Crystal Castles is an arcade game released by Atari, Inc. in 1983. The player controls Bentley Bear who has to collect gems located throughout trimetric-projected rendered castles while avoiding enemies, some of whom are after the gems as well.
The game was made by Franz Lanzinger and was the first game he ever developed. He joined Atari in 1983 and was initially tasked with making a game like Asteroids (1979). As he was developing the graphics for it involving the unique backgrounds, the game began to develop into what became Crystal Castles. The game is a maze game, which featured more unique elements to the gameplay such as warp zones to allow players to advance in the game, and dedicated ending which was not typical in arcade games.
Following the games release in arcades, it was released for the Atari 2600 home console, and various home computer lines. Critics often complimented the game for its unique graphics. Bentley Bear would show up in educational home computer programs from Atari as well as Atari Karts (1995) for the Atari Jaguar. Lanzinger left Atari after developing the game, and after attempting to get the rights to the character, he developed a similarly styled game with Gubble (1997).
Gameplay
The first level of the arcade original. The initials of the player with the highest score–FXL here–are built into the castle.
Crystal Castles features Bentley Bear as the playable character. In the Arcade flyer, the narrative states that Bentley Bear went to the land of Crystal Castles to gather gemstones.[3] The Atari 2600 manual alters the narrative slightly, in that after having a nap, Bentley found himself in a huge castle where he was trapped by Berthilda the Witch. To escape, he had to collect gems while avoiding the Berthhilda's minions.[4]
In the original arcade game, the player controls Bentley with a trackball throughout a maze of 16 different playing fields. Bentley can also can jump with the button on the arcade which allows him to avoid obstacles in the maze.[3] The player can collect the gem stones scattered through the maze to collect points. As some enemies eat gems, players can earn bonus points for collecting the last gem on the board. Other items appear that give points such as pots of honey, give bonus points.[5] Different enemies follow unique patterns, such as trees in the second board, who try to find the quickest path to Bentley. The trees get stunned briefly if Bentley jumps over them. Other enemies such as the Gem Eaters, can be defeated if Bentley runs into them as a gem stone rises up through their body.[6] Each level has four waves, with the fourth one featuring Berthilda the Witch who Bentley can defeat when he wears the magic hat located in the maze. The hat otherwise makes Bentley briefly invincible to enemies.[3][6] In the games ending, the players are receive a congratulatory message and ranking based on how many lives they have and a bonus score based on how fast they played, followed by an animation that reproduces animated rectangles.[7]
Development
Franz Lanzinger was the developer of Crystal Castles. Lanzinger had been programming on his own since 1971 and had dropped out of a mathematics degree at the University of California in Berkeley to pursue a career in scientific research.[8][7] Lanzinger was fan of arcade games and when his friend Brian McGhie was hired by Atari as part of a testing group, Lanzinger was recommended to Atari by McGhie due to his proficiency in coding in assembly language and was hired in 1982.[8] It would be the first game he ever developed.[7] Lanzinger would later thank McGhee, including his initials "BBM" in a level in Crystal Castles.[7]
Franz Lasinger was fan of the arcade game Centipede (pictured) and Millipede which used a trackball for controls. This led to using one for Crystal Castles.
On arrival at the company, Lanzinger had to choose from a book on approved projects and chose one titled Toporoids, a variation of Atari's Asteroids (1979) arcade game. He was without a development system for his first month at Atari, leading him to spend the first few months working on a Mainframe computer creating three-dimensional backgrounds as the intended topology of the game. He recalled he would make five or so variations of the backgrounds each day. As he developed them, he began experimenting with them, and created an E.T.-like character that would move along the architecture, and began to feel he could make a very different game than Toporoids.[8]
At this time, there was no theme or enemies in the game. Lanzinger and some co-workers began thinking of ideas for the game and developed a Fairy tale theme such as moving tree and a witch from The Wizard of Oz (1939).[9] The idea of Bentley Bear came from these sessions. The bear was initially named Bear Braveheart, which was changed by Atari's marketing team feeling it would be offensive to Indigenous people. A competition was held among the engineering team to rename the character with Bentley being chosen.[10]
Lanzinger was a fan of the games Centipede (1981) and Millipede (1982) which used a trackball to control the game, which led him to using one in Crystal Castles. Lanzinger wrote all the code for the game. Two graphic artists employed by Atari contributed to the art, such as Barbara Singh who created the majority of the motion objects and Susan McBride who also contributed a few. Atari programmer Dave Ralston helped design some additional mazes when prototypes were being placed in arcades. Initially, there were 12 mazes, with Ralston helping design some of the more complicated mazes from the later portion of the game.[10]
While developing the game, he spend $2,000 as a tax write-off playing arcade games as research. he stated that he felt it was important to got to an arcade and that it helped him "make good decisions about game design. it pushed me in the right direction."[11] Watching others players games like Tempest and having to take long periods of time to get to the level of play they wanted to be at inspired Lanzinger to include warps in the game, to let advanced players get to the more difficult stages early and to keep game time low for more income on a coin-op. The secret of the warps are shown later in the game to alert players to them.[11]
Crystal Castles for the Atari ST was programmed by Andromeda Software, a company based on in Hungary.[12]
Release
Crystal Castles was released in arcades on July 8, 1983.[13] In Japan, Game Machine listed the arcade game on their December 15, 1983 issue as being the fifth most-successful upright arcade unit of the month.[14]
Reviewing the original arcade release, Bill Kunkel of Electronic Games described the sound and graphics as "top notch", but made Crystal Castles a solid game was its play value.[24] Michael Blanchet of Electronic Fun with Computer & Games said that while "unimaginative maze games abound", Crystal Castles benefitted from a "fresh and novel approach"[25] Roger C. Sharpe writing in Play Meter found the games graphics and cabinet to have "stunning" artwork, and highlighted the games personality, writing that "what's nice about the game is that players have a storyline. You do get a sense of movement as you finish a screen and then watch Bentley move to another as it quickly takes shape on screen."[26] In Electronic Games 1985 Arkie Awards, Crystal Castles received a Certificate of Merit in the Coin-op Division. The award was to which was to salute "the upper crust of gameware" which did not win any major award.[27]
The Atari 2600 port of Crystal Castles was released in March 1984.[28] In 1984, several ports for Crystal Castles were announced, including the Commodore 64, Apple IIe, IBM Personal Computer, and VIC-20.[29] In 1984, Andy Harris wrote in TV Gamer that none of the home versions of the game had the superb graphic quality of the arcade game, which was constantly entertaining with several surprises.[30][31] Reviewing versions for the BBC Micro and Commodore 64 (C64), "Nicky" of Computer and Video Games stated they "haven't played such a satisfying game of grab-the-loot-and-run for a long time" noting both versions ran quickly and were faithful copies of the arcade games.[32] Reviewing the C64 release, the reviewers in Zzap! disagreed on the overall quality. One reviewer fond of the arcade game recommended it to fellow fans, another felt it did not live up to the arcade game while another felt the game was "little more than glorified Pac-Man".[22]
From retrospective reviews, Brett Alan Weiss of Allgame gave the arcade game a four and a half star rating out of five, noting the game had memorable characters, catchy music, addicting gameplay and was a "beautiful game."[19] In 1995, Flux magazine ranked the game 95th on their "Top 100 Video Games."[33] In his book The Video Games Guide, Matt Fox gave the arcade game a two out of five star rating, finding the building-block like graphics unappealing and that the all the gems, enemies and Bentley appeared small which made the game "worlds away" from the immediacy of Pac-Man.[23] Reviewing the game in 1989, ACE commented that the arcade release was "one of the most addictive cabinets ever", and that the budget release from home computers by Kixx was "ultimately pointless, yet totally unputdownable arcade entertainment."[1]Zzap! would also later re-review the budget re-release, while finding it repetitive and difficult to control, ultimately wrote that this "ancient co-op, the Pac-man concept still has a lot of strength (look at Pac-Mania on the Amiga) and this is one of the best versions around."[34]
Legacy
Following Crystal Castles, Lanzinger began development on an arcade machine based on the film Gremlins (1984). He visited the set, but left Atari after a dispute with Atari over residuals paid to coin-op developers for sales of home conversions.[7] He initially left the video game industry before working for Tengen on their ports of games like Toobin' and Ms. Pac-Man.[7]
Crystal Castles did not receive a sequel. In the mid-1990s, Lanzinger formed Actual Entertainment to create a sequel to Crystal Castles. The group could not get the rights, but developed a similarly themed game titled Gubble (1997).[7] Bentley Bear would reappear in educational programs such as Bentley Bear's Magical Math for the Atari ST and as a playable character in Atari Karts (1995) for the Atari Jaguar.[35][36] Lanzinger stated that Crystal Castles remained his favorite game on which he had worked, but later said that he did not think of the implications of using a trackball for the game, saying "In retrospect, having a trackball is a hindrance as it's hard to get the feel right with a different controller."[10][7]
Crystal Castles includes warps, pre-dating their popular use in Super Mario Bros. (1985).[11] It is also among the earliest arcade games to have a distinct ending.[11] Lanzinger wrote a two-page memo to his bosses stating that if video games are aspiring to tell stories, they should have satisfying conclusions.[10]
Millipede is a fixed shooter video game released in arcades by Atari, Inc. in 1982. The sequel to 1981's Centipede, it has more gameplay variety and a wider array of insects than the original. The objective is to score as many points as possible by destroying all segments of the millipede as it moves toward the bottom of the screen, as well as eliminating or avoiding other enemies. The game is played with a trackball and a single fire button which can be held down for rapid-fire.
Kaboom! is an action video game published in 1981 by Activision for the Atari 2600. The gameplay was based on the Atari arcade game Avalanche (1978), with the game now involving a Mad Bomber who drops bombs instead of falling rocks. Kaboom! was programmed by Larry Kaplan with David Crane coding the graphics for the buckets and Mad Bomber. It was the last game designed by Kaplan for Activision, who left the company shortly after the release of the game. The game was later ported by Paul Wilson for the Atari 5200 system.
Star Raiders is a space combat simulator video game created by Doug Neubauer and published in 1980 by Atari. The player assumes the role of a starship fighter pilot, who must protect starbases from invading forces called Zylons. Piloting and combat are shown in the 3D cockpit view, while a 2D galactic map shows the state of the Zylon invasion. Neubauer made the game during in his spare time at Atari, inspired by contemporary media such as Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars, as well as the 1971 mainframe game Star Trek. Originally released on the Atari 400/800 computers, Star Raiders was later ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Atari ST.
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Berzerk is a multidirectional shooter designed by Alan McNeil and released for arcades in 1980 by Stern Electronics of Chicago. Following Taito's Stratovox, it is one of the first arcade video games with speech synthesis. Berzerk places the player in a series of top-down, maze-like rooms containing armed robots. Home ports were published for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Vectrex.
Ms. Pac-Man is a 1982 maze arcade video game developed by General Computer Corporation and published by Midway. It is the first sequel to Pac-Man (1980) and the first entry in the series to not be made by Namco. Controlling the title character, Pac-Man's wife, the player is tasked with eating all of the pellets in an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating the larger "power pellets" lets the player eat the ghosts, who turn blue and flee.
Road Runner is a racing video game based on the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner shorts. It was released in arcades by Atari Games in 1985.
Phoenix is a fixed shooter video game developed for arcades in Japan and released in 1980 by Taito. The player controls a space ship shooting at incoming enemies that fly from the top of the screen down towards the player's ship. There are five stages which repeat endlessly. The fifth is a fight against a large enemy spaceship, making Phoenix one of the first shooters with a boss battle, an element that would become common for the genre.
Demon Attack is a fixed shooter video game created by Rob Fulop for the Atari 2600 and published by Imagic in 1982. The game involves the player controlling a laser cannon from the surface of a planet, shooting winged demons that fly down and attack the player in different sets of patterns.
A warp, also known as a portal or teleporter, is an element in video game design that allows a player character instant travel between two locations or levels. Specific area that allow such travel is referred to as warp zone. A warp zone might be a secret passage, accessible only to players capable of finding it, but they are also commonly used as a primary mean of travel in certain games. Warps might be deliberately installed within puzzles, be used to avoid danger in sections of a game that have been previously accomplished, be something a player can abuse for cheating, or be used as a punishment to a player straying from the "correct" path.
Robot Tank is a first-person shoot 'em up written by Alan Miller for the Atari 2600 and published by Activision in 1983. It is similar in design to Atari, Inc.'s Battlezone tank combat arcade video game and more so to its 2600 port. Robot Tank adds different systems which can individually be damaged—instead of the vehicle always exploding upon being shot—and weather effects.
River Raid is a video game developed by Carol Shaw for the Atari Video Computer System and released in 1982 by Activision. The player controls a fighter jet over the River of No Return in a raid behind enemy lines. The goal is to navigate the flight by destroying enemy tankers, helicopters, fuel depots and bridges without running out of fuel or crashing.
Pac-Man is a 1982 maze video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. under official license by Namco, and an adaptation of the 1980 hit arcade game of the same name. The player controls the title character, who attempts to consume all of the wafers in a maze while avoiding four ghosts that pursue him. Eating flashing wafers at the corners of the screen causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue and flee, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. Once eaten, a ghost is reduced to a pair of eyes, which return to the center of the maze to be restored.
Megamania is a video game developed by Steve Cartwright and published by Activision in 1982. The game is a fixed shooter, where a pilot of an intergalactic space cruiser who after eating a variety of food, has a nightmare where his ship is being attacked by food and house hold objects. Using the missile launcher from his space cruiser, he finds himself being attacked by various food items and house hold objects.
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Surround is a video game programmed by Alan Miller and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600. The game plays similarly to the arcade game Blockade (1976), which allows players to navigate a continuously moving block around an enclosed space as a wall trails behind it. Every time the opposite player has their brick hit a wall, the opposing player earns a single point, with the winner being the first to collect ten points.
Atari Vault is a collection of one hundred video games that Atari had produced for arcade cabinets and its Atari 2600 home console system, dating from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The collection was developed by Code Mystics, who had helmed similar collections of Atari games to other platforms, to work on Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux via the Steam client. The games, where possible, have been updated to include modern-day features such as local and online multiplayer and online leaderboards.
The Scrolls of Abadon is a maze game designed by Frank Cohen and published in 1984 by Access Software for Atari 8-bit computers and Commodore 64.
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"Crystal Castles" (Arcade flyer). Atari, Inc. 1983.
Crystal Castles. Atari, Inc. 1984. C019787-110 REV. A.
Digital Eclipse (November 11, 2022). Atari 50 (Nintendo Switch). Atari. Atari Karts: Every game console in the 1990s needed a mascot go-kart racer, and Jaguar got its with Atari Karts, which starred none other than Bentley Bear, the protagonist of the arcade game Crystal Castles.
"Game Machine's Best Hit Games 25 - アップライト, コックピット型TVゲーム機 (Upright/Cockpit Videos)". Game Machine (in Japanese). No.226. Amusement Press, Inc. December 15, 1983. p.33.
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