a horrible hackjob reimagining than a remake, at least it still had the original playable. Then it turned out the original was playable...on a small screen, with effects over, and it was one of the bad editions of the original implemented with missing content.

Haven't sunk time into MM in the remaster, but what I saw, once you get started you at least have full screen mode and it seems like the classic edition, hopefully nothing was cut out for no good reason...apart apparently for save slots. If you follow the link to the thread further up, it seems they have license to add save slots...The comment was in response to a request of including the original Dosv2 files so people could play it in ScummVM like they could with the original DOTT release's version.

Well I'm no fan of copyright laws either, and yet companies have to follow them, because they are... well, the law.

Yeah, but if Disney now owns the Lucasarts games, then what's the holdup there I wonder?

Why would you assume that it's any easier to negotiate something with Disney, than it was with Lucas? At best I would expect no change at all.

Well, I mean Disney is technically already here via the other Lucasarts games on gog. I guess that's what i'm getting at. Though if Double Fine can manage to fix the save issue with MM, then I guess it doesn't really matter to me if we get the original.

Hi,

Have you tried using SCUMMVM to see if it recognises the version of Maniac Mansion supplied with DotT Remastered (add game and point it to the according directory)? That should solve your problem if it works - savegame slots galore... I have not got the remastered version (yet) but the version of Maniac Mansion supplied with the English versions of DotT (floppy and CD - in my case the CD and I still have it - I also used to have the German CD version but gave it away later because I did not like the German translation and voices - the English voices are just amazing!) at the time was the original version where you only had one savegame slot anyway while the German CD version and probably also the floppy version came with the EGA version that had more savegame slots (8 if I remember correctly - better but still not enough in my opinion). In the original version of DotT, Maniac Mansion has its own subdirectory and all they had done was to rename MANIAC.EXE to MANIAC.OVL. If you reverse that or copy MANIAC.OVL to MANIAC.EXE you can start Maniac Mansion independently (press F5 for the save game menu). Should that not work, do not waste your time, try Maniac Mansion Deluxe instead. Yes, you can still get it - some German computer magazine sites, for example, are still hosting it. LucasArts may not have endorsed it but at least Ron Gilbert did. He could not have praised it more had he tried ;-).


Cheers
Patrick

Hiya,

Unfortunately there are no such files. There is a massive archive file called Tenta.cle which I suspect is where the game files are. It is possible that if someone manages to decompress it, we can use it with ScummVM depending on what DF has done to the files. Part of the support request I submitted to DF:

http://support.doublefine.com/forums/300498-day-of-the-tentacle-remastered/suggestions/13074210-maniac-mansion-save-slots

requests they expose the files in the installation directory for that exact purpose.

I already own Maniac Mansion on the NES - which I consider to be the best version with the chiptunes and elimination of the "what is" command(as well as the C64like DOS V1 version via original DOTT)

However this would be my first time owning the DOSV2 version, perhaps the best version with Gary Winnick's original graphics (though I hear amiga is better sound-wise). Maniac Mansion Deluxe is nice too, but I would like a legal version of the DOS V2 version that works, so I'm hoping DF fixes this.

Have you tried to unpack it with 7Zip? Might work unless they are using their own compressing algorythm.

Yup, first thing I tried :D

I'm sure someone will manage to unpack it sooner or later, but it's still up for question whether the files are even in a state to be used by scummvm. We'll see I guess.

Alas, copyright holders can be a bunch of tossers sometimes.

Good news everyone, I got this email from Double Fine support regarding the save slots for Maniac Mansion:

"We are working on an update to add additional save slots, and a manual save to Maniac Mansion. Priority wise this will likely appear after we have addressed the issues affecting DOTT gameplay."