Your story is a lot like mine. The first time I ever saw this game was in a store, running the C64 version. I didn't get to linger or play it, but the library with Bernard opening the panel to reveal a hidden cassette tape ... burned into my mind.

Weeks later, I was at a friends house, and he had a C64 too. For some oddball reasons, every friend of my childhood seemed to own a C64, while I was the only one with an Amstrad CPC instead. I waited forever for this game. And it never came.

Also, for reasons unfathomable to me, none of my friends really cared much for their C64 or their games. The computers, which were gifted to them for christmas, or birthdays, and what not, would only a few years later look like dust collectors, or plastered with stickers, or graffitti like writing all over them, half broken cases or keyboards, broken joysticks, and they were typically using really crappy TVs. For a few months I was a bit of a bad friend, because I kept begging some of them to let me play Maniac Mansion. Naturally they all had ... backups of the game. I bought C64 floppy disks and made my own, too, even though I never owned the computer.

I don't know why, but to this day I feel like my old buddies never really appreciated what treasure they had there. While I was in love with it all, the music, the graphics, the gameplay -- their patience with me playing would last up to an hour, and then, if we were to play any games on it at all, it had to be crappy Epyx sports simulations. Or we'd go outside, which I of course greatly enjoyed as well. But playing Maniac Mansion for barely a few minutes left me feeling annoyed soon. Especially considering that I wasn't permitted to save my game. They didn't understand that this was a normal thing to do, and I failed to explain it to them.

Either that, or their parents were starting to think I was a bad influence, because video games are the devil, and even when you play with friends, it's anti-social and your family is sent straight to hell.

Soon I owned a PC copy and ran it every opportunity on the computers in school. Hercules graphics Commodore PC-10 III's. I'd boot it up on all of them and leave it running, as a prank, once.

When in 1991 I finally had my first 286, a lot of things changed. I would play all and any Lucasfilm adventure that I could get my hands on. I was a fan, and I still am.