A CM2 fan recently asked if an old interview SongBird Productions had done with Ken Beckett was ever published online after it was first released on the limited CM2: Buried Treasure CD for Windows PC about 20 years ago, and they realized it had not. In the spirit of better late than never, check it out in the Songbird blog. Ken and Scott talk about the NES version, working with Color Dreams, and how the Lynx port got released. Enjoy!
https://songbird-productions.com/2020/09/09/throwback-interview-with-ken-beckett-creator-of-crystal-mines/
Thanks for the pointer. Very interesting to read how much effort was put into each level. I am a huge CM-II fan and a tremendous Chip's Challenge 2 fan for that matter. I consider both to be canonical video games :). Both are universes in and of themselves. For CC2 see https://bitbusters.club/
Anyway, a while ago I wrote a Perl script to decode all levels of the original CM-II. Both the script and the level layouts can be viewed at and downloaded from http://members.ziggo.nl/crystalmines-ii/index/. As Ken Beckett, my plan was to re-implement this fantastic game, just like Brian Rater re-implemented Chip's Challenge 1, which became Tile World. Decoding the original levels of CM-II was the first step. My plan was to use SDL. I stopped once I realised how much time it takes to design new sprites and program their movement.
You're welcome!