Mystery Mansion

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Mystery Mansion
MMansionTitle.gif

Release type: Shareware
Release date: January 1, 1994
Levels: 5
Author: Matthew Groves
Website: mgroves.com
Registration bonus: sequel Mystery Caves, hint mini-books, 1-year subscription to bimonthly newsletter
Registration price: $10
Related games: Mystery Caves

Both of Matthew Groves’ rescued games (Mystery Mansion and Jet Driver) share several traits with Space Cadet. They call on many of RSD’s sample resources to build their environments and monster collection. They employ simple sprites, tiles, and backdrops consisting of flat colors and basic, yet well-defined, shapes. They betray a fondness for PC and arcade games over an obvious console lineage. Despite that, they feel very reminiscent of games for early-1980s Atari hardware.

In particular, Mystery Mansion feels a bit like an Atari 5200 version of Gauntlet — perhaps crossed with an ASCII dungeon crawler like Nethack or Groves’ preferred design tool, ZZT. Despite its simplicity and borrowed tiles, the game is very playable. Its controls are crunchy and responsive, and the levels make an interesting, Roguelike use of space. Of especial note are the diagonal hallways and long narrow corridors connecting open rooms.

As in all of Groves’ games, the original character sprite and behavior largely makes up for the borrowed incidentals. Here, Barry the Brave is cleanly rendered and fairly well animated. When he stands still, quarter notes spiral his head as he whistles to himself. When he dies, he slowly melts into a puddle of blood and tissue. It’s unexpected and gory, and kind of cool.

With registration, users are promised a sequel entitled Mystery Caves. This game did at one point exist; the author no longer has a copy. No one registered, so unlike the three shareware games no copies are in the wild. It may then reasonably be considered lost.

Previous Current Next
(Overview) Mystery Mansion Mystery Caves
Mystery Place series

Story[edit]

Singing and saws in Mystery Mansion

You, brave adventurer, are heading home when suddenly, you see the old Gatson estate. You know its been condemned for decades and has no electricity, water, heat, and a "NO TRESPASSING! VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED" sign, but there is a light on and a little silhouette of a man.

MansionSprite.gif

You, being brave and bold, journey to the mansion door to see who is up there and for what purpose. What you find behind the front door is something totally unexpected.

Instructions[edit]

The control of Barry the Brave is very simple. Use the arrow keys or joystick to move him around. The fire keys is space bar or button one on the Joystick.

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You can collect bonuses along the way to help you. There are three total bonuses. Garlic, a cross, and a steak will help you. Good luck!

Credits[edit]

Level 1 of Mystery Mansion

GRAPHICS

Matt Groves

SOUND

Matt Groves

MUSIC

Anonymous

PROGRAMMING

Matt Groves/Game-Maker

TESTING

Matt Groves
Nate Groves
Jeff Bussey

CREDITS

Matt Groves

Background[edit]

"CD-ROM shareware discs were common back in those days, just discs full of shareware games for like $10 or so, and Space Cadet and Mystery Mansion were both featured on one of those discs (I want to say "Game Head" volume 4 or something like that). I wasn't paid for it, but I remember being very proud of it at the time."

Availability[edit]

This game seems to have been made available on several shareware compilation CD-ROMs. More precise details TBD.

Archive History[edit]

On October 16, 2010 Matthew Groves responded to a Facebook message regarding Space Cadet. He replied that he did have copies of Jet Driver and Mystery Mansion on 5-1/4" floppy disk, but had no way to retrieve the information. He also mentioned that he had completed the promised registered versions of all of his games, though was unable to find surviving copies of the games. He agreed to send the disks along for processing.

On November 29, the data was extracted using a custom 486 tower PC, built with an Ethernet port to pass along the recovered files.

Links[edit]

Interviews / Articles[edit]

Misc. Links[edit]

Downloads[edit]