Yeah, found out just after posting the video that this is another one of those rare few games which uses the CRT overscan border to indicate that sort of thing, which isn't emulated in the standard build of DOSBox. (Yet!)
The first shareware title for which I got (i.e. my parents got) the full 3 episodes. I'd played and played the first episode until I could almost beat it blindfolded. I literally dreamed about the new caves that would await me in the next episodes. And when I got to play them....Never mind the fact that the enemies were all the same; I was blown away by the new crystal shapes! ..and the new introductions. And the unwinnable state you can get in episode 3 actually held a kind of mystique for me. Finally, after completing episode 3, I was blown away by the MULTIPLE ending screens. Ah, when life and pleasures were simple.
This and Secret Agent are some of my favorite games all time. I remember staying home sick from school one day and playing all the way through Secret Agent :D
My favorite thing about this game is that back in the early 90s, David "I wrote The Trouble With Tribbles" Gerrold wrote a book about PC shareware games called Fatal Distractions and remarked on the title sounding familiar.
I played this a lot as a kid, it taught me what a fundamental "jump and shoot" platformer was along with Commander Keen. You can still argue that besides the minor flaws, Crystal Caves and Commander Keen are both the purest essence of what makes a platformer game.
I simply just love this and Secret Agent. I find them very frustrating, but the sounds, graphics, gameplay and humor have a lot of charm! And not only because of nostalgia. They are really cool.
I remember playing this a lot back in the day. At least until I got hooked to keen4 :) But I think the jumping mechanics are perfectly fine in this game. Sure, you can argue "it makes no sense that the x-movement stops when you hit the ceiling" but let's face it, it's only a very minor inconvenience, and only in the first 20 or 30 minutes until you have mastered the jumps. I see it more as a Jump'n'Run puzzle game, so the sometimes "tricky" jumps and the dead end situations are just an intrinsic part of the gameplay. Sure, you would need to memorize the levels to some extent, or (even better) "think before you jump", i.e. make sure that the ledge you're jumping down allows you to get back up at any time in case you missed some crystals. But that is also simply part of the game mechanic, and it fits pretty well
Exactly! Mastering the gameplay mechanics! Yes, headbonking could be considered annoying and will be partly fixed, but once you get the hang of it and get used to the gameplay, it is what makes Crystal Caves what it is!
I remember playing this back then. Regarding the last-crystal gripe, I distinctly remember the border of the screen changing to green when the last crystal is collected. Not emulated in Dosbox for some reason though. Might be possible with some settings. Bought this again some time ago along with Secret Agent. Still entertaining, but a lot of the game design really hasn't aged all that well. I did not know there were a HD remake in the works. Might be interesting to look forward to.
So, DOSBox 0.74 doesn't emulate CRT borders as VERY few programs actually put the CRT border area to functional use, but yes, I found out shortly after posting this video that this game does indeed indicate the crystal state in that manner! I do know that some other branches of DOSBox have support the CRT borders. :B
@@Pixelmusement And despite being a big fan of Commander Keen and Duke Nukem, I never even _heard_ of this one before now and if I saw the title in a game directory I'd have expected a fantasy dungeon crawl instead of a space adventure.
Just found out about some of the changes already incorporated into the HD game... which tipped me off on the border missing from playing the game emulated! :B
Quite dug the examination - Crystal Caves is one of the early Apogee titles I never explored, so I'm hoping they take notice and tweak the HD version to improve things instead of just adding shiny graphics and sound.
Not long after posting this video I was linked to a Steam forums page listing some of the changes already incorporated into the HD remake so it looks like they are indeed going the extra mile instead of just doing a raw port! :B
Am I the only one who noticed that a few enemies (pink snake with deadly corpse, green flying tadpole thing, blue rolling angry ball) and hazards (metal pipe with flames, thin pipe with bulge to show enemy/hazard coming out of it), and even aesthetics got re-used in Cosmos' Cosmic Adventure? I'm sure they were reused earlier, but man watching this felt like watching an EGA prototype of Cosmos'.
Secret Agent was my first dos game I truly remember by name, played others before but was to young and never found them back.. but this one I played a lot. At the time didn't know this existed but would have loved this as well, finished it recently. I agree with all your points, except headbonking. Feel that is part of the gameplay and challenge and you get used to it.
There's a thing in game design referred to as "flow". The idea is, the player can become more immersed if extremely minor mistakes don't force them to redo even just a second or two of gameplay. In the case of headbonking here in Crystal Caves, it's far too easy for flow to be broken because you weren't SUPER-ACCURATE with a jump. It adds an unnecessary spike to the difficulty which gate-keeps the game from people of lesser skill who would find the rest of the game perfectly fine to play, thus why I consider it something that should be fixed. :B
Excellent review and invaluable feedback to the remake team! I personally entered the Apogee realm with the legendary Command Keen series, so also missed its earlier (and as you pointed out slightly more flawed) precursors like this one and Secret Agent.
I love Crystal Caves and am looking forward to the remake! Thanks for the review. Issue number 5 (dead end in Episode 3) definately needs to be fixed. The rest of the game is fine with me, actually due to the small level size I think it´s rather easy.
Yup! Found that out very shortly after posting the video! Not something you'd normally notice without using a non-standard build of DOSBox which supports emulating the CRT border! :B
You couldnt tell if you had all the crystals or not because the game used the CRT monitors' overscan area to convey that information to you (with a green border around the screen, or a red flashing when you take damage), and dosbox doesnt support this feature. The remake does. Edit: As someone who has played this game on a DOS machine back in the day, i immediately noticed it when i booted it up in dosbox. Since you didnt, that explains why you didnt know about the border.
I find it interesting how there were no games with smooth scrolling before 1990 on the IBM PC, but after Commander Keen came out, every game had to have it. I'm wondering if John Carmack was generous enough to share the inner workings of his smooth scrolling technique.
I know the engine was shared, probably for a profit. Even the Doom engine got shared with other companies. That said, once it debuted, it revealed that such techniques were even possible, but more importantly, computer speeds were RAPIDLY increasing by that point and would be more than tripled within a matter of just a couple years! :O
@@Pixelmusement Well considering how efficient the drawing algorithm is, it should've been possible on the original IBM AT. I'll have to try it out some day. But I suspect the reason why scrolling wasn't done before Commander Keen is IBM's secrecy when it comes to Programming Manuals.
I dont hate your suggestions, though i find them slightly nitpicky... but that tip about the saving double jump to get out of the dead end on the main map blew my mind.
Other things that definitely need fixing are the impossible to reach objects. Like a few chests and ghost crystals, but I'm sure the devs are aware of it. Same with the infamous tricky crystal of that one stage in episode 2 and the tornado trap. Personally I never had an issue with the jumping mechanics (aside from the specific situations previously mentioned). Those other jumps (like in 10:25) just need player input precision imo, like in any platformer. But hey, if they can make the physics more robust then great.
That "HD Remaster" is not what i would consider a remaster unless if by HD they meant something other than High Definition. it's more like a modern port.
Are the HD levels still going to be the equivalent of 2 screens square? If they are, this means at least 2560x1440 worth of playfield, or a 14.4x upscale. This could make the game extremely tedious to play if they aren’t careful.
@@Pixelmusement I had completely forgotten! Still, since they share a game engine, I think a quick note of, "if this looks familiar, it's because you know Secret Agent and you should check out ADG # XXX for more info on that game." wouldn't have been out of place :-) I wonder if this HD Remake will be able to run the SA trilogy though.
@@endymallorn Probably not, but if it does well enough maybe they'll give it the HD treatment too? Secret Agent has more issues than Crystal Caves though so I'm not sure a simple remastering into HD is gonna be good enough for that one. :P
I believe the jump mechanics are intentional. They never bothered me. I always considered them a part of the challenge, which made this game so great. :D The fact that the levels indeed are so short means that the game doesn't really need to go easy on the player, too! ... Edit: Oh wow, I did not know that the jumping mechanics can prevent you from progressing. D: (I never manage to watch videos through before I comment. :p)
The jump mechanics likely are intentional but they still break the flow of the game since they add a necessity for pixel-perfect precision. That's fine for experts, but for average players the more such precision is required to actually progress, the more frustration it adds and the slower the progression is one way or another. I'm absolutely a proponent of making games as accessible as possible so more and more people can play them! :B
@@Pixelmusement That's fair. Nowadays players just aren't the same breed anymore, so I'm sure we can expect the game to be altered accordingly. I'm totally looking forward to whatever will come out! :D
I wasn't aware there was a HD remake coming. Might have to look into that. Also, I'm pretty sure the next game according to the hint provided is Extreme Assault. We used to play that game a bit back in the day. But for some reason, some of the CD audio doesn't work and I don't know why!
Tons of people! Requests can be sent via eMail (address is in the credits at the end of every video) and I add them to an ever growing list, with repeat requests from different people grouped together so I can gauge which games are the most requested. The more requested a game is, the more likely I'll go out of my way to get a copy myself! :B
Great game (along with Secret Agent even though they're basically the same sort of thing) the quirks are what make it fun and remotely challenging, leave it as it is, why remake!?! Apogee rules!
1:44 If they did change anything, removing that gaudy and dumb 'WiNnErS dOn'T uSe DrUgS' message would be ideal; the 'war on drugs' has always been a war on people and I don't support that type of message. I am intrigued; I wonder just how much this could be improved, graphically whilst retaining the original charm...
I just looked at the previews for the HD remake on Steam... so, HD apparently means just as blocky as the original with just a slightly tweaked palette, and that lazy, ugly, analoguey, fractions-of-pixels movement that all the indie devs these days default to because they don't know how pixels actually work. Seriously, either have big blocky pixels or smooth movement. You can't have both - it looks terrible. Still, I prefer that than what they did with the Gods remake... yikes!
Ahem... to quote my exact words about Secret Agent: "Overall, I don't like Secret Agent. Its combination of weird gameplay quirks, below-average level design, and having little in the way of variety over the course of 48 levels, make me want to be playing almost any other Apogee platformer, but I do recognize that the game's not terrible and it still served as a stepping stone for Apogee as they developed more and more titles." I wouldn't call that "trashed the Hell out of" more of a "I don't like this game and have legitimate reasons not to, but I've absolutely played worse". :P
This has been my fav game in childhood and EVERYTHING you mentioned as "to be improved" was purposely DESIGNED to be exactly this way in original. This includes bricking the whole game. Its not first episode, so you are supposed to understand what you do. If you "improve" it, you will just remove the difficulty from the game. This is not sonic hedgehog, its cc.
Trust us in the HD remake, the visual indicator that you have collected all the crystals......You will notice.
Yeah, found out just after posting the video that this is another one of those rare few games which uses the CRT overscan border to indicate that sort of thing, which isn't emulated in the standard build of DOSBox. (Yet!)
Does the game scream at you to get out? That'd be cool.
@@killerb2099 You nailed it! ;)
@@Pixelmusement was just about to mention this. I think it's graphics card dependent too - some cards don't respect this if I remember correctly.
The first shareware title for which I got (i.e. my parents got) the full 3 episodes. I'd played and played the first episode until I could almost beat it blindfolded. I literally dreamed about the new caves that would await me in the next episodes. And when I got to play them....Never mind the fact that the enemies were all the same; I was blown away by the new crystal shapes! ..and the new introductions. And the unwinnable state you can get in episode 3 actually held a kind of mystique for me. Finally, after completing episode 3, I was blown away by the MULTIPLE ending screens.
Ah, when life and pleasures were simple.
I felt absolutely same.
I remember this from my childhood, my older brother liked this game A LOT more than I did
This and Secret Agent are some of my favorite games all time. I remember staying home sick from school one day and playing all the way through Secret Agent :D
My favorite thing about this game is that back in the early 90s, David "I wrote The Trouble With Tribbles" Gerrold wrote a book about PC shareware games called Fatal Distractions and remarked on the title sounding familiar.
One of my favorites, still playing it from time to time!
I played this a lot as a kid, it taught me what a fundamental "jump and shoot" platformer was along with Commander Keen. You can still argue that besides the minor flaws, Crystal Caves and Commander Keen are both the purest essence of what makes a platformer game.
I simply just love this and Secret Agent. I find them very frustrating, but the sounds, graphics, gameplay and humor have a lot of charm! And not only because of nostalgia. They are really cool.
My favorite game at one point. I still play it to this day #ChildhoodMemories
Edit : I had no idea about the HD Remake :o
I remember playing this a lot back in the day. At least until I got hooked to keen4 :) But I think the jumping mechanics are perfectly fine in this game. Sure, you can argue "it makes no sense that the x-movement stops when you hit the ceiling" but let's face it, it's only a very minor inconvenience, and only in the first 20 or 30 minutes until you have mastered the jumps. I see it more as a Jump'n'Run puzzle game, so the sometimes "tricky" jumps and the dead end situations are just an intrinsic part of the gameplay. Sure, you would need to memorize the levels to some extent, or (even better) "think before you jump", i.e. make sure that the ledge you're jumping down allows you to get back up at any time in case you missed some crystals. But that is also simply part of the game mechanic, and it fits pretty well
Exactly! Mastering the gameplay mechanics! Yes, headbonking could be considered annoying and will be partly fixed, but once you get the hang of it and get used to the gameplay, it is what makes Crystal Caves what it is!
The first videogame I ever loved. Memories.
I remember playing this back then. Regarding the last-crystal gripe, I distinctly remember the border of the screen changing to green when the last crystal is collected.
Not emulated in Dosbox for some reason though. Might be possible with some settings.
Bought this again some time ago along with Secret Agent. Still entertaining, but a lot of the game design really hasn't aged all that well.
I did not know there were a HD remake in the works. Might be interesting to look forward to.
So, DOSBox 0.74 doesn't emulate CRT borders as VERY few programs actually put the CRT border area to functional use, but yes, I found out shortly after posting this video that this game does indeed indicate the crystal state in that manner! I do know that some other branches of DOSBox have support the CRT borders. :B
I agree with the borders. It is even documented on DOSBOX
www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=536
I was SURE you had covered this already but... nope. One of the Apogee games you hadn't covered.
I hadn't even PLAYED it until this week; one of the last Apogee games I'd never tried! :o
@@Pixelmusement And it's also one of the most typical.
@@Pixelmusement Me neither bizarrely, I just never had any interest for some reason.
@@Pixelmusement And despite being a big fan of Commander Keen and Duke Nukem, I never even _heard_ of this one before now and if I saw the title in a game directory I'd have expected a fantasy dungeon crawl instead of a space adventure.
Great review, played episode 1 a lot as a kid and enjoyed it, never knew an HD remake was coming! Should be fun.
- Phwoarnado
I can't wait for the remake, it looks genuinely good! Also, thanks for uploading this- Crystal Caves is an absolute gem :3
Just seeing the gameplay and graphics... it's giving me Secret Agent flashbacks. :P
Understandable as Secret Agent was made using an offshoot of the engine used here. ;)
8:40 And border on your screen goes from red to green. That's the problem with LCDs, you have no border like on CRTs
We brought green border back in Crystal Caves HD ;)
Just found out about some of the changes already incorporated into the HD game... which tipped me off on the border missing from playing the game emulated! :B
@@Pixelmusement And that exactly sums the reason why I hate emulating :D
Well, maybe PCem emulates the border? If not then maybe a good reason to pester Sarah with that feature? ;)
@@BastetFurry DOSBox-X (and SVN Daum) has overscan and proper vsync and PC Speaker emulation
Quite dug the examination - Crystal Caves is one of the early Apogee titles I never explored, so I'm hoping they take notice and tweak the HD version to improve things instead of just adding shiny graphics and sound.
Not long after posting this video I was linked to a Steam forums page listing some of the changes already incorporated into the HD remake so it looks like they are indeed going the extra mile instead of just doing a raw port! :B
@@Pixelmusement That's excellent news indeed :D
@@Pixelmusement Cool, I might check it out.
This is really interesting to see after 8-bit guys tour and history of 3d realms / apogee
Along with the HD remake announced It was definitely good timing to finally give this game a go! :B
The sister game of Secret Agent, though I played them many years apart (SA as a kid, CC during my time in college).
Am I the only one who noticed that a few enemies (pink snake with deadly corpse, green flying tadpole thing, blue rolling angry ball) and hazards (metal pipe with flames, thin pipe with bulge to show enemy/hazard coming out of it), and even aesthetics got re-used in Cosmos' Cosmic Adventure? I'm sure they were reused earlier, but man watching this felt like watching an EGA prototype of Cosmos'.
I vividly remember playing this game as a kid. Used to purposely shoot the little air machines to watch your character's head inflate and explode 😂
Crystal Caves. Instant UpVote!
Secret Agent was my first dos game I truly remember by name, played others before but was to young and never found them back.. but this one I played a lot. At the time didn't know this existed but would have loved this as well, finished it recently. I agree with all your points, except headbonking. Feel that is part of the gameplay and challenge and you get used to it.
There's a thing in game design referred to as "flow". The idea is, the player can become more immersed if extremely minor mistakes don't force them to redo even just a second or two of gameplay. In the case of headbonking here in Crystal Caves, it's far too easy for flow to be broken because you weren't SUPER-ACCURATE with a jump. It adds an unnecessary spike to the difficulty which gate-keeps the game from people of lesser skill who would find the rest of the game perfectly fine to play, thus why I consider it something that should be fixed. :B
Excellent review and invaluable feedback to the remake team!
I personally entered the Apogee realm with the legendary Command Keen series, so also missed its earlier (and as you pointed out slightly more flawed) precursors like this one and Secret Agent.
There's going to be a remake of Crystal Caves? I'll take "Things I never saw coming" for 400, Kris.
I love Crystal Caves and am looking forward to the remake! Thanks for the review. Issue number 5 (dead end in Episode 3) definately needs to be fixed. The rest of the game is fine with me, actually due to the small level size I think it´s rather easy.
I'm informed that's one of the issues already addressed! ;)
Im pretty sure that the border color changes, when you've collected all the crystals in a level
Yup! Found that out very shortly after posting the video! Not something you'd normally notice without using a non-standard build of DOSBox which supports emulating the CRT border! :B
You couldnt tell if you had all the crystals or not because the game used the CRT monitors' overscan area to convey that information to you (with a green border around the screen, or a red flashing when you take damage), and dosbox doesnt support this feature.
The remake does.
Edit: As someone who has played this game on a DOS machine back in the day, i immediately noticed it when i booted it up in dosbox. Since you didnt, that explains why you didnt know about the border.
I find it interesting how there were no games with smooth scrolling before 1990 on the IBM PC, but after Commander Keen came out, every game had to have it. I'm wondering if John Carmack was generous enough to share the inner workings of his smooth scrolling technique.
I know the engine was shared, probably for a profit. Even the Doom engine got shared with other companies. That said, once it debuted, it revealed that such techniques were even possible, but more importantly, computer speeds were RAPIDLY increasing by that point and would be more than tripled within a matter of just a couple years! :O
@@Pixelmusement Well considering how efficient the drawing algorithm is, it should've been possible on the original IBM AT. I'll have to try it out some day. But I suspect the reason why scrolling wasn't done before Commander Keen is IBM's secrecy when it comes to Programming Manuals.
I dont hate your suggestions, though i find them slightly nitpicky... but that tip about the saving double jump to get out of the dead end on the main map blew my mind.
When you're remastering anything, you wanna BE nitpicky because it's your chance to really make the product shine! :B
I love when im extremely early and people are already here. Looking forward to this(based on bizarre title screen!)
Other things that definitely need fixing are the impossible to reach objects. Like a few chests and ghost crystals, but I'm sure the devs are aware of it. Same with the infamous tricky crystal of that one stage in episode 2 and the tornado trap.
Personally I never had an issue with the jumping mechanics (aside from the specific situations previously mentioned). Those other jumps (like in 10:25) just need player input precision imo, like in any platformer. But hey, if they can make the physics more robust then great.
Impossible to reach objects, missing keys, ghost crystals, tornado trap...we have all that covered and more :)
@@EmberheartGames I know you guys are doing a good job :)
@@unerxai2608 Thank you!! ^_^
That "HD Remaster" is not what i would consider a remaster unless if by HD they meant something other than High Definition. it's more like a modern port.
I actually prefer Secret Agent, but I got that game well before Crystal Caves.
1:35 Do those snakes and spiders explode into femurs or is it just weirdly shaped clouds of smoke? How humerus.
Are the HD levels still going to be the equivalent of 2 screens square? If they are, this means at least 2560x1440 worth of playfield, or a 14.4x upscale. This could make the game extremely tedious to play if they aren’t careful.
crystal caves was awesome period
I'm amazed you made no comment about Secret Agent.
Because I already reviewed it roughly 50 episodes ago. ;)
@@Pixelmusement I had completely forgotten! Still, since they share a game engine, I think a quick note of, "if this looks familiar, it's because you know Secret Agent and you should check out ADG # XXX for more info on that game." wouldn't have been out of place :-)
I wonder if this HD Remake will be able to run the SA trilogy though.
@@endymallorn Probably not, but if it does well enough maybe they'll give it the HD treatment too? Secret Agent has more issues than Crystal Caves though so I'm not sure a simple remastering into HD is gonna be good enough for that one. :P
I believe the jump mechanics are intentional. They never bothered me. I always considered them a part of the challenge, which made this game so great. :D The fact that the levels indeed are so short means that the game doesn't really need to go easy on the player, too! ... Edit: Oh wow, I did not know that the jumping mechanics can prevent you from progressing. D: (I never manage to watch videos through before I comment. :p)
The jump mechanics likely are intentional but they still break the flow of the game since they add a necessity for pixel-perfect precision. That's fine for experts, but for average players the more such precision is required to actually progress, the more frustration it adds and the slower the progression is one way or another. I'm absolutely a proponent of making games as accessible as possible so more and more people can play them! :B
@@Pixelmusement That's fair. Nowadays players just aren't the same breed anymore, so I'm sure we can expect the game to be altered accordingly. I'm totally looking forward to whatever will come out! :D
Classic game! Probably my first PC platformer.
I wasn't aware there was a HD remake coming. Might have to look into that.
Also, I'm pretty sure the next game according to the hint provided is Extreme Assault. We used to play that game a bit back in the day. But for some reason, some of the CD audio doesn't work and I don't know why!
Pixelmusement who requests the ADG games on your ADG games episodes
Tons of people! Requests can be sent via eMail (address is in the credits at the end of every video) and I add them to an ever growing list, with repeat requests from different people grouped together so I can gauge which games are the most requested. The more requested a game is, the more likely I'll go out of my way to get a copy myself! :B
Reminds me of the original Duke Nukem.
Great game (along with Secret Agent even though they're basically the same sort of thing) the quirks are what make it fun and remotely challenging, leave it as it is, why remake!?! Apogee rules!
1:44 If they did change anything, removing that gaudy and dumb 'WiNnErS dOn'T uSe DrUgS' message would be ideal; the 'war on drugs' has always been a war on people and I don't support that type of message.
I am intrigued; I wonder just how much this could be improved, graphically whilst retaining the original charm...
It could be changed to "Only Losers Do Drugs" to be even more antagonistic.
@@RoninCatholic
"Meth; what's in it for you?"
Would be even better.
I just looked at the previews for the HD remake on Steam... so, HD apparently means just as blocky as the original with just a slightly tweaked palette, and that lazy, ugly, analoguey, fractions-of-pixels movement that all the indie devs these days default to because they don't know how pixels actually work.
Seriously, either have big blocky pixels or smooth movement. You can't have both - it looks terrible.
Still, I prefer that than what they did with the Gods remake... yikes!
i can't believe you actually reviewed Crystal Caves. AFAIK you seemed to think this game was trash.
Dunno where you got THAT impression from. :P
@@Pixelmusement Maybe he's mistaken it with Secret Agent. Both are kinda similar, but you trashed the hell out of Secret Agent...
Ahem... to quote my exact words about Secret Agent: "Overall, I don't like Secret Agent. Its combination of weird gameplay quirks, below-average level design, and having little in the way of variety over the course of 48 levels, make me want to be playing almost any other Apogee platformer, but I do recognize that the game's not terrible and it still served as a stepping stone for Apogee as they developed more and more titles." I wouldn't call that "trashed the Hell out of" more of a "I don't like this game and have legitimate reasons not to, but I've absolutely played worse". :P
@@Roobar_Plays Yeah I actually mixed up Crystal Caves with Secret Agent
This has been my fav game in childhood and EVERYTHING you mentioned as "to be improved" was purposely DESIGNED to be exactly this way in original. This includes bricking the whole game. Its not first episode, so you are supposed to understand what you do. If you "improve" it, you will just remove the difficulty from the game. This is not sonic hedgehog, its cc.