Pennsylvania, USAI didn't want to post this in guides because it's not exactly speedrun routes, but the Talkshow ending is way more broken than I had imagined. If you regain control on the Wink Smiley Show set, the game will normally hang, but you can actually warp back to the Mansion for a second quest under the right conditions.
First, during the main game the New Kid menu has to be unlocked when Wendy approaches the Meteor. It is recommended to grab the Radiation Suit before the menu break kicks in or you'll have to redo it. When you give Contract to Meteor, immediately New Kid Dave, who should be positioned outside Weird Ed's open door. When "We're going to be rich" displays, immediately walk into Weird Ed's room. Very briefly hit New Kid again to pause and unpause the in game timer as Weird Ed approaches you. Then start mashing New Kid again as soon as you hear the last Meteor sound effect play. If you do it right, "What are you doing in my house?" will display very briefly before the screen wipes and goes to the Talkshow Ending.
After this (I'd just wait til the Game Over Screen), hit start to bring up the New Kid menu again and this is where it gets even stranger. Mash New Kid Dave, it will briefly take you back to the talkshow, scrolled further stage left, with an unmovable Wendy sprite and Dave's theme playing. If you do it right, after a few seconds of mashing New Kid, the screen will wipe and go to the dungeon, where Weird Ed has taken who appears to be Wendy. Hit start to bring up the New Kid menu and New Kid Dave, then walk out of the dungeon. From here' you are free to explore the Mansion, with "Congratulations, You Won The Game" and the credits scrolling.
Apparently, the Wendy sprite that appears on the talkshow set, mechanically, is actually Dave, which explains the mismatched music. If you walk out the front door, the sprite will revert to Dave. Besides warping back to the Mansion from the Talkshow set, what really sets these Talkshow continues apart from other trick endings, is you can actually go through a second quest for other "True Endings". This is because, unlike the other true endings (Rockstar, Meteor Police, Michael Ending), Meteor doesn't despawn, so you can still launch it in to space, feed it to the plant, or get it arrested by the Meteor Police. The power to the Mansion may still be out when you warp back, so you may want to turn the Circuit Breakers back on.
To get the second quest Weird Edsel launch ending, leave the Yellow Key in place during the main game. After warping back to the Mansion from the Talkshow set, you can go back up to Green Tentacle's room to get it and then get captured or walk around past the pool to the Garage. If you go the pool route, the New Kid menu will still be accessible for more potential trickery. Get the Meteor and launch it like a regular ending. After the space scene plays, it will then cut back to a repeated Talkshow ending, complete with a second true game over screen (as opposed to just the captions repeating). From what I can tell, once the Contract is given to Meteor, there is no way to trigger the porch ending cutscene.
This is useful for situations where you want to skip the Fred cutscene but can't skip the Purple Tentacle (Rockstar%, Michael Ending). Get captured in Edna's room and hit new Kid as she gets to the corner of her desk. If you get the New Kid menu up before she say's "I Got You" it's ideal, otherwise you can switch to the character outside the outer lab door and keep mashing New Kid til you see Edna's dialogue appearing at the top of the screen. From there just walk in the Outer Lab and you still have New Kid menu access. You'll want to walk up to Purple Tentacle to trigger getting captured and then quick switch to another character and back. This will breeze through Purple Tentacle's dialogue and cause Weird Ed/in the Michael Ending specifically) to show up for the proper storyline obstacle clearance. Timing is really sensitive to accidentally just skipping Tentacle altogether like normal any%. As an aside, this is how I found out that any character can get past Tentacle in the Michael Ending, no matter which one hands the film over to Weird Ed, no tele-transfer required.
So after a few months of talking about it I finally got a full run together for the proposed Super Hamsteak %, where you beat the game any% style, regain control for the extra turn and then lose with the Hamsteak ending.
The way I did it here took longer than regular any% and Hamsteak combined, but less time than the Talkshow ending. A big part of the challenge is getting rid of 2/3 characters during the main game with the hamster still available to pick up. Its about five minutes faster if you wait until the extra turn and use teledeath to finish the party from scratch, but that's not really what I had in mind and it gets complicated because of the "Hell Screen", where the other two characters aren't really there but can still respond to dying or using the Hunk-O-Matic. In any case, when I tried the post-game tele-death route the game spontaneously reset after the third "No Thanks" before the final graveyard, and so I don't think that would count as any kind of Hamsteak ending.
There's also the option of finishing the party during the main game with the graveyard overflow and beating the game as the ghost, but I feel like that is a separate thing even.
Lots to think about but i wanted to put it to you all that this is more doable than I expected. It'd be great to see some of you try to speed this up.
This is where you get a recording contract for your character instead of Green Tentacle and trigger the win from reading the contract in front of him (getting killed by him in a jealous rage optional). Among all the experimental endings, this one seemed less difficult to try routing for a speedrun then one of the ones where you both win and lose. It uses the Purple Tentacle skip, which is banned in regular Rockstar, but comes out a little faster than that, even when missing the Fred Skip. It'd be great to see some other speedrun attempts at this. This ending appears to require Dave being dead because of the timing of different versions of the porch apologies cutscene, which you need to regain control and pause during to progress to this ending.
If you're using Tele-Death to get a third gravestone with a character other than the one in possession of the hamster, you can switch back and go for a fourth Weird Ed revenge in that brief moment before Game Over would normally trigger. This overflows the graveyard and lets you continue the game without losing first. The character you were controlling for the fourth one will then return as a ghost in Weird Ed's room. From this point you can still beat the game and/or legitimately finish off the party with an already full graveyard.
In this example I tripled Dave's gravestones, got Syd on Weird Ed's fourth swing, and got Razor with the Microwave.
It's a little too slow to try in any%, but if you don't start the Weird Edsel until after the second real doorbell ring but immediately before the "Oh The Doorbell" cutscene, you can regain control and steal the package in time for Weird Ed to answer the door after "Don't Be A Tuna Head". This will make "Can't You Read The Sign, Now Get Out Of Here" the very last thing that happens before "Congratulations You Won The Game" appears.
He can also accept the package and/or not have as precise timing, like this one. On this one Sandy's dialogue from another cutscene gets mixed up and she talks back to Dr. Fred before Weird Ed collects the package..
This requires the glitch to unlock New Kid, mainly used for the Fred Skip, but takes alot less setting up and routing than the other alternate endings I've devised. Not sure how much variation there'd be in the potential time range if this was a category. The doorbell timing can be influenced but not with much precision as far as I've been able to tell.
Love 'em or hate 'em, Limited Run Games has a reprint of Maniac Mansion for pre-order on NES and PC. The deluxe box even comes with a soundtrack CD. I'm surprised I heard about this when I did but am now extra glad I didn't drop the big bucks on an original CIB copy the other week. I'm gonna guess they're using the original rom, perhaps with some hacking to update copyright credits on the menu or something at most. I'd be beyond surprised if they patched any of the glitches and stuff.
Has anyone tried speedrunning the uncensored prototype rom either with an emulator or repro cart? I prefer the official version myself but I haven't played the bootleg in ages and in light of the new attention to the advantages of 2-character mode I now wonder if there are more than just cosmetic differences between the two roms.
To do this you need to do the Weird Ed capture glitch to unlock New Kid in the lab. After Meteor Police come, use the switch like normal but quick change to another character and hit New Kid again. It fast lets you bring up the menu during the Dr. Fred cutscene and if you get the timing right after he's done with the control panel you can get one more revenge out of Weird Ed to get a third gravestone and WIN the game. You can outright skip the Dr. Fred cutscene but I find that it does help get the timing more accurate at first. You gotta wait for 12 button pushes before giving the hamster to Weird Ed. There's a few directions you can take this in:
Lose Then Win
In this version Bernard's gravestone was doubled and so Razor is still alive and present during the apologies cutscene, which occurs after the "All the kids have died" game over screen appears, but before the "Congratulations, you won the game" screen does.
Walk Past Graves and Lose
In this version Bernard's gravestone was doubled and so Dave is still alive and present during the apologies cutscene. I go for the extra turn here (hit New Kid at the last possible instant before the game would normally end, hit start to bring up the New Kid menu during closing cutscene) with enough time to walk by the three gravestones before losing (going for the extra turn when you would otherwise win off a Hamsteak ending will automatically set you back to losing). If you regain control immediately at the start of the post-graveyard apologies cutscene, the bad ending screen seems to always come on no later than when asked how Dr. Fred can repay you for your troubles. If trying it during the Razor version of the apologies ending it seems to come up even faster.
These endings are hard to get, but as far as winning off a hamsteak run, Meteor Police seems like it would be the fastest because of the downtime you have anyway that you can do additional Razor/Syd steps and you don't have to wait for the Contract, etc.
I'm not planning on speedrunning these endings anytime soon but I'd love to see it happen so if anyone is interested in trying I can maybe put together a new alternate endings tutorial vid or something.
Good running!
sorry if i'm hogging up the forum lately, just don't know who else this would pertain to as much. i was kinda joking at first when i thought of this but i figured out that you can actually get the full graveyard before you win the game, unlike the Super Hamsteak thing i brought up before which requires the full extra turn glitch. this is getting the gravestone screen followed by talkshow/you win cutscenes instead of the bad ending. it'd be great to see some runs of this sort.
Choosing the Feed Meteor to Plant option compared to the Weird Edsel ending slashes the difficulty considerably because you don't have to deal with all the minutia of regaining New Kid menu access and skipping all those cutscenes at the end. I used the pool valve to re-enable New Kid here. The route I took to get here wasn't optimized for speed, just trying to figure it out slow with a ton of backtracking. Getting the timing right on feeding the plant is tough, but if you hit New Kid too early, you'll still have Meteor in your inventory and the meltdown timer is diffused.
It'd be something else to see some speedruns of this. I know you have it in you
If you already have new kid re-enabled (timing of getting someone captured is essential) when you are ready to send Meteor to space and get what seems to be the right combination of pauses and the right timing for hitting New Kid, you can do the start to pull up the menu glitch during the apologies cutscene. Dr. Fred will start to walk around like in the lab (the only non-cutscene animation of him?). I can't say I understand the whole of how it works, but you can basically pause and return to the mansion after the "You Win The Game" cutscene. This time though, the credits are rolling at the top. All items are gone from your inventory and the other two characters are gone from where they stood, so hitting New Kid again will crash the game. The game is in an un-rewinnable state at this point and items are still gone if they were picked up, but what a hellacious twist. If this was incorporated into an alternative category, what kind of goal would it have?
Marginally useful info at best here, but if you're trying to Feed Meteor to Plant or go for some other weird bonus category, don't bother with the Pepsi Machine in the lab. The Cold Can of Pepsi will not get you past Green Tentacle.
It kinda reminds me of the Insane-o-Flex from the Aqua Teen movie. Weird unnecessary possibility when messing up the Hunk-O-Matic trick.
LOT is one of my favorite games but I haven't been able to get it running on my Windows 11 laptop (GOG version), and therefore no runs recorded. Anyone have pointers on how to fix the directdraw error? Couldn't find anything helpful or concise out there.
Thanks
I was trying to do a glitchless 100% run and somehow I got the New Kid menu to come up during the Meteor Police cutscene. I am so confused by this effect. I can't tell if the menu could have been brought up even earlier and I didn't notice. The music isn't correct either it seems. If someone can figure this out it might break Meteor Police Ending.
Here's an excerpt of the part where this happens.
Hi everyone. I just joined on here after getting inspired by the great gameplay everyone's demonstrated in the runs. Started out just wanting to revisit Maniac Mansion for some Halloween spirit but the bug really bit me after seeing the limit pushing performances you've all been pulling off. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
