While Linux users laugh at them both, the eternal leverage PC gamers have held above Mac users has been their chosen hardware’s ability to run the latest video games. Ill-equipped for cutting edge graphics, the Macintosh library has always been an uncanny one, home to edutainment gems and cult action games that exist in spite of it all. One of the most fascinating bits of software is 1986’s Dark Castle, whose creators wanted to see what the Apple machine could pull off. The game is celebrating its 40th anniversary in the most appropriate way imaginable: An official PC port.
Macintosh computers, which didn’t even have color displays until 1993, weren’t made with action games in mind. Anyone who grew up with them in their family computer room can regale you about the uncanny library of games this created. Usually adventure games, simulators and edutainment classics like Carmen Sandiego. It didn’t attract many game designers, but the ones who did came looking for a challenge.
Silicon Beach Software had some early hits on the hardware, but their imagination went into overdrive when they came across artist Mark Stephen Pierce, whose animations were bundled in the Adobe predecessor VideoWorks. Silicon Beach already proved how much novel audio they could cram into a Mac game, but Pierce’s ornate animations were unlike anything else in the scene. They asked for a sprawling sci-fi adventure, but Pierce rebutted with a more concise dungeon crawl. He storyboarded a game similar to Prince of Persia, but had players dodging arcade-like foes. Enemy patterns gleaned from Donkey Kong and Space Invaders couched in cobwebs, bats and dark knights.
Pierce’s expressive animations gave Dark Castle a ton of personality, but it raised the question of how they’d get any of it to work. He collaborated with future Flash creator Jonathan Gay between different cities, mailing each other the latest builds and iterating on each other’s works. To overcome the Mac’s inability to render so much action, Gay used an under the table method known as “page flipping,” tricking the computer to pre-load and hide cells in a maneuver Apple apparently wasn’t a fan of.
The net result is a 1-bit wonder that’s as detailed as it is challenging. The game demands perfect timing and quick reflexes, easily one of the most hardcore games available on the hardware. Its white knuckle difficulty and mesmerizing animation garnered a sequel, Beyond Dark Castle, a year later. Like Lode Runner before it and Marathon after, the series is a canonized Macintosh cult classic. Its 1991 Sega Genesis port, one day poo poo’d by the Angry Video Game Nerd, less so.
After 40 years the castle gates have reopened. In a port from Pierce himself, both Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle have been added to Steam. A cleaner way to play than some of the Internet Archive emulators, but ultimately relitigating the eternal conflict between Mac and PC lords.