You are Bentley the Bear, cuddly defender of a vaguely 3-D
fairy tale realm just loaded with ruby-like crystals. While
this would seem like an idyllic existence for many sentient
stuffed animals, it is, of course, not that easy. Berthilda
the Witch has sent her evil minions to seize the crystals for
her. Walking trees, upright centipedes, and animated skeletons
prowl the geometric vistas to keep Bentley from claiming the
crystals. Finding the wizard hat will briefly give Bentley the
power to dispose of Berthilda if and when she makes an
appearance. Bentley also has a weakness for the pot of honey
that appears on each level - and if he grabs the honey, a swarm
of bees suddenly has a problem with him. Clearing each screen
of crystals advances to the next level. Keep in mind that the
enemies can also consume crystals, so they may actually clear
the level - Bentley gets a bonus if he's the one who nabs the
last gem on the screen.
(Atari, 1983)
A bizarre little game with play elements of Pac-Man set in an
almost Q*Bert-like perspective, Crystal
Castles was actually
quite the quantum leap forward for graphics back in '83. (It
would later be blown out of the water by Atari's own Marble Madness not long afterward.) It was
also one of the earliest games to utilize Atari's System 1 hardware.
The biggest frustration with Crystal Castles was undoubtedly
its trakball control. A red trakball with a flashing light
inside was obviously intended as a connection to the red gems
lining the mazes on the screen, but it sure didn't make it easy
to control Bentley. Think about it - games like Zaxxon, Q*Bert and Congo
Bongo were hard enough to get a handle on
with clearly-marked joystick controls. Imagine a game set on a
3-D isometric playing field with a free-rolling trakball as the
controller. Not cool.
Atari, stubborn as always, did try to cash in on their latest arcade
title. An Atari 2600 version of
Crystal Castles proved to be a bomb, with vastly watered-down graphics
and sluggish controls adding even further to the game's inherent
frustrations.
The balance was redressed much later, though. While playing
Crystal Castles on MAME is about as adequate an experience
as the arcade game was, the best version yet is the arcade-perfect emulation
appearing on Midway's second volume of Atari
Arcade's Greatest Hits. (Why Midway and not Hasbro? During
the controversial Tramiel management era at Atari, the
company's arcade division was made a separate entity, Atari
Games. When Atari blew apart, the Atari Games division was
bought by Midway; the home video game division was what
Hasbro later bought out.) The AGH version of Crystal
Castles on the Playstation still falls victim to the control
nightmares that plagued the game since day one, but it also
replicates the audiovisual finesse that drew attention to
Crystal Castles in the first place - even if only for a
few fleeting moments.
Rating:
Two quarters - worth playing, but could use some more work.
Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
Two quarters - worth playing, but could use some more work.
