"mom! dad! don't touch it! it's evil!"
Feb. 27th, 2007 12:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashIt's not ubiquitous, but it's common enough to be a cliche. You're playing a shoot-em-up - probably a vertically-scrolling one. You blast (and possibly buy) your way to the final boss. It's big. It spews out more bullets than anything else in the game. You have to blow it up more than once because it keeps changing shape instead of dying.
Finally, a big crystal comes out of it. This is a crystal of Pure Evil. Blow it up, and the game's over. Quite possibly with an ambiguous 'You won... or did you?' text screen at the end.
The question being: who came up with this schtick? Treasure certainly helped spread it in their infamous Radiant Silvergun and Ikaurga - but this was the final boss of Raiden, back in '90. Was Raiden's invading army of Evil Red Crystals the first game to culminate in blowing up the Crystal Of Evil? I think it's the first time I remember seeing it.
Crystals of evil, gems of power - to be honest, these run rampant throughout all videogames. A Magic Crystal is what a lot of people reach for as a quick and easy Macguffin when making the semi-generic fantasy worlds video games tend to take place in. Collect the (3, 5, 7 - or even 14 if you're playing Sonic & Knuckles 3) crystals. Heal the Dark Crystal and heal the world.
... I can't think any harder than this right now. I'll be glad when I'm done with this cold. And when I hear back about this job prospect from the end of last week. Yay waiting. My website continues to be less sucky on IE6 - and maybe on 7 as well; I haven't seen it on that yet, and I've done some stuff that should improve its display on general principles. IE6 debugging was less painful than I expected once I got it seeing the dev copy on my Mac.
I found an ancient personal website from back in 2000 lying on my hard drive. And threw a few old Flash pieces from it up into the current site. Even back then, my idea of website design was "minimal" and "slightly off-balance". Just the art and a little something to frame it.
Finally, a big crystal comes out of it. This is a crystal of Pure Evil. Blow it up, and the game's over. Quite possibly with an ambiguous 'You won... or did you?' text screen at the end.
The question being: who came up with this schtick? Treasure certainly helped spread it in their infamous Radiant Silvergun and Ikaurga - but this was the final boss of Raiden, back in '90. Was Raiden's invading army of Evil Red Crystals the first game to culminate in blowing up the Crystal Of Evil? I think it's the first time I remember seeing it.
Crystals of evil, gems of power - to be honest, these run rampant throughout all videogames. A Magic Crystal is what a lot of people reach for as a quick and easy Macguffin when making the semi-generic fantasy worlds video games tend to take place in. Collect the (3, 5, 7 - or even 14 if you're playing Sonic & Knuckles 3) crystals. Heal the Dark Crystal and heal the world.
... I can't think any harder than this right now. I'll be glad when I'm done with this cold. And when I hear back about this job prospect from the end of last week. Yay waiting. My website continues to be less sucky on IE6 - and maybe on 7 as well; I haven't seen it on that yet, and I've done some stuff that should improve its display on general principles. IE6 debugging was less painful than I expected once I got it seeing the dev copy on my Mac.
I found an ancient personal website from back in 2000 lying on my hard drive. And threw a few old Flash pieces from it up into the current site. Even back then, my idea of website design was "minimal" and "slightly off-balance". Just the art and a little something to frame it.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 05:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 06:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 06:21 pm (UTC)