8. Maniac Mansion
It cannot be understated just how much Lucasarts did for adventure games with the implementation of their Script Creation Utility for Manic Mansion (or SCUMM.) SCUMM took all of the guess work out of point and click games. Whereas previously you had to not only find the right item, you had to tell the game the right action to take with it. With SCUMM, the game gave you the options and you just had to find the right ones. Released in 1987, Maniac Mansion was one of the first games to show off how good SCUMM could be. It was first released for Commodore 64 and eventually ported to numerous other places, including a heavily edited NES version that took some things out to fit with Nintendo policy at the time. Dave's girlfriend has been kidnapped and locked in a mansion and you must switch between he and his partners using their unique skills to solve puzzles to progress and eventually save the girl. Some may have been turned off by the basic story but the puzzles more than made up for it. They were expertly put together and your game progression affected which ending you would eventually get. Frustratingly you could also get into a scenario where a bad choice or forgetting something would leave you at a dead end and having to restart. What stood out most was its sense of humour, which was darkly comic, taking aim at B Movie Cliches and featuring some genuinely funny moments. The new engine revolutionized how point and click games were played with the ease of its interface and a cinematic presentation that wasn't widely seen at the time. It spawned another successful sequel, Day of the Tentacle which was another fantastic game. Most importantly it set the stage for what could be done in the genre once even more tweaks were made to the SCUMM system.