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The Return of Crystal Quest
November 29, 2001
Sometimes it isn’t the fancy graphics and sound effects that make a game memorable—sometimes it’s the nostalgia. I sometimes wax poetic about the glories of Kaboom and Circus on the Atari 2600… oops sorry, wrong platform. Today I’m talking about Crystal Quest, a game with which I wasted far too many hours while I was in college all those years ago. Now that I’m in grad school, I’m wasting time with Crystal Quest for both the Palm OS and Pocket PC platforms.
If you haven’t played the game before, the instructions are pretty simple- guide your spaceship in a quest to pick up all of the crystals and bonuses while avoiding the bad guys and the space mines. Believe me, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. Some of the bad guys shoot back, and some of them take more than one of your shots to kill. Once you pick up all of the crystals on a given level, the gate opens and if you can manuever out of it without hitting the side, the level ends. If you did it fast enough, you can even get a time bonus.
I really like the approach that the developer has taken here. Instead of using the hard buttons to control your character, you use the stylus. I found that while it was a little tricky getting used to, it gave me excellent control over where I went on the playing field. The hard buttons are used for your weapons, both the standard gun and the level-clearing “big bombs.”
All in all, Crystal Quest is a lot of fun. If you enjoyed playing it on the Mac all those years ago, you’ll probably enjoy playing it on your Palm or Pocket PC. You can download a demo at http://www.portable-games.com and a license for the full version will set you back $14.95.
Pocket Goddess Rating: 
