thordog
Feb 25th, 2007, 08:14 PM
Ahh, The Manhole. Just the mention of this game makes me smile. The Manhole, created by Cyan, was created in 1988 by Cyan - a remake was made in 1994 with color, but that is not the one I'm talking about; give me old school B&W any day. One could say that this game is a Myst for kids (since is was made by the creators of Myst and Riven). Of course, at the time I played, it didn't seem like a kid's game, but rather an extremely bizarre world of freakishness. Ahh, such wonderful childhood memories.<BR>The setup is very similar to Myst. In this game, the player explores surroundings, solves puzzles and examines things by clicking on them. The game begins with the player seeing a manhole cover and a fire hydrant. You can go over to the manhole cover, and a huge beanstalk grows out of it. You can go into the manhole, where you can, from a rabbit's living room, explore some really freaky worlds. You get to these worlds by clicking on certain objects. I can't begin to remember EVERY little thing you can do, but here are a few things that I do remember vividly:<BR>Clicking on the chest of drawers-You find a pic of a dragon that says "Do not touch"- this takes you to the dragon, where he burns your toast.<BR>Clicking the bookshelf brings you to a row of books-you can actually enter the books and explore!<BR>Clicking the painting of the ship, you can enter a sunken ship and explore that world.<BR>Inside each world you explore, you meet a host of strange characters: the rabbit (of course), the walrus, the penguin, the turtle, the dragon, and more. <BR>There are a couple of scenes that I cannot exactly remember how to get to, but I do know that they scared the crap out of me when I was younger. One was rowing a gondola around a sewer, and the other was going through a straw into some tea (I think) with crazy swirly sounding music playing.<BR>This game has to be my all time favorite PC game. I would pay a lot to own it again, but I don't know if my machine would support a game that old. The bizarre images and the amazing exploration capabilities and story definitely make this game a classic.