IGN recently posted an interview with Ron Gilbert, creator of the SCUMM engine. SCUMM, the script creation utility for Maniac Mansion, was the engine behind most of the classic Lucas Arts graphic adventures and is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The interview covers the inspiration for Maniac Mansion, SCUMM's longevity, and the current state of adventure games.

IGN: What was your inspiration for Maniac Mansion?

Gilbert: A lot of different things. I had always really enjoyed playing adventure games. I had played in college on the big mainframe computers; the old Adventure, Infocom stuff… I really liked the gameplay, but I really wanted to see graphics. I had seen the early King's Quests that Sierra had done which added graphics, which I thought was a big improvement, but it had a parser. And that just bugged me. I thought, "You know, if I'm going to be playing and interacting with this game graphically, I should be interacting with the graphics. I should be clicking on the things I want to manipulate." So it came from that. I wanted to get rid of this parser. And the guy who designed Maniac Mansion with me, Gary Winnick, we were good friends and we had always loved bad horror movies. So we started coming up with this idea for Maniac Mansion

IGN: SCUMM Of The Earth

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