As an old tech geezer who remembers when cool graphics meant there was more than one color on the screen, I tend to prefer old-fashioned games to the complex and time-consuming fare that gets most of the attention these days. Last week I came across something called Fairy Treasure (Red Marble Games, $19.95, Universal Binary), a fresh interpretation of the classic computer game Breakout. It’s actually a Windows game converted to the Mac by Red Marble Games and released just last week.

In Breakout-type games players use a paddle at the bottom of the screen to deflect an ever-moving ball up into a field of bricks, the object being to destroy all the bricks without losing your ball. The original form of this game is actually built into some iPods (well, it came with my 30 GB video iPod).

The object of Fairy Treasure is the same, but features rich graphics and sound along with the fantasy theme. Instead of simply advancing to increasingly difficult levels as you do in most Breakout-style games, in Fairy Treasure the completion of each level carries you further on your journey through the Kingdom of Trollandia. After each level you are shown your progress on a map of the kingdom. Your goal is to complete all 120 levels to recapture the fairy treasure from an evil troll.

Yes, I said 120 levels – but the game remembers where you left off so you don’t have to do it all in one sitting. Better yet, while losing all your balls resets your score to 0 it doesn’t restart your “quest.” Your next game picks up at the level where you left off unless you choose to restart from scratch. The game also offers three difficulty levels, a useful feature that keeps the game easy for beginners and challenging for experienced players.

Typical of a Breakout-type game, hitting certain bricks causes various bonuses and power-ups to fall which you need to capture with your paddle. But Fairy Treasure adds some nice theme-related touches, such as flitting fairies that help break up the bricks when your ball releases them from the jars in which they’re imprisoned. This is a commercial-quality shareware game.

A free trial is available from Red Marble that’s good for 60 minutes of playing time. Or, if you’d rather check it out with downloading anything, you can play a “light” version (it requires Flash 7.0) for free online.