The Manhole

The Manhole is a children's adventure game by Cyan. In this game, you open a manhole cover and find a beanstalk that you can either climb up or down, leading to fantastic new worlds in either direction. There is no beginning or ending to the game.  The goal is just to explore and have fun.

The game was first developed as a floppy disc game for Mac OS using the HyperTalk programming language by Cyan in 1988.  In 1989, a DOS version of the game was with Activision's MADE engine. Custom engines were used for the PC-9801 version in 1990 and for the FM-Towns version in 1991. 

It was later expanded into The Manhole: New and Enhanced in 1990 and The Manhole: CD-ROM Masterpiece Edition in 1994.

The Manhole: New and Enhanced is now supported by ScummVM, a program designed to let 2D adventure games run on multiple platforms. With ScummVM, it can run on modern versions of Windows, as well as Linux, Mac OS X, and many consoles such as Dreamcast, Wii, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation Portable. For a complete list of platforms supported by ScummVM, see here.