I am nostalgic for certain random things about old video games, even if I didn’t really have much direct involvement with them. One of those things is the aesthetics of old Mac games — that distinctive, pure, monochromatic look of black on white with no compromise like that weaksauce Spectrum and its pitiful application of limited color with all those awful halos. No thanks! If I can’t convert it to Bitmap mode in Photoshop, I don’t want any truck with it.
Anyway, the moral of this story is that Dark Castle is one of those games I never had any direct involvement with, so it’s up to Ben Elgin to let us know what is up with it.
Dark Castle’s programmer, Jon Gay, would go on to lead the development of Flash at Macromedia. Imagine how different the Internet might be if this game hadn’t paid his way through college!
Whoa, now I kind of hate Dark Castle.
Play the Genesis version. Your hatred will not only be justified, but increased sevenfold.
This is literally the first game I ever played. NOSTALGIA BOMB
My only experience with this game is that it came in a lot of Phillips CD-i games a friend of mine got when he bought his system about two years ago. I had absolutely no idea the game originated on Mac, or that it was originally from 1986. That explains so much.
Watching videos of this game brought back the rage. The worst part is what happens when you fall in a pit. Instead of dying, you’re shot down to a dungeon room. Time to restart!
If you changed the Mac’s date to Christmas (or if it actually was Christmas when you played), a Christmas tree (and other accoutrements?) would appear in the Great Hall.
There’s also a Genesis version of Dark Castle.
It’s always seemed kinda weird to me that none of the various rereleases of Wizardry over the years ever saw a port of the superior Mac version.
Only kinda weird, because, y’know, SirTech ran out of money and got bought out or whatever and the series somehow wound up way bigger in Japan. But still, if someone could just take the Mac version and slap an automap on it…
I have no nostalgia W-H-A-T-S-O-E-V-E-R for this game, because I played the Genesis version first. To this day I can’t imagine how it could, in any conceivable situation or alternate dimension, be enjoyable.
ArugulaZ, you should check out TheFatManCometh’s old review of the Genesis version on YouTube, it’s quite therapeutic… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZmXbtvGG4E