← thesylvester.ca
CRYSTAL QUEST

The 1987 Mac classic, in terminal colors.

Patrick Buckland's mouse-and-inertia arcade game — the first color game on the Macintosh. Collect every crystal, dodge the nasties pouring out of the side portals, and escape through the gate at the bottom. The mouse changes your velocity, not your position; stopping is the hard part. Needs a mouse.

crystal-questafter Casady & Greene · 1987
man crystal-quest
mouse sets your velocity — there is no friction and no brake
click · a–z fire, always in the direction of motion · five bullets at a time
space smart bomb — kills everything on screen, but not mines
tab pause · any key or the mouse button continues
0–9 volume · 0 is silent, 9 is painfully LOUD
> catch the big drifting crystal for 10,000–50,000 — shoot it and you lose it
> nasties only spawn while you collect — loitering is safe, and worthless

Physics constants lifted from a disassembly of the original 68K binary: ship velocity = (mouse offset from neutral) ÷ 10, clamped to ±9 px per update at 30 updates a second on a 512×342 field; bullets fly at 4× ship velocity; 3 ships, 3 bombs; bonus ships every 15,000 points to wave 11, 40,000 to wave 26, 75,000 after. The walls never kill you. The gate posts always do.

github.com/TheSylvester