Barnett College basement from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. this one is part of the game's intro sequence, which doesn't have the verb interface and so uses the full 320x200 screen space. love the warm colors here, even though it's not a particularly cozy place.
Cavefish Lair from Full Throttle. Peter Chan was just sickeningly good at VGA backgrounds at this point, there's so much style and atmosphere here. almost hard to believe that this is still 320x200, the same resolution as the Maniac & Zak EGA backgrounds of 5-6 years earlier. i don't actually know what kind of tools and workflow Chan was using circa 1995.
the game wisely never really tells us what the cavefish's whole deal is; they're there to be a mystery from beyond the fringes of this world. going into their space is appropriately creepy, like entering a temple to alien gods.
going all the way back, to the Library from the C64 version - the original SKU - of Maniac Mansion. compared to the previous two VGA masterpieces, it seems so basic. and yet it's still a compelling room to explore. you enter from the left, and the room is dark so your first few steps in require engaging with the somewhat fiddly if thematically cromulent "fumbling around in the dark for the light" mechanic.
the spiral staircase was so tempting to ~9 year old me. sure, the sign says "out of order", but what if i got Bernard to use the tools to fix it?! there might be a whole other wing of the mansion up there! sadly, nah - but for a fairly cool reason that Ron Gilbert himself told me over 20 years later: this room is loosely based off the library at Skywalker Ranch, LucasFilm Games' first office space! the thought of doing game development in such a beautiful, historic (R2-D2 is a few feet from your desk!!) space is mind boggling to me. so yeah, they had to put the spiral staircase in, even if it didn't lead anywhere.
this room is also notable as the first appearance of Chuck the Plant - basically LucasArts' Dopefish.
Office Hallway from Sam & Max Hit the Road. so much of this game is raucous lampoon1 of roadside americana, but right at the start we need a bit of pleasantly understated detective noir to get into the mood. well, okay maybe Flint Paper isn't so understated.
the dramatic light and silhouette here really feels more like the black and white comics from which these characters originally sprang than anything else in the game. it's also just a really nice room composition. as with yesterday's edison mansion library, i really want to go up those stairs, but i am once again thwarted: "We don't go upstairs." "Not since the accident."
fun fact: at any point while playing this game you can press the B key to toggle noir mode, which simply swaps out the VGA palette for an all-grayscale one.
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"please Sam, don't ever say 'raucous lampoon' again."
