Gilbert would "love" new Maniac Mansion

Adventure games veteran Ron Gilbert has revealed that he would love to see an updated version of his ancient C64 point and click classic Maniac Mansion hit the shelves.

The Monkey Island creator and current Double Fine employee told an audience at the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco today that he'd even consider fixing some of the flaws with the original game.

"I would love for them to re-release Maniac Mansion the same way they did the Monkey Island games. I think that would be really neat," he explained.

"I've often thought it would be fun to go through the game and fix a lot of the problems I mentioned and get the puzzle structure more like we did in Monkey Island.

"But then other times I think 'do I really want to do that?' Maybe the game really needs to have those flaws. Isn't that a little bit like George Lucas going back and fixing all those problems with Star Wars? Maybe the game really needs to be what it is back then."

Of course, any remake or sequel is out of his hands. LucasArts still owns the rights to the game, and its 1993 sequel Day of the Tentacle. However, as Gilbert noted, it did recently release excellent HD remakes of his first two Monkey Island games, so revisiting Maniac Mansion isn't an entirely unrealistic notion.

The pioneering point and click escapade first crept out of the shadows on the Commodore 64 way back in 1987, launching the careers of both Gilbert and Double Fine boss Tim Schafer.

"Maniac Mansion set in motion a captivating chapter in the history of gaming, which in terms of wit, invention and style has arguably never been equalled," wrote Eurogamer's Kristan Reed in a Eurogamer retrospective.

Ron Gilbert's last effort, DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue hit PC, PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade last year, scoring a respectable 7/10 from Eurogamer's Kristan Reed. He's currently working on an unannounced project with Schafer at Double Fine.