Day of the Tentacle is one the best, funniest adventure games ever made, and it's a shining example of why this style of gaming was once so popular.

Inside the Maniac Mansion

Not only is Day of the Tentacle a work of genius, but it also features one of the single coolest Easter eggs of any game. In one of the rooms of the mansion in which the game takes place, Bernard can use a computer to play a pixel-perfect port of Maniac Mansion, the 1987 adventure game to which Day of the Tentacle is a sequel. Many subsequent sequels have gone on to feature versions of their predecessors as hidden bonuses, but Day of the Tentacle did it first and built it straight into the gameplay for good measure.

The irreverent humor, the inventive and interesting puzzles, and the cast of characters make Day of the Tentacle an unforgettable game.

There was a time, about a decade ago, when LucasArts was best known not for its Star Wars games, but for its graphical adventure games for the PC. Most all of these were very good, but some were so extraordinary that they remain uniquely remarkable to this day. In fact, we've already inaugurated LucasArts' Grim Fandango into the ranks of GameSpot's Greatest Games of All Time. Now we are imparting the same distinction on Day of the Tentacle, another LucasArts adventure influenced by the same designer as Grim Fandango, Tim Schafer, who served as co-designer on DOTT along with Dave Grossman. Day of the Tentacle is one of the funniest, wittiest, most charming, and most inventive adventure games ever made.

It also features one of the greatest video game villains ever: Purple Tentacle, whose name is self-explanatory. At the beginning of the game, Purple Tentacle takes a sip of some toxic sludge, grows a couple of stubby arms, and turns incredibly evil. So when the hapless trio of nerdy Bernard, spacey Lavern, and portly Hoagie unwittingly free the tentacles from their master, all hell breaks loose...sort of. In short, the freakish Dr. Fred ends up dumping Hoagie 200 years in the past and Lavern 200 years in the future in a pathetically failed attempt to have the three friends undo the damage they caused. It's up to you, at that point, to play as all three of the characters in their respective time periods, flushing items back and forth through the future via a toiletlike time machine and eventually thwarting Purple Tentacle's plans.

Day of the Tentacle is continuously amusing if not laugh-out-loud funny to watch and listen to. The game's exceptionally good voice acting stands out even to this day, and the excellent character animation and bizarre cast of characters--including the mummylike Dead Cousin Ted and none other than George Washington--make the game as memorable as they come. LucasArts pioneered a brand of adventure game in which you could never die--you would just get stuck for a while if you couldn't figure out a puzzle--and Day of the Tentacle is a perfect example of this carefree, frustration-free style of gaming. This is a genuine classic--very few games have matched or exceeded the quality of Day of the Tentacle's production.

I think it was the voice acting in Day of the Tentacle that really blew me away. This stuff was at least at the level of the big-budget Disney productions of the time. Plus the writing in Day of the Tentacle was razor sharp. It's like a better version of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and I don't level such compliments lightly. Very few games have ever succeeded at making me laugh, and none have quite like Day of the Tentacle.