There was once a time when Apple Macintoshes were pretty well regarded for their games, and Crystal Quest was their Tetris — engrossing, addictive, and impossible to beat.
You used the mouse to control a little spaceship that looked like a hockey puck, collecting all the crystals in each screen-sized level. Once you had all the crystals, a gate at the bottom of the screen would open up, permitting you to escape into... a slightly harder version of the level you just played, with more types of enemies, more Space Mines to dodge, and more crystals you'd have to pick up. This masochistic treadmill of impending doom made the jump to several platforms, including the Game Boy, Amiga, and Xbox Live Arcade.
A sequel, Crystal Crazy, introduced more convoluted objectives such as assembling jigsaw puzzles and sinking pool balls in order. Some considered it a quantum leap over its predecessor, but it never won enough popularity to be ported beyond the Mac.
Tropes found in Crystal Quest:
- Anti-Grinding — From the official tips page
:No more nasties come out if you stop collecting crystals, so don't try hunting. - Attract Mode
- Blob Monster — The Dumple.
- Bowdlerised — The original level completion fanfare, a woman making a suggestive gasping sound, was not carried over to the Xbox remake.
- Cartoon Bomb — Smart bombs.
- Cathartic Exhalation — When the player completes a stage by passing through the exit gate, older versions of the game play a sighing sound, obviously meant to represent the player's relief. However, the female voice and inflection used made it sound like something else.
- Collision Damage / Everything Trying to Kill You / One-Hit-Point Wonder — Touch anything not collectible, and you're dead.
- Cool Gate — The exit.
- Deadly Walls — The sides of the exit.
- Destroyable Items — Bonus Crystals.
- Energy Weapon — Menaces employ "laser beams" that extend and retract like measuring tape.
- Every 10,000 Points — Extra lives are awarded "at depressingly rarer intervals."
- Five Bullets At A Time
- Gotta Catch Them All — Each level's crystals.
- Harder Than Hard — Hold down Option to disable speed limiting and play as fast as your CPU can throw pixels at you. High scores achieved in "super-fast mode" will appear in italics.
- Level Editor — The bundled Critter Editor.
- Made of Explodium — The Shrapwarden.Quite sweet little things these. Unless you shoot them...
- Made of Indestructium — The Bane's "bouncing bombs". The constantly spammed bouncing bombs that will fill your screen within seconds. Prepare to weep.
- In the significantly more merciful Xbox remake, the bombs can be shot.
- Monster Compendium — The Crystal Quest Repertoire of Nasties.
- Mook Maker — There's one on either side of the screen.
- More Dakka — Zarklephasers "emit bullets like a hail storm".
- Portmanteau — Various creature names, such as the Tentawarble, Shipnapper, Rawpuscle, and Shrapwarden.
- Score Screen
- Silliness Switch — The included Game Mod example, "Totally Silly", in which your ship is a baby's head and your foes include dung-shooting elephants.
- Smart Bomb — The instructions liken it to "using an anti-aircraft gun to kill a mosquito."
- Status Line — The status line runs across the top of the screen. Like the game, it takes full advantage of the color graphics available to it. Each part of the status uses a different color. It displays the score, the Video-Game Lives left as cherries, the time playing, and the wave you are in.
- Super-Persistent Predator — The inaptly named Parasite will pursue you relentlessly only to kill you with a single touch.
- Symbol Swearing — The game refers to Zarklephasers as "little #!£$%s".
Tropes specific to Crystal Crazy:
- Alliterative Title: Crystal Crazy
- Bonus Stage — Every third level is a "bonus wave" with no mines or enemies, just goodies to collect...with the catch that The Walls Are Closing In.
- Excuse Plot:Although it might be possible to think up some contrived scenario like you're a ship raiding somebody else's crystals while some nasties try to stop you, it wouldn't really be worth it.
- Hair-Raising Hare — Fracturefluffies.
- Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut / Stealth Pun — That tranq-wielding ruffian, the Välïümlöüt.
- Instant Armor — In five varieties, including a "Rubber Hat" made of latex.
- Power-Up — Guns and armor.
- Samus Is a Girl — Turns out your Flying Saucer is piloted by a six-legged Space Cow. (Who is, of course, a girl.)
- Unrealistic Black Hole — Lampshaded.Rifts in the space-time continuum that instantly transport you from one place to another. Actually the time bit isn't really correct. Neither is the continuum bit. Or the rift. But it sounded good.
