A true blast from the past: Dark Castle, by Delta Tao, is a true pioneer in Macintosh gaming. One of the first memorable Mac games for the 9-inch Mac systems, its black-and-white original stole many hours away from this IT engineer in the late 1980's. Was it the multi-level action? The animations? The embedded humor? Let's find out...

Dark Castle is in black-and-white, requiring you to boot up an application disk which contained a "minifinder"...anyone remember these?

Dark Castle was written in 1986 by Mark Pierce and Jonathan Gay for Silicon Beach. It was a huge success, showing off how great the Mac was at sound and graphics. It won every award there was, and made lots of money. However, the Macintosh evolved, and Dark Castle didn't. The Mac II, color, and Multifinder all came out, and Dark Castle slowly stopped working. Aldus acquired Silicon Beach for its graphics, not its games. There were no more Dark Castle games following the acquisition.

For those who were born after Dark Castle's original release (sigh) or who need a refresher on the game, the goal of Dark Castle was to defeat the Black Knight. In order to do that, you (Duncan) will need to explore the castle to find the tools you need to take on this bad boy or to avoid the nasties that try to stop you.

Each level in DC is totally different, requiring different skills to complete them. Many of them lead right to the dungeon (most trap doors and drop-offs will send you there (meaning you'll have to get through 3 dungeon levels in order to get back to the Great Hall). This linkage allows for loads of game play, although it can get a bit repetitious (the nasties are always in the same place). As you increase the difficulty level, the number of nasties increase. Some levels require you to be fast while others require careful observation and meticulous steps.