really excited that this #macintosh #hypercard treasure came in today
while most people remember Myst, fewer remember cyan's earlier first-person hypercard adventures like The Manhole, Spelunx and Cosmic Osmo.
spelunx has a unique and wonderful art style - robyn's 1-bit black/white paintings are crisp, imaginative, and delightful. but what surprises me the most is that *colour* sprites are mixed in at specific places. i do not know of other games that feature both colour and b+w support simultaneously during gameplay. (fwiw, if your macintosh was 1-bit, it would show 1-bit art in its place)
this is the launch edition of the game, ca. 1991. two years later, after the success of Myst, #cyan would re-release Spelunx with repainted 256 colour art. robyn himself isn't a fan of the repainted art, and i can understand why. the originals are incredible examples of what macpaint and hypercard are capable of together.
i especially like that the game includes a Hypercard 2.1 diskette, because there were no guarantees that macintosh owners would have a copy of their own.
attached is the receipt I found in the game. it appears the Colbert family of Fayetteville, Georgia bought this for their kids a few days after christmas '92 - one can imagine santa brought the family a new mac for christmas a few days earlier :)
if you're interested in cyan's untold history, i highly recommend @MossRC's wonderful interview with robyn miller on the b+w adventure series:
- replies
- 1
- announces
- 0
- likes
- 3
@MossRC I only had played Osmo growing up, and I was delighted a few months ago by the colour sprites.
it took me about 3 years to find a reasonably priced copy of the original edition. hopefully game prices continue to drop
@leadedsolder @MossRC what a great question. that was a really unique part of the gameplay - i had forgotten about it!
@leadedsolder @MossRC fascinating. i've never delved at all into hypercard sourcefile hacking
Bonus: hypercard stack data forks end in Swedish for "now it is over"
@PearlescentFerret hard to imagine a weirder visual pool for dreams than spelunx 😅
@PearlescentFerret also: i hereby formally declare that the title should be renamed to include an exclamation mark as you correctly noted
@PearlescentFerret wow! i had to look up the latter. i know what you mean - our house was full of weird not-quite-for-kids cartoons like Wizards and The Last Unicorn