Cd-I Emulator For Mac4/13/2021
Jon Gay has credited Dark Castle with helping to establish the reputation of Silicon Beach Software and with paying his way through college.It was designed and illustrated by Mark Pierce and programmed by Jonathan Gay.
Dark Castle is a platform game where a young hero named Duncan tries to make his way to the evil Black Knight, dodging objects as well as solving occasional puzzles. The game is notable for its use of sampled sounds to great effect. ![]() ![]() Pierce designed the animations in MacroMinds VideoWorks (the direct ancestor of Adobe Director) and then mailed the files on floppies to Gay, who then coded the game in 68000 Assembly Language on an Apple Lisa (a few parts like the high-score system were written in Pascal). The digitized sound was created by Eric Zocher who worked with voice actor Dick Noel. The game opens with a vista of the castle with storm clouds in the distance. The opening notes of Bachs Toccata and Fugue in D minor play and are followed by thunderclaps. Duncan can run, jump and duck, and can throw a limited supply of rocks at his enemies. More rocks can be found in little bags along the way, as well as bottles of an elixir that provide a one-time antidote to bites of the numerous rats and bats found around the castle. To defeat the Black Knight, Duncan needs to pull several levers which topple him from his throne. To aid Duncan, a magic shield and the power to hurl fireballs can, fortunately, be found within the Dark Castle. The game begins in the Great Hall, where the player can choose from four doors. One other is marked with the shield, and the remaining two mysteriously alternate between the fireball course and a more troubling path. The game can be played at three different skill levels, the hardest Advanced level containing more enemies and a few extra surprises. Computer Gaming World stated that Dark Castle was the best arcade game Ive seen for the Macintosh, and perhaps the best Ive seen on any microcomputer, ever. The reviewer praised the sound and graphics, stating that he did not know that the Macintosh was capable of animations of such quality. He concluded that Dark Castle is filled with lots of little touches that show its one of the first steps toward what Silicon Beach likes to call interactive cartoons. BYTE compared the game to Lode Runner, writing Theres nothing new about the basic concept, but the execution is impressive. The magazine praised its slick animation and realistic digitized sound, and concluded that it is a perfect way to fritter away those long winter evenings when you should be doing something productive. Compute praised the Amiga versions brilliant graphics, sound, and atmosphere but criticized the keyboardmouse control system and gameplay as too difficult. The reviewer also disliked the disk-based copy protection which caused him to fear damage to the disk drives, crashes when loading the game, and slow level loading.
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