Spelunx
Encyclopedia
1991 in video gaming
-Notable releases:*Microprose creates Civilization, Sid Meier's most successful game .*Electronic Arts releases James Pond 2 and Road Rash for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, starting a series of games that were popular in the 1990s....
educational computer game designed by Robyn
Robyn Miller
Robyn Charles Miller co-founded Cyan Worlds with brother Rand Miller. After releasing a number of children's adventure "worlds", the brothers finally hit on a success with the computer game Myst, which remained the number one-selling game for the remainder of the 1990s...
and Rand Miller
Rand Miller
Rand Miller co-founded Cyan with brother Robyn Miller and became famous from the unexpected success of their computer game Myst, which remained the number one-selling game for the remainder of the 1990s...
, best known as the creators of Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
. Robyn Miller also hand-drew all of the graphics in the game.
Spelunx has no real story, and is meant as a game to be explored and played with rather than completed. Other than the player, there are two main characters, Professor Spelunx and Mr. Seudo, who are pictured but never actually meet the player.
In the 1993 colorized release, Cyan's Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
made a cameo appearance
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
in the Tumnus room. You can view a picture of Myst Island by dragging the x-ray viewer on the model house to the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
Games and activities
There are several games and activities in Spelunx, some of which are designed to introduce the player to a specific field of knowledge:- Mr. Seudo's telescope (Cartesian coordinates)
- The Tree Gene-orator (geneticsGeneticsGenetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
) - Pet Lizard (metabolismMetabolismMetabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in the cells of living organisms to sustain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories...
) - Yon-Yon Caverns (gravity)
- Lightning Simulator (speed of soundSpeed of soundThe speed of sound is the distance travelled during a unit of time by a sound wave propagating through an elastic medium. In dry air at , the speed of sound is . This is , or about one kilometer in three seconds or approximately one mile in five seconds....
) - Criss-Ants (animal behavior)
- Yodel Toasters
- Talking Puppets
- Pigtoad Tree (choreographyChoreographyChoreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...
and musicMusicMusic is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
) - Animation Machine (Stop motionStop motionStop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
)
External links
- Official site for Spelunx
- Home of the Underdogs entry for Spelunx
- Spelunx at the Macintosh Garden