Crystal Castles

The game is played with an isometric view of the multi platformed castle. When Bentley collects all of the gems on the current castle, he will move on to the next, more difficult castle. Wandering throughout the castles are a wide variety of dangerous creatures, which Bentley should avoid.

From time to time, a magic hat will appear. If Bentley collects the hat, he will temporarily be invincible to the castles inhabitants.

Atari 2600’s Crystal Castles game description

Enemies can be avoided by use of the maze and its constructs, or by Bentley leaping opponents via the jump button, in some cases also allowing him to stun them.

Some types of enemies will track Bentley’s movements in certain ways, while others move at random. If Bentley is touched and loses a life, he “cries out” in a distinctive manner with the use of a cartoonish speech balloon.

If at least 3 lives remain, he says “BYE!”; if 2 lives still remain, the quotation is “OH NO!“; if 1 life is left, it is “OUCH!“; and finally, for the last lost life (which ends the game), he says “#?!“, so as to imitate an obscenity.

At the start of a maze, gems are worth 1 point. This increases by 1 for every gem Bentley collects, up to a maximum of 99. Each maze includes a hat or honey pot, which serve the dual purpose of awarding points and letting Bentley defeat specific enemies.

The hat (500 points) makes Bentley briefly invulnerable. The hat also allows him to eliminate Berthilda the witch (3,000), who appears in the last maze of each level. Picking up the honey pot (1,000) can delay the landing of a swarm of bees.

Other villains include Nasty Trees which become more aggressive as levels progress, a ghost that will usually appear in the Hidden Spiral levels, dancing skeletons, Gem Eaters whom Bentley Bear can defeat if he catches them while eating a gem, and Crystal Balls that appear in later levels and tend to follow Bentley Bear as he collects gems.

The Nasty Trees and Crystal Balls can also pick up gems.

The player can skip some castles and acquire additional lives and points by using secret warps activated by making Bentley Bear jump at special locations.

Crystal Castles contains two easter eggs. Jumping 100 times or more in the southeast corner of level 1‒1 and clearing the maze of all gems will make ATARI appear on level 1‒2.

On level 5‒4, if the player kills Berthilda and goes to the corner of the area where she was and jumps, “FXL” appears in the southeast corner of the screen. These are the initials of programmer Franz X. Lanzinger.

Play Crystal Castles online

You can play Crystal Castles game for Atari 2600 online, in a web browser, for free!