Game:

Crystal Castles (1983)

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MAME ID: ccastles
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Crystal Castles (c) 1983 Atari.

Crystal Castles is an inventive variation on the maze-driven collect-the-dots gameplay first seen in Namco's legendary ""Pac-Man"". The player takes on the role of 'Bentley Bear', who must run around a number of ""castles"" - each presented in the form of an isometric forced 3D maze - picking up the gemstones that litter its walkways and platforms, before moving onto the next castle.

Each level is populated by a variety of enemies, including sentient trees, gem eaters, a swarm of bees and Berthilda the Witch. Some enemy types move around the levels randomly, while others will actively chase Bentley. Gem Eaters will devour any gems they reach before the player.

In addition to four-directional walking, Bentley can also jump to avoid pursuing enemies and obstacles. Many levels have platforms that can only be reached via an elevator and some screens also contain hidden secret passages and ramps, as well as 'warps' that move players forward several levels.

Jumping over the trees will shrink and temporarily disable them, while wearing Berthilda's red hat grants the player temporary invincibility, allowing them to kill the witch should they manage to catch her. If Bentley Bear touches a Gem Eater while it's in the process of eating a gem, the Gem Eater dies and 500 points are awarded to the player. However, if the Gem Eater is not eating a gem when touched, Bentley Bear dies.

Some levels contain a large pot of honey. A swarm of bees appears near the honey approximately every five seconds but collecting the honey pot earns the player 1,000 bonus points and causes the bees to appear less frequently. Other enemies, such as the balls, skeletons and ghosts must be avoided.

If Bentley collects all of the gems on a castle, the player receives bonus points. A bonus is also awarded in the event of the player picking up the last gem on the level.

Crystal Castles consists of ten different stages broken down into 37 castle mazes (with four castles making up each stage, apart from 10th, which has only one castle).

- TECHNICAL -

There were two different Crystal Castles cabinets, an upright and a cocktail. Both of these were highly detailed and covered with decorations. The upright cabinet had a production run of 4,880, and the cocktail cabinet had a production run of 500, for a total production run of 5,380 units.

* The Crystal Castles upright was one of the best looking cabinets ever made. It is sort of colored white, and has huge painted sideart of Bentley Bear gathering gems in the castle. The marquee has a futuristic looking logo flanked with two in game scenes on a black background. There is a second mini-marquee over the speaker are that has a large Atari logo. For some reason that logo ends up going missing on many machines, and don't believe sellers when they say it is a cheap or easy part to find, because it isn't. The control panel continues the same graphical scheme as the rest of the machine. It has a standard trackball mounted centrally with fire/start buttons on either side. These trackballs eventually become worn out or damaged, and are mildly expensive to replace.

* The cocktail version has no sideart, very few cocktail machines do. But the top glass is nicely decorated and the control panel art matches the upright version. The players sit across from each other on this version, and the on screen image flips over to face whichever player is currently controlling Bentley Bear.

Game ID : 136022

Main CPU : MOS Technology M6502 (@ 1.5 Mhz)
Sound Chips : (2x) POKEY (@ 1.25 Mhz)

Players : 2
Control : trackball
Buttons : 1 (JUMP)

- TRIVIA -

When it first appeared in arcades in July 1983, Crystal Castles amazed players with its sharp graphics and pseudo 3-D mazes.

The game was originally supposed to be a variation on the mega-hit ""Asteroids"" and the working title was 'Toporoids' (from TOPOgraphics and asteROIDS). It featured a one-legged robot and/or a spaceship placed in 3-D mazes lined with asteroids and the goal was (of course) to shoot them. The mazes were similar to those in Crystal Castles.

The character 'Bentley Bear' was originally named 'Braveheart Bear' in the released prototypes. But, Atari ran into trouble over that name from the American Indians and so had to change it. Whenever Bentley is killed, he shrinks, and says something in a cartoon-type balloon above his head. The four possible sayings are: OUCH; OH NO; BYE; and #?!.

Originally, FXL designed the game so that Bentley could jump while in a tunnel. But he decided to take that ability away when he saw Bentley's head popping through the roof!

The game was programmed in 6502, and Fortran was used as tool for programming.

All of the musical[...]
- CONTRIBUTE -

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