Crystal Quest Classic

I am very nostalgic for this game having grown up on the original version. I really wish the developer hadn't abandoned it because its a nearly perfect port but it has some really annoying bugs if your monitor is ultrawide.

I played this as a kid back in the day and have thought about this game a lot over the years. It's harder than I remember. I thought I'd destroy at this game as an adult.

My one complaint is the bonus crystals seem to just die on their own. It's not just a random mistake where I may have killed them. I'm literally flying around not shooting and they spawn and die. The emulated version has them floating around at the spawning zones and I fly in to catch them. The steam version has those "Dead" messages popping up constantly even if you fly around with no projectiles being fired.

Being someone who doesn't care about Steam achievements, Crystal Quest is perfect for what it originally set out to do, and is still just as fun now. It's the distillation of the arcade game spirit: No story, fast amd extremely difficult gameplay, strange and exciting graphics and sounds, number go up. I just learned recently of its fascinating sequel Crystal Crazy and sincerely hope that one comes to Steam too. These are classic games that are some of the best of their time in pure gameplay.

Not recommended except for nostalgia reasons. has funny sound effects and an interesting control scheme, but thats about all youll get.
Used to play this as a kid on the family computer all the time. not a good game by modern standards, or any standards really, but a nice nostalgia trip and piece of computer game history.

Classic just like the original which is a classic.

Please update this to work on 64-bit Macs.

Had to request refund since you can't adjust the screen size and achievements do not work. The game also requires super precision mouse skills, my walmart special just isn't up to the task.

PROS: If you played this game on Mac back in the day, your brain will melt from nostalgia. It plays and sounds exactly like what you remember.

CONS: As noted by others, the achievements do not work.

Based on the fact that the game is still being sold at full price despite being no longer being supported by the devs, I can't really promote the game. If the devs decide to reappear and fix the achievements and maybe make some minor updates, then I'll change my review. As it stands, the brief nostalgia trip isn't worth the five bucks.

I remember playing this back on my old Mac II in the 80's and 90's. I was actually thinking about installing a MacOS 7 emulator on my PC to try it out again. To my surprise it showed up as being available on Steam when I was searching for it! I can happily report that this is faithful to the original classic game. It's been updated to accommodate large widescreen displays and modern laser mouse controls. Outside of that it's just as you remember it. The sound effects definitely bring back memories! Highly recommended for anyone that enjoyed the original back in the day.

Classic game - one of the original mac games that was any good as well.

Pay attention or your game will not last long, and sometimes you need to spend a few lives to finish a level.

I never played this on the Mac and have not encountered previous versions of the game, but I am a tremendous fan of Williams' classic arcader ROBOTRON 2084. Robotron has had many, many descendants to its twin-stick gameplay mechanic, but this game adapts the OTHER elements of Robotron into a different gameplay mode. It works great in terms of gameplay.

Currently playing this with a desktop trackball but I will soon try this on an arcade cabinet using a full-size trackball and arcade buttons and expect the experience to be rewarding. For weirdos like me who hunt down Steam games for use on an arcade cabinet, this is a winner.

The only traumatic experience from my childhood for which I am nostalgic.

I played this on my old Mac LCIII when I was a kid, and loved it. Those old mouses were garbage so it was a pain in the neck to control the ship, and the difficulty level was extremely punishing, but it was beautiful, funny, and fun, so I stuck with it. All these years later, this super-polished port runs like a dream and I find that, wow, it's still beautiful, still funny, still fun, and still goddamned impossible. It just takes me longer to hit the wall, now.

The graphics are brilliant, sparkly and neon-drenched.

The sound effects are hilarious and memorable (I've been muttering "Mledn" to myself apropos of nothing for decades now) except for a few which are intolerable - especially in bulk. The Menace makes a laser beam sound specifically designed to make you hate the concept of lasers and, eventually, the concept of sound. But that level-ending notification noise is easily the finest hour of audio design in video gaming history, so all is forgiven.

The controls are simple, and early on they work great; later on the game uses them to punish you, as in the case of the Parasites which make a beeline for you - you can only shoot forwards, so you have to run away then swing back and hope they aren't already too close, and also hope that your incredibly specific firing stream actually hits them before they hit you. The Dumples take a billion shots to kill, and you can't spare the time when there's a screenfull of nasties in the way, the Banes send countless indestructible bouncing balls across the screen, the Shrapwardens explode and probably kill you when they're hit and the Trimpets rocket along linear paths; all of this combines to make the play area essentially uninhabitable after a certain point.

Yeah, the difficulty... spikes. The first few levels are fun, and people born without mutated brains can figure them out. By about the dozenth level the game starts getting nasty, and by about Wave 30 the game locks out ninety-nine percent of humanity from further progress... and that's the halfway point.

Luckily, by the time the game becomes impossible it also becomes no fun. It puts crystals next to the spawn points, and enemies blast out of them at such a rate of speed that it is impossible - meaning not possible - to collect them without dying. The mines littering the field become unavoidable; a favourite trick is to put one immediately beside the player's spawn point, so that the slightest twitch of the mouse kills you instantly. Even the smart bombs which clear the level get shrugged off by the game in later waves - it basically goes "Yeah whatever" and immediately fills the screen with nasties like nothing happened. The exit starts to move back and forth, the game randomly selects enemies from the entire roster with no regard for survivability, and eventually the term "bullet hell" doesn't begin to do the situation justice. By the time you hit your personal limit you won't be sorry to lose, you'll just be pissed off and ready to go do something else. I wish more games had this manual ejector seat function; if I'm on Wave 30 and I only have a few lives left I just plow myself into the mines, enter my high score and quit.

All that and it's still adorable, entertaining, and fun. Just don't have any illusions about its intentions towards you - even with your fancy new two-button mouse and adult reaction times, you're still in for a world of hurt. If you like a quick, flashy challenge and you know when you're beat, buy Crystal Quest. If you think most games are too easy and you're mad about it, wow, buy Crystal Quest right this instant... and try not to type the words "too easy" in your review, because it's not nice to lie, and you will be lying.

This is a faithful recreation of a classic. It is one of the first few video games I ever played on the family Mac. The sound effects are amazing (almost all vocal noises done by the creator). Simple but challenging, the levels quickly become chaotic in a good way. If you want to go back in time to when video games were just plain fun, get this game.

Timeless, mouse-based, hand-eye coordination training game.. Old school Mac game.

Remake of the first game I ever played. Executed perfectly. Great if you wana train your mouse skills but def worth a pick up for nostalgia value.

Ah thank you so much for the nostalgia blast. I don't think I would recommend this game to someone who didn't play it back in the day but for those that grew up with a family "Macintosh" should enjoy playing this for a few minutes. This game is apart of gaming history and I'm so glad it's preserved.

I was a little hesitant because of the "from my childhood" reviews. But then I considered that people regardless of age hate fundamentally bad games, so people wouldn't remember this game so fondly if it sucked. Then I remembered that games like this existed to teach basic I/O skills on computer and waving the mouse around was one of the styles... and on that basis I feared it really MIGHT suck.

Well after giving it a go I'm happy to say it doesn't suck. In fact the gameplay is well-tuned and very skill-based, and overall this game is charming and compelling. I have the hand cramp of a life time, but it was worth it and I plan to play a lot more when it un-seizes.

What you see in the previews in the Steam Store is what you get here. But it is the kind of game that keeps calling you to play more because you know you can hone your skill "just a bit more" as you click to play again. Worth it!

Edit: I came back after about 3 hours of play to say I'm done with this game. It was a fun diversion and worth what I paid for the fun I got back. Sure it wasn't AAA gaming but the core gameplay is fun enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMnqdu-7GwI
I just love this. It's a faithful reproduction of Crystal Quest (Crystal Raider for those who only had the shareware version) which I used to play on a black-and-white Macintosh Classic when I was a kid. Maybe it's because it's such a nostalgia trip for me, but I find it a horrifyingly addictive experience.

Guide your inertia-powered spherical spaceship around and collect all the crystals, and if you manage to avoid all manner of crazy monsters you might be lucky enough to get out of the opening at the bottom of the screen. If you're REALLY lucky you might get a huge crystal and loads of points and feel like an 11-year-old again* (*last part probably exclusive to me).

'Hash Monsters', 'Sandbags' and the 'Blim Thingies' - might not be their real names - will spawn from both ends to try to stop you, and stop you they will unless you use a lot of bombs to clear them out.

It gets very difficult, very quickly in a very entertaining way - you'll be yelling at the screen with a smile on your face. For this price you cannot argue with its arcade madness.

Couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this pop up on Steam - I spent so many hours in the late 80s and early 90s playing this on a variety of old-school Macs. This seems to be pretty much a perfect recreation of the classic, down to the amazing sound effects. Blem. Blem. Blem. AaaAAAaah!

Brings back fond memories for me when I was a child. My Dad and I use to play this on his Quadra and B&W monitor. Very fun! I thought I would be mucher better now, but the game is still very challenging.

Crystal Quest! I used to play this ALL the time as a kid. Well, the original one. And let me say that I got MUCH better than I did when I was a child. Because. You know. I was a child. Anyway, as soon as I saw this in the Steam store, I had to get it. And I wasn't disappointed. Yeah it gets pretty nuts in the harder levels, but I did well, and I'm really loving throwing it on for a quick time-killer. You don't expect to survive long, and it's a blast. Nostalgia out the wazoo!