Maniac Mansion

The house and everyone within a 5 mile radius

have been destroyed in a massive nuclear meltdown.

I played the original PC version. I was actually having fun with it until I realised I'd reached a dead-end after three hours of gameplay, because I'd used the paint remover on, well, the nearest available thing to use it on. And as far as I know, there are several other unwinnable situations in the game that will prevent you from progressing. There are also plenty of red herrings, such as a useless chainsaw. You would have throught you could use that to open doors, break chains or something. But no. It's just there.

I appreciate the influence of this game on the graphic adventure genre, and I have to admit the multiple-character gameplay is pretty cool for its time (and even for today!), but this just hasn't aged too well. It must have been fun in the 80's, when you had no internet and spending hours on end playing these games seemed like the only option; or if you were a child with nothing else to do. Who knows. At present, it feels extremely flawed and a time-waster... but that's okay. It paved the game for so many, more polished games in the genre.

I 100% understand why this was such a big deal when it came out. Not only is the interface surprisingly solid given it was the first major attempt at point-and-click (though a proper "look" command and some more descriptive text wouldn't have gone amiss), but the multiple character system is kind of amazing. Even when you know the solution to a puzzle, you still need to coordinate inventories, and figure out how to get the right item+character combination in the right spot at the right time. It can lead to some backtracking every so often, but it feels really great when you've laid out a plan in your head and finally manage to execute it by switching between all your characters. It's a rare game when actually implementing your solution is just as fun and challenging as figuring it out to begin with.