created for the apple macintosh in 1987 (and later ported to the apple iigs by rebecca heineman), crystal quest is patrick buckland’s response to vid kidz’s robotron: 2084. apple’s fledgeling computer wasn’t equipped with dual joysticks, but - as a gui-based computer in a market of text-based terminals - it was emphatically equipped with a mouse. buckland built his game around mouse control - the mechanical skill driving navigation on the macintosh desktop is also what drives navigation through crystal quest’s screens.

since a mouse-click firing pattern doesn’t allow for a lot of firepower, the goal of this new game would have to be different: finesse instead of crowd control. while in robotron collecting things is the secondary goal, in crystal quest it is foremost, and the destruction of enemies secondary. each stage requires the player to collect a scattering of crystals and exit the screen as quickly as possible through controlled, precise use of the mouse. the player can shoot, but this too is a matter of delicate mouse direction, as the player’s bullet has the same speed and heading as the player’s craft at the moment the mouse is clicked. the essence of the game is in deftly weaving between enemy bullets and mines to collect crystals and bonuses, dispatching solitary enemies with pin-point shots in a graceful, unbroken arc of motion - it is a kind of dance.

remakes of the game for platforms lacking mouse control, like the nonetheless-playable gameboy version, can’t capture the subtlety of the original’s control. this is never truer than in stainless games’s 2006 xbox live arcade version of the title. with the xbox 360’s dual-stick control pad, buckland’s new team saw fit to finally equip the game with a robotron-like control scheme - removing the nuance and making the game just another of the many robotron-inspired titles littering the live arcade marketplace instead of the pixel stage for a single, perfect dance.