The Crystal Caves are the most famous of many caves in Bermuda and are named after the crystal clear water that fills the cave, making it possible to see the cave floor down some 55 feet below the water’s surface. The cave is full of stalagmites and stalactites that have taken millions of years to form. Sometimes, they join to form a single column from floor to ceiling. The player controls Mylo Steamwitz, a space miner who wants to get rich quick. In order to invest in some ridiculous get-rich-quick schemes, including 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. The goal of each level is collect all of the crystals and safely reach the exit. Mylo must navigate each level by jumping onto platforms, some of which must be activated by switches, as well as shooting enemies with his rocket launcher. The game has a number of identifying features, such as a gravity inversion powerup, and an unexpected death when the player accidentally shoots out a level's air generator. Like most Apogee games, this game was released in three episodes, the first one being shareware. The three episodes are called: The Trouble with Twibbles, Slugging It Out, and Mylo Versus the Supernova. Contrary to many PC platformers of the early 90's, the main character responds fluidly to controls (although it suffered from jerky scrolling, which at that time was rather common for action games on PC). The levels are quite small in size, but have various different graphical themes and, not unlike other Apogee games, also contain a number of inside jokes that refer to other games of the same time period. 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 which set the player's computer's clock backwards 100 years after playing on 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.
Enter an underground world of treasures and traps. This colorful EGA game (VGA compatible) rivals any commercial game with its arcade quality, puzzles and graphics. As Mylo Steamwitz, you'll enter cave after cave of adventure, gathering the treasures of each, while evading hazards galore! This game features the smoothest animated graphics ever seen in an Apogee game. The game begins with Mylo rocketing to the Altairian star system on a simple treasure hunt. But what happens is far more dangerous than even Mylo bargained for. He enters an underground world of chambers full of alien technology and traps. Strange alien creatures and robots inhabit the caves, protecting the priceless crystals from money-greedy explorers. Crystal Caves is a mixing of Nintendo's Mario Brothers, Commander Keen, and Indiana Jones. As with all Apogee games, a high priority has been placed on solving ingenious puzzles built into the game. Variety is also evident in Crystal Caves. On some levels Mylo will even walk up-side-down! Other levels have such low gravity that the recoil from Mylo's laser pistol can knock him into other dangers! Some levels are without lights, and others are packed full of falling hammers egg-dropping alien bats, free roaming slither eyes, web-shooting alien spiders, and much, much more. Each level has all new graphics! There are three unique episodes to the Crystal Caves saga: "The Trouble with Twibbles", "Slugging it Out", and "Mylo Verses the Supernova". Each episode has a unique story twist and graphics. Can you help Mylo strike it rich and quit his day job?
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). How did the crystals reach such superheroic proportions? In the new issue of the journal Geology, García-Ruiz reports that for millennia the crystals thrived in the cave's extremely rare and stable natural environment. Temperatures hovered consistently around a steamy 136 degrees Fahrenheit (58 degrees Celsius), and the cave was filled with mineral-rich water that drove the crystals' growth. Modern-day mining operations exposed the natural wonder by pumping water out of the 30-by-90-foot (10-by-30-meter) cave, which was found in 2000 near the town of Delicias (Chihuahua state map). Now García-Ruiz is advising the mining company to preserve the caves. "There is no other place on the planet," García-Ruiz said, "where the mineral world reveals itself in such beauty."
