''The Manhole'' is an

adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme spo ...

video game in which the

player Player may refer to: Role or adjective * Player (game), a participant in a game or sport ** Gamer, a player in video and tabletop games ** Athlete, a player in sports ** Player character, a character in a video game or role playing game who i ...

opens a

manhole A manhole (utility hole, maintenance hole, or sewer hole) is an opening to a confined space such as a shaft (civil engineering), shaft, utility vault, or large container, vessel. Manholes, typically protected by a manhole cover, are often used ...

and reveals a gigantic beanstalk, leading to fantastic worlds.

Summary

The game was first released on

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

s in 1988 by Cyan, Inc. (now ''Cyan Worlds'') and distributed through mail order. In 1989, it was produced for

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

as a CD-ROM version based on the floppy disk game. This version was the first personal computer game distributed on

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...

(although there had already been two games released in late 1988 in Japan for NEC's PC Engine game console on its CD-ROM² format). It runs in

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

on the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

line of computers. It was created using the

HyperTalk HyperTalk is a discontinued high-level, procedural programming language created in 1987 by Dan Winkler and used in conjunction with Apple Computer's HyperCard hypermedia program by Bill Atkinson. Because the main target audience of HyperTalk ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

by brothers

Rand The RAND Corporation, doing business as RAND, is an American nonprofit global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm. RAND engages in research and development (R&D) in several fields and industries. Since the ...

and

Robyn Miller Robyn Charles Miller (born August 6, 1966) is an American video game designer who is the co-founder of Cyan Worlds with brother Rand Miller. He served as co-designer of the popular computer game ''Myst'', which held the title of best-selling co ...

, who founded the company Cyan and would go on to produce the best-selling adventure game ''

Myst ''Myst'' is a 1993 adventure video game developed by Cyan and published by Broderbund for Mac OS. In the game, the player travels via a special book to a mysterious island called Myst. The player interacts with objects and traverses the ...

''. ''The Manhole'' was later also released for the

PC Engine The TurboGrafx-16, known in Japan as the , is a home video game console developed by Hudson Soft and manufactured by NEC. It was released in Japan in 1987 and in North America in 1989. The first console of the fourth generation, it launched ...

and

FM Towns The is a Japanese personal computer built by Fujitsu from 1989 to 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and PC games, but later became more compatible with IBM PC compatibles. In 1993, the FM Towns ...

. The game was re-released for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

twice, once in 1992 by

as ''The Manhole: New and Enhanced'' (including a Windows 3.1 version) and again in 1995 as ''The Manhole: CD-ROM Masterpiece Edition'' by

Broderbund Broderbund Software, Inc. (stylized as Brøderbund) was an American maker of video games, educational software, and productivity tools. Broderbund is best known for the 8-bit video game hits '' Choplifter'', '' Lode Runner'', '' Karateka'', and ...

, which featured the use of

color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...

sound effect A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. In m ...

s, and some new

characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to Theoph ...

. Cyan artist Chuck Carter designed all of the color graphics in about three months using

StrataVision 3D StrataVision 3D is a comprehensive 3D computer graphics software package developed by Strata. Features include primitives-based modeling with texturising, keyframe animation, raytrace and later radiosity rendering under the name of ''Raydiosity ...

. In 2007, the game was released on

GameTap GameTap was an online video game service established by Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) in 2006. It provided users with video games and game-related video content. The service was acquired by French online video game service Metaboli in 2008 as ...

. As of February 2011, the game is available from

GOG.com GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt, based in Warsaw, Poland. GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through i ...

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

, and as part of the "Cyan Complete Pack" on

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

Reception

Describing ''The Manhole'' as "the first children's software to require a hard disk", ''

Macworld ''Macworld'' is a digital magazine and website dedicated to products and software of Apple Inc., published by Foundry, a subsidiary of IDG. History ''Macworld'' was founded by David Bunnell and Cheryl Woodard (publishers) and Andrew Fl ...

'' in March 1989 stated that its "realistic sounds, the fantasy-filled graphics, and the stack construction are truly impressive". The magazine "highly recommended

he game He or HE may refer to: Language * He (letter), the fifth letter of the Semitic abjads * He (pronoun), a pronoun in Modern English * He (kana), one of the Japanese kana (へ in hiragana and ヘ in katakana) * Ge (Cyrillic), a Cyrillic letter cal ...

for young children andit's hard to imagine a playful soul of any age who wouldn't enjoy exploring the mind-tickling world inside The Manhole". ''The Manhole'' won a

Software Publishers Association The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) is a trade association dedicated to the entertainment, consumer and business software industries. Established in 1984 as the Software Publishers Association (SPA), the SIIA took its new nam ...

Excellence in Software Award in 1989 for Best New Use of a Computer.

References

External links

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''The Manhole''
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Manhole, The 1988 video games Adventure games Broderbund games Cyan Worlds games Activision games DOS games FM Towns games Classic Mac OS games ScummVM-supported games TurboGrafx-CD games Video games about children Video games about plants Video games scored by Russell Lieblich IOS games Windows games Video games developed in the United States Single-player video games