Looking back, it can be a bit hard to understand with modern eyes why everyone went nuts in 1993 for Crystal Caliburn, an Arthurian Legend themed pinball game for Mac and DOS, to the point we are still talking about it 30+ years later. For instance, take a look at this ad for the game, and while most ads cherry picked quotes, it really was considered Game of the Year (a pinball game!) and got a mention in the New York Times, back when they were much, much snottier about talking about the computer game enthusiast world. To this day, Crystal Caliburn regularly tops lists of the best computer games of all time, perhaps the only pinball game to ever do so, a genre usually considered of niche interest for Nerdy Dads along with golf games and flight simulators.
At first glance, it looks like just another pinball simulator with average graphics for the time. Pictures do not get across how remarkable it is. As it was done by a Japanese designer, it also had inexplicable "Engrish" like referring to Avalon as "Glass Island." What's more, it was standard for video pinball games to come with multiple tables instead of just one (as many pinball games for the Amiga did, or the later Maxis Pinball, which gave us Space Cadet in Windows 95), but this one, you paid full price for just one table. And yet, people bought it anyway at full price, back when you had to buy a video game in a box at COMPUSA, Nobody Beats the Wiz, or Incredible Universe and install several floppies (later versions had it on something new coming into style, a CD-ROM). Why? Why did people do this?
Well, prior to Crystal Caliburn, it was actually an incredibly difficult technical challenge to represent or simulate the most important part of the game: pinball physics. Not just angles but speed and movement, which video games until then did not have the ability to represent well. Pinball video games prior to Crystal Caliburn felt like you were playing underwater with a floating antigravity ball, without any real tactile heft or physics for the two essential skills, flipping and nudging. Pinball is a tactile game, with incredibly complex physics and varying speeds and angles. If Adam was the first man, Crystal Caliburn was the first video pinball game.
Because Crystal Caliburn's best trait is something that has to be experienced to blow your mind (accurate tactile physics that represents pinball accurately for the first time), it was marketed in an extremely interesting way that was unusual then, but more standard now: a free demo, where you could play for several minutes and see for yourself. Where did you get it? On something a few years old that computer enthusiasts/masturbating nerds used, called the World Wide Web. In fact, if your local Circuit City didn't have the game, you could even use the World Wide Web to purchase it online, and actually have the box and floppy mailed to your home! Who ever heard of such a thing? That sounds like some of the far out scifi things Sandra Bullock did in "The Net," like order a pizza with a computer.
Because the game was purchased by people trying to see what the hubbub was all about who do not usually buy pinball simulators, and because it so accurately reflected the experience of physical pinball tables, the game came with a manual explaining fundamental pinball skills for beginners like shielding with a deflect pass, or how to do a do a power shot where you nudge forward at the same time as a shot for more speed.
The manuals and marketing for Crystal Caliburn sold the game as a way to practice pinball skills at home without the arcade, since it so accurately reflected the experience that the skills could transfer over to physical machines. Since this collection of skills in this manual is so good for beginners (there are some people in this world who view pinball as a game of luck instead of technique, who don't understand you can aim shots, pass the ball between flippers to yourself, or nudge at all), that if I were to teach a beginner course at "Pinball University," the manual for Crystal Caliburn would be required coursework for the three skills: flip, nudge, know.
The story of Crystal Caliburn is often not remembered well because we tell the story of the history of video games all wrong. Popular histories of vide games are not as helpful as you think, as they tend to be biased toward telling the story of game systems (what today are referred to as "consoles") instead of the story of home computers and what PCs were doing. I read an academic history of 80s Japanese video games...that only mentioned the PC-88 and Ys in passing. Most video game histories only mention PC when they were impossible to ignore, as with Doom. Wing Commander, Myst (a game played by literally everyone I knew for years), Ultima, and Star Control sold in the millions, and probably inspired your favorite game, but they are not discussed in histories of video games, a surprising blind spot.
