Every Lucasarts Adventure Game: Ranked Worst To Best

Tim Schafer's time-vaulting romp Day of the Tentacle - a loose sequel to SCUMM-starter Maniac Mansion - is an exercise in adventure game design perfection. Nearly every puzzle follows a definite and consistent train of logic, though each has a twist as its final step, allowing the players to solve the basic equation before rewarding their ingenuity in pushing it over the line.

Here's an example. The game's trio of protagonists find themselves separated across three time periods, one of whom, Laverne, ends stuck up a tree after being hurtled into the future. Hoagie, in the past - and at the signing of the Declaration of Independence - can quiz George Washington himself on his famous, apocryphal cherry-tree chopping exploits. The inaugural pres. would be happy to prove the doubters wrong - if only there was a cherry tree around.

There isn't. But there is a kumquat tree. Paint the fruit red, and the American Fabius has no choice but to cut it down - making it disappear in the future, and freeing Laverne. It's devilishly simple, with just enough hints to guide the player along.

And how many other games let you egg on George Washington? Day of the Tentacle's outlandish humour simply doesn't let up, from exploiting a suggestion box for the US constitution to ensure all American homes have a vacuum cleaner in their basement, to microwaving a frozen hamster to thaw it out after two centuries in a freezer (this time, it doesn't explode).

The only possible criticisms - and what keeps it out of the top spots - are a setting that feels a little claustrophobic, and a zany narrative more a series of sketches to serve the open-ended design than a compelling story.

It does teach us one crucial piece of advice, mind: if you want to save the world, you got to push a few old ladies down the stairs.