Our Awesome World: The Crystal Caves Mexico is not often thought of as a place of breathtaking natural beauty—unless, of course, one is willing to look under the ground. National Geographic News presents a stunning, literally awe-inspiring photogallery of Mexico’s Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals). The cavern system was discovered near the town of Delicias, Chihuahua, in 2000 by a mining operation who subsequently drained the caves to reveal gigantic gypsum crystals unlike any ever
When I was 14, we moved to Bermuda. My father was in the Canadian Armed Forces and this was the best posting we'd ever gotten. We were all very excited. We packed up only the stuff we really needed and put everything ielse nto storage. And I said goodbye to my best friend Cathy. For those of you who have read Whale Song, you'll recognize this scenario. I was sad to leave behind my best friend but so excited to go to another country--and one so tropical. I remember that the trip was long. It se
When I was 14, we moved to Bermuda. My father was in the Canadian Armed Forces and this was the best posting we'd ever gotten. We were all very excited. We packed up only the stuff we really needed and put everything ielse nto storage. And I said goodbye to my best friend Cathy. For those of you who have read Whale Song, you'll recognize this scenario. I was sad to leave behind my best friend but so excited to go to another country--and one so tropical. I remember that the trip was long. It se
Buried a thousand feet (300 meters) below Naica mountain in the Chihuahuan Desert, this astonishing cave was discovered by two miners only in the year 2000. A sort of south-of-the-border Fortress of Solitude, Mexico's Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) contains some of the world's largest known natural crystals - translucent beams of gypsum as long as 36 feet (11 meters). Read the entire article! Superman's Cave
Crystal Caves is a video game written and published by Apogee Software. In the game, you are Mylo Steamwitz, a space miner who wants to get rich quick. In order to invest in some ridiculous get-rich-quick schemes, including, but not limited to, starting a "twibble" farm (compare with tribble), he travels to the Altairian star system, and ventures into the caves in the planets there to harvest large, naturally grown crystals.
Mylo comes with a rocket launcher (due to small graphic size, it is hard to determine the exact weapon; it may be a humorously large pistol) and has to jump and shoot his way through the levels to collect all crystals. The game has a number of identifying features, such as a gravity inversion powerup, and an unexpected death when you accidentally shoot out a level's air generator.
Like most Apogee games, this game was released in three episodes (known as volumes), the first one being shareware. It was not very popular, because its graphics, animation, gameplay, and level design were inferior to those of the Commander Keen series that was released around the same time. The three volumes are called: The Trouble with Twibbles, Slugging It Out, and Mylo Versus the Supernova.
Crystal Caves uses the same game engine as Secret Agent, which was released about a year later.
On October 24, 2005, Apogee released a maintenance patch to fix a bug in the game. The bug sets the user's system clock backwards 100 years after running any of the three episodes on some systems using Windows XP. As the game was released 14 years and one day earlier, Apogee may now hold the record for longest time between an initial game release and a maintenance patch.
Trivia
Frank Maddin, the game's designer, found out that David Gerrold, the script writer for the Star Trek episode The Trouble With Tribbles (which the game's first episode parodied) played Crystal Caves, and referred to it in a computer magazine for which he was a contributor.
