Crystal Quest

The words 'video game' and 'Mac' are not frequent bedfellows and their chances of a ménage a trois with the word "classic" rarer still. Quite what Apple has ever had against gaming isn't clear (although apparently Steve Jobs himself is not a fan) but they've almost always treated video games as the ginger stepchild of the information technology revolution.

Nevertheless, Crystal Quest is regarded as one of the very few classic games for Apple's line of computers – which is why you've probably never heard of it. It has been ported to a few different formats in its time, there was even an Xbox Live Arcade version not so long ago, but each new version has only helped to further its anonymity.

There are at least a dozen or so old Mac users in the U.S. that still remember the original though, from way back in 1987, so in the spirit of brotherly love amongst games fans we'll describe it as a retro classic. It is still a perfectly playable little game after all, which is more than you can say for many other better known games from the era.

The basics are exceedingly simple, with the game occurring only on a single screen. Controlling a ball-like spaceship you have to collect all the crystals on screen and then escape via a worm hole. (See, it's a quest for crystals – old game names were so much more instructive than nowadays).

Naturally there are enemies in the way to make things more difficult, but a handy autofire feature makes shooting them and moving as easy as practical on a keypad. Indeed the controls are a lot more responsive than you'd think, considering the original was controlled with a one button mouse. But between the keypad and the narrow screen (obviously the original was made for a computer monitor) the game inevitably seems harder than ever – and it was never very easy to begin with.

This makes the dodgy collision detection all the more unforgivable. Most enemies seem to have an invisible force shield around them, which makes avoiding them seem a frustratingly unfair procedure. Your only recourse is to try and be even more careful and to make good use of your stock of smart bombs when things get really dicey.

Borrowing as much as it can from the Xbox Live Arcade version this features new score multipliers for you to add to quest for, as well as just crystals. There are more enemies than previously too, each with their own movement pattern, and there are even a set of Xbox 360 style Achievements to unlock.

If this is all beginning to sound like a poor man's Geometry Wars though you're not far wrong. Obviously this came first, and combat is by no means the emphasis, but the comparison is neither kind nor easy to avoid. It's still not a bad game in itself though and with the tight controls this will actually do very well until someone deigns to actually release Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved Mobile over here.