This Week In Retro: Crystal Castles (Patreon)

July 1983: Does a bear collect gems in the woods?

by Diamond Feit

Old video game genres don't die, they just fade away. I've seen my share of fads in my time. The fighting game boom, the "Doom-clone" era, the race for the next Grand Theft Auto wannabe; all of these came and went. More recently, it feels like we've only just emerged from a deluge of developers trying their hand at battle royale games. Of course, people still play and make all these types of games to this day, but when the gold rush stops paying out, game makers and players alike quietly move on.

One of the earliest crazes I can personally recall is the success of Pac-Man. Namco's hit 1980 arcade game trapped players in a maze with hostiles where eating every dot was the only way out. Pac-Man did not invent the genre, but its particular combination of cute characters and a power-up system that let players turn the tables on their pursuers captivated audiences everywhere. Within two years, dozens of creations—some of dubious originality—flooded arcades, personal computers, and home consoles alike, all offering players different mazes, different consumables, and different protagonists. Even Pac-Man's most popular sequel, Ms. Pac-Man, began life as an unauthorized hack of the original.

By the summer of 1983, I could tell Pac-Man fever was cooling off. The Atari 2600 port had sold millions while simultaneously disappointing consumers and retailers; I know I had a copy and I certainly played my share of it, but I couldn't help but compare it unfavorably to both the original game and its more colorful competitors in arcades, one of which debuted 40 years ago this month. At first glance, I don't know that I recognized Atari's Crystal Castles as derivative of Pac-Man thanks to its radically different graphics and sound, but adult me can see the connections as clear as a translucent polished rock.

Let's lay bare the similarities first: Both Pac-Man and Crystal Castles feature stages with narrow passageways covered in dots which the player must harvest before moving on to the next screen. Both games star a defenseless protagonist who must carefully avoid monsters while he completes his task, and both offer a power-up that grants temporary invincibility to the hero. Both games also include food-based pickups which grant players a scoring bonus.

How did child-me fail to pick up on all these shared elements between the two games? Presentation matters, and Crystal Castles uses an isometric perspective to give its stages a vertical dimension that Pac-Man lacks. While still drawn without any 3D polygons, the geometry of Crystal Castles features slopes, elevators, and dark passageways, making each level look and feel like a diorama or an action-figure playset.

Speaking of action, Crystal Castles stars Bentley Bear, a dynamic mammal with moves Pac-Man could never pull off. Namco's little yellow circle slowly flapped his mouth as he inched his way around his maze, but Bentley can run and even jump as he seeks to collect every gem. The controls of Crystal Castles accentuate this difference by utilizing a trackball instead of a joystick, giving players the freedom to swipe Bentley around the screen at high speeds.

Enemies and their behavior in Crystal Castles also stray far from the Pac-Man model. Instead of four identical ghosts, Crystal Castles' threats come in a variety of shapes and sizes, all with different behavior as well. Creatures such as Evil Trees and Crystal Balls pursue Bentley relentlessly, while the Gem Eaters prefer to gorge themselves on any gems they might find. They can be left alone but every gem an enemy takes means one less for Bentley to pick up. Players looking to earn a high score will need to focus on eliminating Gem Eaters when they are briefly vulnerable mid-swallow.

One enemy type in particular stands out in Crystal Castles, a deadly swarm of bees which can spawn in any stage. Much like Evil Otto in Berzerk, the bees serve as an enforcer for an unseen timer, appearing if the player takes too long to gather every gem. The bees are drawn towards honey, a pickup worth bonus points, but once on-screen they can chase Bentley wherever he might flee. Bentley can outrun them, but he cannot destroy them.

Where Pac-Man offered power pellets, Crystal Castles features a Magic Hat, though seldom does any level include more than one. When Bentley dons a chapeau, it only remains on his head for a few seconds, during which time no enemy can hurt him and one enemy in particular, the witch Berthilda, will die if he touches her. Otherwise, the main function of the hat is defensive, a chance to grab a few gems free of danger.

A few factors made Crystal Castles a favorite of mine in 1983. The presence of a trackball helped it stand out as more and more machines settled on joysticks, but the extensive artwork on the cabinet also drew my attention. With its irregular layouts and splashes of color on stark gray surfaces, I thought the game world looked cool, and the illustrations on the hardware reflected that.

I also have vivid memories of playing a Crystal Castles machine at my neighborhood convenience store, making it the closest arcade cabinet to my home. Most machines in town were either in pizzerias or our one bowling alley, locations I seldom spent time in save for special occasions. When you're a first-grader living in the suburbs, access matters, and I had plenty of opportunities to stop by the Dairy Mart and ask my parents for a quarter.

Unfortunately, that cabinet proved to be my only source of Crystal Castles memories, for while Atari did port the game to home computers and consoles alike, none of those versions captured the magic I felt when I played on original hardware. Few machines could properly simulate the graphics or sounds, and even those that came close didn't include the trackball. Once the Dairy Mart swapped Crystal Castles out for a new game, I doubt I saw Bentley Bear again for decades.

40 years later, people still know and enjoy Pac-Man, but few of its sequels, spin-offs, or knock-offs carry much weight. Crystal Castles added more than enough tweaks to the maze game formula to justify its existence, but at this point I suspect only dedicated Atari fans fondly recall Bentley Bear or his lust for gems. Personally, I can't look at a jar of honey or a so-called wizard hat without flashing back to Bentley's isometric escapades, and dare I say Crystal Castles might have helped shape my own lifelong fear of bees.

Great, now I have to explain a 40 year old arcade game to my therapist.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.