Crystal Caves

The Good
Crystal Caves is one of the first EGA games developed by Frank Maddin an employee at Apogee who later worked on Monster Bash. You are Mylo Steamwitz, a space trader whose job is to scour the universe for treasures he can sell for a quick buck. Poor Mylo didn’t have much luck at this, having lost a fortune trying to sell Regulan Blood Stones to the inhabitants of Ghoulbone IV. He tries again by flying his Millennium Kiwi to the mines in the Altarian Star System, and sell whatever he can get his hands on at the Galactic Trading Post. As you will eventually see, any investments Mylo has in mind will be all for nothing.

It consists of three episodes: “The Trouble with Twibbles”, “Slugging it out”, and “Mylo vs. the Supernova”. Back in the day, episode one was free to download from a BBS and you could play it for free, and if you enjoyed it, you sent a small amount of money to Apogee to get the final two episodes and some extras. Each episode opens with an amusing introduction showing Mylo having a bit of trouble with the Kiwi, and has difficulty passing a planet with something orbiting around it. In the third episode, he blows a hole in the planet and passes through it.

You have to make your way down to the mines, passing the planet Mylo had to deal with as well as an erupting volcano. (I love watching Mylo skid his way around.) There are sixteen gray doors, and going through these lead you down into the actual caves. It basically works the same way as Super Mario Bros. 3, except you can’t re-enter a cave already completed. Once inside, the object is to get all the crystals, but you can also do other things such as opening treasure chests, collecting fruit, and gathering bonus items. Once all the crystals are collected, you can proceed to the exit so that you can go down into another cave.

Sound easy? You have to deal with several creatures, including two types of bats, snakes, robots, and green monsters. You can kill these enemies by shooting them with your gun, with the exception of the walking rocks, Most of these creatures have their own attacks. For example, the alien bats drop eggs down at you, and these eggs will hatch into baby alien bats. There are other hazards to watch out for, including water drips, laser beams, hammers, and stalagmites. Getting hit by any of these will cost you one of your three lives, and losing them all results in a nice animation of Mylo facing the screen. While he waves his arms, his headlight switches off and he collapses onto the floor.

Several power-ups can be collected to make your quest easier, but you can only use them for a limited time. Getting a gray “P” icon will allow you to kill enemies with a powerful shot, while “G” icons let you change the gravity, which is useful for getting crystals that are out of reach. In rare instances, collecting a huge stop sign freezes every living creature or hazard for a number of seconds, allowing you to pass them without being harmed.

Graphic-wise, I think they are fantastic for a 1991 game. The backdrops for each have interesting patterns and most of them stand out against the foreground. The illustrations that serve for both the main menu and ending sequence are well done. Sound-wise, the effects only comes through the PC Speaker, but this is understandable considering that a lot of small companies like Apogee couldn’t get access to sound cards.

The Bad
I can’t think of anything.

The Bottom Line
Crystal Caves is a great title that behaves like the third Mario game, so anybody who has played SMB3 will feel right at home here. Unlike Nintendo’s game where you just make a dash for the exit, you need to collect all the crystals before you can leave and you can’t re-enter caves. The graphics are gorgeous, the sound is great (even though it is through the PC Speaker only), and the ending cinematics are more than satisfying. Platform gamers like myself should give this one a try.