Introduction

What is The Manhole?



Back in 1988, it was a floppy-disc game released by Cyan worlds, better known as the Rand and Robyn Miller company, still better known as the folks behind Myst, Riven, and uh... Uru.

In 1989 it was the first video game to ever be distributed on CD-Rom.

In the floppy disc 1988 version, it was known in particular to a young man learning to grapple with video games - it was among his first, contemporary with the Black Cauldron and Colonel's Bequest.

It was frustrating, and intriguing.

Well, what do you do in it?

That is up to you. You look around, and if you see something you like, you click on it. That will usually take you to a new screen. Lots of places are hard to get to, well-hidden, and sort of mysterious. There are some other creatures to interact with, and learning the physics of the world is a big part of the exploration. You can really see where the ideas that became Myst were brewing around!

How do you win?

That's something we'll be exploring in this thread!

So what is this thread gonna be about then?

This thread is a family psychodrama. We'll learn a lot and come out wiser, but... changed.

So how about spoilers? Are those allowed?

I can tell by that question that you don't know much about The Manhole. Suffice it to say any discussion is alright. Talk about Cyan studios, old adventure games, what's going on in the thread, I don't care. I'll be crafting some narrative in this LP, so our discussion might inform places that the thread is going. If you want something in particular to happen, throw it out there! I'm pretty good about taking thread suggestions.

How about thread participation?

A few times I'll be asking for it outright, in terms of where we go, so there's that. I might have a few other tricks up my sleeve - tag along and find out.

Can I play along?

You bet! As luck would have it, The Manhole was recently released for mobile devices! It's pretty cheap, and fun for all ages, so I think it's worth getting. There are also old copies floating around out there if you know where to look, but you'll certainly have to run them on dosbox. Feel free to explore on your own, that's the main purpose of the (vanilla) game!

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