Crystal Castles

Overview

Crystal Castles is a fantasy-themed maze game developed and released by Atari for arcades on July 1983.

Known for its use of trackball controls and a trimetric perspective, Crystal Castles puts players in control of Bentley Bear as he navigates the land of the Crystal Castles to gather gemstones and avoid the forces of Berthilda the Witch.

It is the earliest known game to include the concept of hidden warps, which allow shortcuts to later levels, and is one of the earliest games to have a definitive credit-ending sequence in an arcade game (as opposed to endlessly looping the same series of stages).

The game later received multiple home conversions, including official Atari releases for the Atari 2600 in March 1984, the Atari ST in 1986, and the Atari XE in May 1989. An Atari 5200 version was developed, but unreleased. It also received European releases by U.S. Gold in 1983 for the Amstrad CPC, Apple II, BBC Micro, and Commodore 64 between 1983 and 1986. Neither of these versions make use of trackball controls. Both the arcade and 2600 versions were included in several Atari compilations.

Bentley Bear later starred in his own series of edutainment games for the Atari ST in the mid-to-late '80s and made a playable appearance in the 1995 Jaguar game Atari Karts.

Stages

While the game has 37 total board to clear, split into 10 Levels, only 16 of these boards are unique. Unlike most arcade games at the time, the game includes an ending after the last board is clear (rather than loop endlessly).

Several of these boards include hidden warps that lead to later Levels, the most notable of which is in the very first board (which includes a hidden warp to Level 3, as well as a tunnel on continues leading to a later unlocked Level).

Level 1

1. Get the Gems, Bentley Bear
2. Tree Wave
3. Doomsdome
4. Berthilda's Castle

Level 2

1. Hidden Ramp
2. Staircase
3. Crossroads
4. Berthilda's Fortress

Level 3

1. Hidden Ramp
2. Nasty Tree
3. Hidden Spiral
4. Berthilda's Dungeon

Level 4

1. Pyramid
2. Cross Maze
3. Hidden Ramp
4. Berthilda's Palace

Level 5

1. Staircase
2. Nasty Tree
3. Crossroads
4. Berthilda's Castle

Level 6

1. Cross Maze
2. Tree Wave
3. Tree Wave
4. Berthilda's Palace

Level 7

1. Staircase
2. Pyramid
3. Hidden Spiral
4. Berthilda's Dungeon

Level 8

1. Staircase
2. Cross Maze
3. Hidden Ramp
4. Berthilda's Fortress

Level 9

1. Impossible Staircase
2. Nasty Tree
3. Hidden Spiral
4. Berthilda's Dungeon

Level 10

1. The End

Warps & Easter Eggs

The game includes some hidden warps and easter eggs, all of which are done by navigating Bentley to a certain point on certain boards and jumping. Some of these warps are different between home versions. The known warps are as follows:

• The first board includes two warps: a continue tunnel (leading to a later Level that the player has reached beforehand) and a hidden warp on the top-left corner leading to Level 3.

• The third board of Level 5 includes a hidden warp on the top-left corner leading to Level 7.

In addition, the game includes two known easter eggs:

• The word ATARI can be displayed in the second board by moving Bentley to the southeast corner of the first board and jumping at least 100 times.

• Franz X. Lanzinger, the game's programmer, hid his initials in the fourth board of Level 5, which is shown after defeating Berthilda and jumping in the corner she was in.