This Old Gamer:
Wanted: Wizardry I for Macintosh

By Joey Cooper 

Welcome back, old game fans, to another exciting edition of This Old Gamer! Today I'm going to be talking about several different topics, and I welcome your feedback, questions, and stories.

Before I get into the other topics, I wanted to ask all you readers a favor. Have any of you ever heard of Wizardry I? My fellow Mac web publisher Dan Knight is looking for the game.

Joey, the one thing I want more than any other game for my Mac is Wizardry I. I've played it on the Apple II, the PC, the Commodore 64, and the Mac. I've never completed it. I want to find someone (anyone) with a copy available. This game was completely mesmerizing with minimal graphics and slow computers.

If any of your readers could help me find a copy, I'd be eternally grateful. -Dan

Do any of you know where this game could be found? Your help would be appreciated.

Many readers who have written in have asked why I haven't talked more about the Marathon Trilogy. Well, I was saving that topic for this column!

For those of you who weren't using Macs back in 1996 or simply didn't pay much attention to games then, I'll give a short description of Marathon. Bungie Software created the first Marathon edition as a Mac-only first person shooter-up. The story included you going aboard a space ship, some sort of computer thing that helps you along the way, and plenty of aliens for you to destroy. At the time, the game's graphics and gameplay were quite good, but what really stood-out about this game was the fact that us Mac users could play multi-player Marathon over a network years before PC drones got Quake! (Plus the fact that our AppleTalk networks are so easy to setup even game-heads can do it!) But the main thing I remember about Marathon is that it was a fun game.

To this day, my brothers and I still blast-away at each other in Marathon. We never got around to buying the full trilogy of Marathon games, including Marathon 2 and Infinity. Marathon Infinity let gamers create their own level with Forge and Anvil. (I think most games that have level editors are twice as good!)

Another interesting thing about Marathon is that the game features very little blood -- which is nice if you are sick of some of these new games. And, the graphics in Marathon actually look quite nice on an iMac, although the game is starting to show it's age. All in all, the Marathon Trilogy was a well-developed series that's worth your look even now.

Here's another plea for help from a reader:

The most addictive and crazy game I had on my old Mac SE/30 (which I still own, though it is lent to my girlfriend more or less indefinitely) was Cassady & Greene's (?) Crystal Quest. I cannot remember the version but it was the one that included the Critter Editor, allowing design of custom sprites, custom sounds, etc. A fantastic game, even in black and white on my se/30. It was so simple in its concept and so well suited to the mouse... the perfect take-a-break-from-schoolwork game! Sadly, I accidentally deleted the game and have no clue how to get it back. Since I bought my iMac DV SE a few months ago I have been scouring the web looking for a downloadable version but have come up only with Cassady & Greene's replacement for it called Crystal Crazy. In my opinion, it is nowhere near as well executed as the original Crystal Quest. It suffers from what plagues most 'updated' versions of classically addictive video games -- too much complexity and change for the sake of change. You see this in Lode Runner, which is now just plain annoying in 3D whereas it used to be a blast in stick-figure 2D. And am I the only one who loved side-scrollers? I'm getting off topic here... if you have any idea how I can get the original Crystal Quest (the one with the monsters saying "hello!" as they enter the screen and you saying "wheee!" as you pass through the gate!) please pass it on!

Thanks for the memories! -angelos

Anybody know the whereabouts of this game?

Thanks for reading -- next time we'll dive back into some of those really old Mac games.

Joey Cooper is a full-time student, newspaper graphic designer, gamer, web publisher, and writer. He's still trying to figure out exactly which one of those things he does full-time.

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