I think we should make a topic how we find this game the first time. I know it from my father. He has played it and now I am playing it. My sister, too :D

Who have you get Dark castle? :BKfist:

Sorry, I wanted to say HOW did you get Dark Castle.

Sorry :P

I had one of those Macintosh's that had the monitor attached to the rest of the computer and had a very small B&W screen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Plus). We had one single floppy disk of games that I believe came with our computer, and then a couple more that were separate.

Dark Castle
Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego
Cosmic Osmo
Bird Race
Oregon Trail
Stratego

And I played Bird Race the Carmen the most out of those, actually, because Dark Castle was a little too difficult for me to play too often. I had gotten the shield and fireballs a few times, but never beaten the Black Knight. But my dad played it a lot, and I always enjoyed watching him. Then I got older and I was looking through Abandonware, and found Dark Castle mentioned. The memories flooded in, so I installed vMac and started playing. Soon enough I won the game, downloaded the sequel, and won that as well. Then I found Z Sculpt's project and have been following it ever since.

Interesting!

Thanks for posting! :)

My dad bought the game when it came out, and me and my 2 brothers sat and lost hours to it. :)

When the sequel came out, we got that too. And years later, we also got Color Dark Castle, and since then I have been following DC3.

You can still edit the topic title so that it makes more sense :)

I started playing because of my dad, who got DC for our MacPlus

What is the trend with everyone finding it from their dad?

Many of us were very little when DC and BDC first came out. By the time I had my own computer, it was on OS X, and I wouldn't have been looking up old 80's games had my dad not introduced me to it. He bought DC after getting a brand new Mac Plus :) I believe I have a picture of me playing it when I was really young, similar to the one La Porta has already posted.

The first Mac I ever played on was the Mac 512, and the Mac Plus stayed on the desk until it finally shorted out in the 90's. I had a whole bunch of games, all of them pirated. I have no clue where they came from: my father probably got them from work associates. Either way, I was old enough to play the game on the very computer it was written for.

My dad bought them, and Me and my brothers were the ones that played it.

My dad bought DC (I don't remember the occasion). Then he bought BDC about a year later and this time I remember the occasion. I was a piano-player as a kid and every once in a while I was put in a Kiwanis piano competition. All I remember is that after the competition was done (I think I got 2nd place that time) and as me, my dad and my mom were walking back to the car, my dad waved the BDC box in front of my face. :D

Aww man, that made my day.

Instead of pictures of me playing the game, I know we have a home video and you can see the Mac 128k (upgraded to Fat Mac 512k) and hear DC's Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor in the background complete with thunder. You never actually see the Mac's screen but there's no denying I had left DC running on it (I simply loved the intro music from games like DC, BDC, Apache Strike, Falcon and would just sit and listen to it sometimes.)

Like Jon, my dad never really played DC. He was more of a Crystal Quest-guy and I remember having Crystal Quest competitions with my dad. I remember having my spirits crushed one day when he beat my Crystal Quest record. I liked Crystal Quest but I not so much as to spend time getting back the record. :) I think I'd just go back to playing other games like Dark Castle.

I do remember my dad watching me play the game at times though. And I know that when I beat BDC on Advanced he urged me to take a screenshot, print it, and send it to Silicon Beach Software (just like it was instructed in the game). I never actually got an answer from Silicon Beach though. :(

My dad also loved Crystal Quest, crazy....

*twilight zone music*

:D

My dad got them as well, though it's questionable how. He told me who bootlegged them from a friend, but now that I think back I remember seeing the BDC box laying around. Maybe he pirated the first one and bought the sequel.

Floppy disks: the Napster of the 80's!

Wait, what? I never heard anything about that...

there was definitely something in the instructions which said you could take a screen shot with Apple+shift+3 however, I don't remember them saying anything about sending it to anyone...

I lost the manual at such a young age, that I don't even remember what it looked like.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-Xfqkdh5Js4

NoooOOOOooOOO Not that again!

I love you too ;)

I want that rapper guy's hat! It could be my computer time hat!

That is absolutely hilarious I had definitely forgotten about that.

When we moved from New Hampshire, one of our friends gave us a Mac Plus with BDC on it. My brother and I were so bad at it, we couldn't ever get anything but the flying levels done.

Someone who didn't get it from their parents!? omg!

My dad's not into games, and I think the only video games he's ever enjoyed were the Commander Keen games.

My dad... uh... copied that floppy from a friend.

But... but the friend only played it once or twice and then never looked back! So it was really more like a gift, right? Right!??!?!?!?

DON'T ARREST MY FATHER! HE'S DONE MORE GOOD THAN HARM TO THIS WORLD!

Mine were copied, but from the original disks, before they broke. :P

My dad copied DC from work on 400kb diskettes, BDC came later on two DD diskettes, sweet memories. Still remember it though it's a very long time ago. That's how stong memories I have of DC. It is probably because it was the first game I ever played on any machine. I even remember the nice smell of the computer, which was a "hacked" Mac + in a homemade case : ) see previous posts. But DC is the only Mac game that has stood the "teeth of time" IMO, apart from maybe Shufflepuck Cafe, some other games were nice but not so enjoyable anymore unfortunately. I really liked Dungeon of Doom too. But enough off-topic.

Dad brought it home from some guy in the hospital while on his residency...pirated, of course. It was BDC....never had DC until around 2001.

I, on the other hand, never had BDC. I've had DC since 1988 when my father bought it from Silicon Beach for our Macintosh SE.

I didn't get it from my dad.

I got it from a kid whose dad was a coworker of my dad. We met each other through our dads.
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

haha. :)

Continuing Jon God (My Brother)'s story. I was born a little late, and so I was never able to enjoy the games in their prime.

Well, I didn't really GET DC or BDC.. I heard wonderful stories about a "Legendary Game about a Guy who throws Rocks and stuff" from Jon God and my other brothers, and although we still used the old (OLD) SE, it had moved on to become a work computer, and I didn't really get to play on it. You gotta remember, anyway, that I was only around 6 or 7 at about this time. Although I probably couldn't have gotten into the game anyway, because I wasn't really a gamer then. I was more of a watcher OF gamers. Eventually Color Dark Castle came out and I was able to try the Legendary game. I, not surprisingly, didn't even get to old BK on Novice. After repeated, increasingly frustrating losses, I gave up the game completely, moving on to other things. Around this time I heard tell of a mystical game that was supposed to be a sequel to the DC games of olde. Interested, I played the demo. It didn't have enough content to grab my attention, so I, again, moved on to other things.

About 4 years later, Jon God became excited. Apparently the Sequel had gotten new content, and he suspected that the game was not far off.

About 1 year later, Jon God said he had a forum on the games. I was slightly surprised. Jon God was the one who liked the games the most out of all of us, and I knew that if anyone would have made a forum, it would have been him. By this time I was a solid gamer, although, because the SE had died, we could no longer play the games. We still had Color Dark Castle, I believe, but I really didn't have an interest in it.

Not very long after, my brothers and I received some incredibly exciting news from Jon God. The game was out, and he had a copy. He wasn't bragging or anything, he was just happy. I tried the game, and, amazingly (considering my other reactions), liked it! It was a well-balanced game that was silly yet serious, with advanced graphics and frustrating gameplay. It was, in essence, a perfect side-scroller, with everything from Mutants that taunted you to Eyeballs that shot fireballs. It was incredibly original, and when I looked back on the other games (We had Mini vMac by now) it completely captured the feel of the originals. The originals, too, as I played them, had that same air of originality and fun that was in the Sequel. I was amazed by what I had missed.

Soon after, I joined the forum, but since I never check my eMail, I didn't find the Activation notice until months later. And even then, I didn't really post. I couldn't GET the game, so how could I talk about it. Then, a month or two later, I received a copy from Jon God. He had gotten another copy, amazingly, and I began to play from scratch, having lost my old character long ago. That was about the time I checked out the forum... And there we go! I'm now a part (a very SMALL part) of the thriving DC community. And that, my friends, is my entire Past with the games.

:NotePaper: Note: Some or All of the things mentioned in this article are NOT true, because the Writer has a horrible memory.

Good times!

And how else could I have had the game than from my dad! :D

Pirated, don't know what Mac I had, we did have an external floppy drive. My dad didn't really play games, and it was me and my sister competing in DC for the highscores. :)

My dad got all the games from work, besides some tetris game and Crystal Quest.

With Crystal Quest I remember reaching around level 22, game being vary hard on that level, and I remember I felt awesome in my skills I had back then to get there. Just like DC, that game pushes you to greater heights in certain gaming skills.