The Manhole - CD-ROM Masterpiece Edition

What works

Most everything works. User can point and click to activate hot spots on the screen causing characters to speak or the camera to move. Putting the mouse to the top of the desktop causes an options menu to appear, including the "Quit" button and sound options. There does not appear to be any way to save game progress, but that may be because there is no such thing as "progress" in this wandering game.

This game does not have an installation program. Simply run MANHOLE.EXE from the CD-ROM.

What does not

The worst bug is that, when the game first starts, it apparently does not initialize the sound card correctly. CPU usage is 100% and loud noise interrupts the music. Fortunately, this is easy to workaround: click on "Mono" in the menu that appears when the mouse hovers at the top of the desktop. I recommend switching back to "Stereo" afterwards, as the noise will no longer occur.

QuickTime animations do not work and cause the game to freeze. In particular, it is important to not install the version of QuickTime that comes on the CD-ROM. It is a 16-bit DLL which Wine currently chokes on (QTIM.DLL and QTIMCMGR.DLL). I tried installing a 32-bit version of QuickTime (both versions 2.1.1 and 7.1.5) and, while Wine does not choke, The Manhole does not detect or use it.

Fortunately, QuickTime is optional for this game. There are only a dozen movies and they can be viewed manually by opening the "movie" directory on the CD-ROM. They mostly add minor animation to the game, such as the "Z"s floating out of the Walrus as he snores or the rolling eyes of the elephant.

Workarounds

What was not tested

Game was not played through completely.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments