Revisiting "Day of the Tentacle Remastered"

Day of the Tentacle (1993) was the first CD-ROM game I played. It was my older brother's copy, from his collection of LucasArts point-and-click adventures. That collection pretty much dominated my childhood gaming.

But subsequently, I hardly touched the genre. There were scarcely any point-and-clicks to speak of after those golden years. Now, 20+ years on, I'm revisiting DOTT.

If you hadn't heard of it, Day of the Tentacle is a crazy, cartoony yarn about saving the world from the evil Purple Tentacle. Mad scientist Dr. Edison, who created Purple Tentacle, seeks to reverse his mistake by sending nerdy Bernard and two friends into the past, via time machine. When the time machine malfunctions, Bernard returns safely to the present, but Laverne is flung 200 years into the future and Hoagie is stuck 200 years in the past... Your job is to stop Purple Tentacle and get everyone home to the right time period.

DOTT received an excellent remaster in 2016. Art-wise, the remaster feels exactly like you're playing the original, which is great! (The same can't be said of the Monkey Island 1 & 2 remasters.)

The original 1993 version.

The 2016 remastered version.

You can swap between Classic and Remastered modes anytime. This applies to the visuals, music, sound effects, and toolbar.

You can swap between Classic and Remastered versions any time.

This playthrough took 4 hours. Had it been my first time playing DOTT, I would have taken far, far longer than 4 hours. Though I had played through DOTT two or three times, it still took me a while to recall the solution to four or five puzzles. Namely: what to do with the ski-mask man, the cold wet hamster, the horse, and the cats.

The remastered version uses a dial instead of a toolbar. But you can switch back to the old toolbar in Settings.

I have only one gripe about this edition. There's a mouse cursor problem that occurs every time I move it near the bottom right corner of the screen. Within that small area, the game's cross-hair cursor freezes and Windows' arrow cursor appears. Thankfully the problem didn't prevent me from finishing the game. But while it doesn't break the game, it's a really obvious and consistent bug.

Still, the bug didn't mar enjoyment of DOTT, which I found to be as amusing, silly, and well-written as ever.

As before, you can play "Maniac Mansion" (DOTT's predecessor) in Ed Edison's room.
Except for this title screen, Maniac Mansion is the same game as before.