Dragon's Lair

Platforms: Arcade (various, later)
First Released: 1983
Developer: Cinematronics

In the early '80s, there were plenty of things to keep us laughing in the video game world. We had nervous parents who worried that images from games played on our Ataris would ruin the television screen. We had 8-bit graphics that made people look like chickens. And we had arcade owners who looked like the school-bus driver on The Simpsons (the carnies, it seemed, had evolved). All funny stuff.

But Disney animator Don Bluth made an intentionally funny game--Cinematronics' full-motion video arcade adventure game Dragon's Lair. As Dirk the Daring, players search a haunted castle in pursuit of a kidnapped love interest, Princess Daphne. His search takes him to the Dragon's Lair, where he encounters the kidnapper, Singe the Dragon. En route, Dirk meets up with lava monsters, lizard kings, and a wide assortment of other creatures that attempt to thwart his efforts.

GameSpot's Ryan Davis says the appeal of Dragon's Lair was "physical" comedy: "The inappropriately named Dirk the Daring was the gangly antithesis of your archetypal hero, and his constant brushes with death and goofy double takes were half the appeal of this arcade classic."

Maniac Mansion

Platforms: PC, NES, Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64
First Released: 1987
Developer: LucasArts (formerly LucasFilm Games)

The graphic adventure game Maniac Mansion started it all for LucasFilm Games, at least in the humor category. Billed as the "Comedy thriller that dares to be different," Maniac Mansion places gamers in the role of a character named Dave Miller, whose girlfriend, a cheerleader named Sandy Pantz, has been kidnapped by Dr. Fred, whose mind is being controlled by a purple meteor from outer space. The game is character-driven, so whomever you choose to take with you will determine your outcome.

The humor in Maniac Mansion resides in the characters, such as Razor (who has a band called Razor and the Scummettes), Jeff Woodie, Wink Smiley, Dead Cousin Ted Edison, and Michael F. Stoppe (yes, he's a photographer). Purple Tentacle and Green Tentacle make their debut here, before Purple Tentacle later took the stage in the highly touted Day of the Tentacle, the sequel, of sorts, to this game. Maniac Mansion was designed by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick and renowned for its proprietary game engine, SCUMM (an acronym for "script creation utility for Maniac Mansion," and something developers would get much comedic mileage out of later on).

It is widely known that Maniac Mansion underwent some "taming" by Nintendo before it was released on the NES. While not regarded as LucasArts' funniest game, Maniac Mansion got the ball rolling.

Monkey Island

Platforms: Sega CD, Amiga, Mac, Atari ST, PC, PS2
First Released: 1990
Developer: LucasArts (formerly LucasFilm Games)

Monkey Island is a graphic adventure in which you play as pirate-in-training Guybrush Threepwood on Melee Island in the Caribbean. Your adversary is LeChuck, the ghost of a pirate from long before your time, and your love interest is the governor of the island, Elaine Marley. The game is loaded with well-placed humor, from the characters (with names like Gorgon Zola Cheese, Marco Pollo, Meathook, and Manuel J. Calaverus) and their hangouts (the SCUMM Bar--named for LucasFilm Games' revered game engine) to the gameplay you partake in, such as insult sword fighting.

"When we were working on Monkey Island," Schafer says, "we were just writing stuff to entertain each other." Schafer again references programmer Ron Gilbert's visits to the writers' and programmers' shared office, noting that "[if] a line made [everyone] spontaneously explode into laughter, it was the greatest feeling in the world." "And we'd then rewrite the dialogue accordingly after [Gilbert] left," he says, "cutting out the duds and expanding on the parts that got laughs. That kind of immediate feedback is hard to get in games."

Schafer says that when he first started working on Monkey Island, Gilbert came up with the idea for insult sword fighting: "My first thought was, 'Are you crazy? Not let the player control the sword? They can only control the witty one-liners between the action? The players are going to hate that! They're going to want to control the sword!' But soon it became clear that it was a great idea, and I was wrong to assume so little of the player. I learned that people actually want to be surprised. They want to try something new, as long as it's entertaining. And the insults were funny and so it worked!"

When you're making games, Schafer reiterates, it's "easy to see the public as a humorless mob [that] only wants the same thing over and over, partially because those kind of people are the loudest on the gaming forums." But he notes that's not the public at large. "I think the gaming public at large wants innovation and surprise, and humor is one of the best ways to get there."