| The Making of Crystal Mines |
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Crystal Mines was developed in 1989, by a guy named Ken Beckett, who was a worker for an unlicensed vdieogame company named Color Dreams, which was located in Brea California. This game Crystal Mines, was a really cool puzzle game, and it had an interesting development process as well. I'm not going to go over the creation in too much detail, just incase this info isn't supposed to be revealed. The level designers would first work out their stages on graph paper, each level was 30 blocks wide by 11 blocks high, we also have to keep in mind that every Crystal Mines stage had a 1 block border around it. After this was done, the workers would do their stuff in Nindraw and they would also assemble the program. After this, they had to add a special heading to the game as to get the game to run. Then they would load up the game in Ninbug and try out the demo. The original level order for Crystal Mines was like this:
What happened to the other stages, I guess they weren't complete at this time? The game was designed over a long period of time, though March 25, 1989 I think was when it came out. Below is a 200 word summary of Crystal Mines. 200 Word Summary
The year is 2265 AD. You have invested your life savings in a mining operation on a newly discovered planet found to be rich with very valuable Oblytike crystals. From a base camp on the surface of the planet, you must tele-operate a mining robot deep within the planet's crust. The robot that you control uses energy balls to dig through dirt and rock in search of the crystals. Some of the many types of rock you will encounter are resistant to the energy balls, and may require you to set explosive charges to destroy them. You must be careful, however, since there are also rocks that are explosive, and explosions can destroy both crystals and your robot! As you penetrate deeper into the planet you will encounter deadly alien lifeforms that will attempt to destroy your robot - some of them actually mineral lifeforms made out of rock! Other obstacles include mud and lava as you work your way through more than 50 unique levels in search of the elusive mother lode of crystals which will make you a multi-quadrillionaire. Many perils await you, and only your boldness and skill can decide the outcome in this thrilling sci-fi mining adventure! |
