Crystal Castles (version 3, French)

Arcade 1983 Atari Maze
Crystal Castles is an inventive variation on the maze-driven collect-the-dots gameplay first seen in Namco's legendary "Pac-Man". The player takes on the role of 'Bentley Bear', who must run around a number of "castles" - each presented in the form of an isometric forced 3D maze - picking up the red ruby gemstones that litter its walkways and platforms, before moving onto the next castle.

Each level is populated by a variety of enemies, including sentient trees, gem eaters, a swarm of bees and Berthilda the Witch. Some enemy types move around the levels randomly, while others will actively chase Bentley. Gem Eaters will devour any gems they reach before the player.

In addition to four-directional walking, Bentley can also jump to avoid pursuing enemies and obstacles. Many levels have platforms that can only be reached via an elevator and some screens also contain hidden secret passages and ramps, as well as 'warps' that move players forward several levels.

Jumping over the trees will shrink and temporarily disable them, while wearing Berthilda's red hat grants the player temporary invincibility, allowing them to kill the witch should they manage to catch her. If Bentley Bear touches a Gem Eater while it's in the process of eating a gem, the Gem Eater dies and 500 points are awarded to the player. However, if the Gem Eater is not eating a gem when touched, Bentley Bear dies.

Some levels contain a large pot of honey. A swarm of bees appears near the honey approximately every five seconds but collecting the honey pot earns the player 1000 bonus points and causes the bees to appear less frequently. Other enemies, such as the balls, skeletons and ghosts must be avoided.

If Bentley collects all of the gems on a castle, the player receives bonus points. A bonus is also awarded in the event of the player picking up the last gem on the level.

Crystal Castles consists of ten different stages broken down into 37 castle mazes (with four castles making up each stage, apart from 10th, which has only one castle).
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Crystal Castles (version 3, French)

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Technical

CPU
  • maincpu M6502 (@ 1 Mhz)
  • pokey1 POKEY (@ 1 Mhz)
  • pokey2 POKEY (@ 1 Mhz)
Chipset
  • POKEY (@ 1 Mhz)
  • POKEY (@ 1 Mhz)
Display
  • Orientation Yoko
  • Resolution 255 x 255
  • Frequency 61.035156 Hz
Controlers
  • Number of players 2
  • Number of buttons 1
  • Kind of controler trackball

Crystal Castles (version 3, French) Screenshots

Crystal Castles (version 3, French) - Screen 1
Crystal Castles (version 3, French) - Screen 2
Crystal Castles (version 3, French) - Screen 3
Crystal Castles (version 3, French) - Screen 4
Crystal Castles (version 3, French) - Screen 5

Clones of Crystal Castles (version 3, French)

Scoring for Crystal Castles (version 3, French)

Points awarded for collecting gems.
Killing Gem Eaters : 500 or 1,000 points.
Collecting the honeypot : 1,000 points.
Collecting the witch's hat : 2,000 points.
Killing Berthilda : bonus points.

Tips on Crystal Castles (version 3, French)

* Warps : There's a 'continue option' warp on the first board. It won't take you any higher than level 8, though.
1) The first warp is behind the palace on the upper-right hand corner of the first board. Go there then jump. It'll take you to level 3.
2) The second warp : get the hat, run to an elevator, and at the back corner of the hidden ramp, jump before the hat expires. The warp always gives you four lives (not including the one you're on) and takes you to level 5.
3) The third warp is on the third screen of Level 5, titled 'Crossroads'. It is extremely easy to trigger; just move to the very upper left corner and jump. You will be transported to the first screen of Level 7, again with four lives to spare. There are no other warps.

* A Trick : If you jump at least 128 times in the front right corner of any maze, the next maze that is fully drawn from the beginning will have a string of the words ATARI stretched across the middle of the screen. It disappears on the next maze, unless you are playing a two-player game, in which case it can appear on two screens.

* Another Trick : On Level 5, Berthilda's Palace grab the hat and enter the large door where Berthilda is. Run over her for 3000 points, then head to the corner of the room (where Berthilda was) and jump. The initials FXL will appear in the lower-right hand corner of the screen, which stands for Franz Lanziger, one of the designers of Crystal Castles!

* This Trick Is Free : When the machine is in its demo mode, wait until the first stage appears. When Bentley gets killed, hold down BOTH jump buttons and the accounting screen, which shows customer play information, will appear.

* Secret Message : When you complete level 10, a special screen appears that says, I GIVE UP : YOU WIN YOU MUST BE _______________.
What goes in the blank depends on the number of lives you have left.
For 1 life, fill in AMAZINGLY GOOD;
For 2, RIDICULOUSLY GOOD;
For 3, FANTASTICALLY GOOD;
For 4, VERY GOOD;
For 5, AN EXPERT;
and for 6, A VIDEO WIZ.

* Time Bonus : For every four seconds of game play, you lose 1000 points. The amount of time bonus starts at 200,000, so you can figure that a 5 minute game will have a time bonus of 125,000. Also, for every life you lose, you lose at least 1000 time bonus points, so even though you can make up for your life as far as the life bonus, you still lose in time bonus.

Crystal Castles (version 3, French) and M.A.M.E.

0.59 [Chris Hardy]
0.26 [Patrick Lawrence]

Artwork available

SETUP:
- To start a game, press the '5' and JUMP button. '1' and '2' work only in cocktail mode.

Bugs:
- Visible resolution is incorrect. sxevious (ID 03130)

WIP:
- 0.146u1: Minor changes to Crystal Castles volume level [Couriersud].
- 0.146: Couriersud improved sound emulation for POKEY chip. Changed audio emulation to emulate borrow 3 clock delay and proper channel reset. New frequency only becomes effective after the counter hits 0. Emulation also treats counters as 8 bit counters which are linked now instead of monolytic 16 bit counters. Fixed high pass filters for POKEY. Added POKEYN device based on modern device. Fixed random lfsr generation. Consolidated polynom code. Removed legacy left overs from pokey code. Added a internal pokey_channel class. Convert all remaining drivers to use the modern pokey device.
- 0.139u4: Aaron Giles changed Crystal Castles and Cloud 9 to use the X2212 instead of the hacked-up fake version they had.
- 0.133u1: Renamed (ccastleg) to (ccastlesg), (ccastlep) to (ccastlesp), (ccastlef) to (ccastlesf), (ccastle3) to (ccastles3), (ccastle2) to (ccastles2), (ccastle1) to (ccastles1) and (ccastlej) to (ccastlesj).
- 0.126u4: Guru added clone Crystal Castles (joystick version).
- 9th July 2008: Mr. Do - Added the marquee for Crystal Castles, just cause it looks cool, thanks to the BYOAC/CAG artwork.
- 0.113u4: Changed visible area to 319x255.
- 0.107u1: Added clones Crystal Castles (version 1), (version 3, French), (version 3, German) and (version 3, Spanish). Swapped gfx1 roms. Fixed rom names.
- 0.106u13: More Crystal Castles tweaks [Aaron Giles]: Connected EAROM correctly (passes POST now). Added a guess for what the "POTATO" chip does. If you're a Crystal Castles fan report to MAMETesters how MAME looks compared to the arcade when the screen scrolls up inbetween level 4 and 5.
- 0.106u12: Rewrote Crystal Castles driver from the schematics [Aaron Giles]: Corrected clock speeds and frame rates. Reimplemented video system to use mixer PROM. Now using sync PROM to generate interrupts at correct times. Sync PROM is also used to determine proper visible area and VBLANK timings. Implemented the VRAM write protection by using the WP PROM. Hooked up second player trackball properly. Fixed coin counters. Now computing palette based on resistor weights. Watchdog is now set for 8 VBLANKs to match the schematics. Added save state support. Mapped complete memory space according to schematics. Changed VSync to 61.035156 Hz. Added 3x 'Unknown' dipswitches. Removed 3rd coin slot. Fixed prom names.
- 0.105u4: Fixed rom names.
- 30th June 2005: Alessio dumped Crystal Castles (Version 3). Please check out PCB pics, and let me know if it's the same layout as the one already in MAME or if it's different.
- 0.90u2: Santeri Saarimaa added unused proms (synchronous, bus, write and color) to Crystal Castles.
- 0.59: Added Crystal Castles (version 4). Changed 'Crystal Castles (set 1)' to clone '(version 3)' and '(set 2)' to '(version 2)'. Renamed (ccastles) to (ccastle3).
- 6th February 2002: Chris Hardy added a newer revision ROM set to the Crystal Castles driver.
- 0.34b3: Nicola Salmoria added clone Crystal Castles (set 2). Changed parent description to 'Crystal Castles (set 1)'.
- 0.34b1: Known issues: The self test doesn't pass the EERAM test.
- 0.31: Known issues: The self test doesn't pass the EERAM test. I don't know if all of the scores are supposed to rusvive a reset, or only the first three as it is now.
- 0.29: Known issues: Keyboard control isn't up to the task. Use the mouse. When the cabinet is set to Cocktail, pressing 2 while in the switch test screen of the test mode is supposed to flip the screen. This doesn't work yet, since the screen is not refreshed.
- 0.28: Crystal Castles now has accurate colors and load/save of high score and settings (I mean the settings done in the service menu) [Nicola Salmoria]. New osd_modify_pen() function, proposed by Aaron Giles. It allows drivers to dynamically modify the palette. WARNING: Since this feature can severely reduce performance on some systems, it must only be used when necessary - that is, when the emulated game dynamically modifies the palette. The other games should continue to use the static palette as before. Many games already use this feature (e.g. Crystal Castles, the Gottlieb games, Tapper, Bubble Bobble, and many others). There's also osd_get_pen(), which is used by usrintf.c to dynamically pick the pens used to render menus.
- 0.27: Known issues: The colors are accurate, but the color space is downgraded from 3x3x3 to 3x3x2. Sound. It's better! The game sounds are slightly slow.
- 0.26: Patrick Lawrence provided a driver for Crystal Castles (Atari 1983). Game is playable with accurate colors and sound. Also this game supports trackball (-trak option). Valerio Verrando provided a new tweaked mode 256x232 for Crystal Castles. Control: Arrows = Move around and CTRL = Jump. Known issues: Sound. It's better! The startup sound no longer plays. The game sounds are slightly slow. Dynamic palette. I haven't given this the time it deserves. I'll get to this one soon. The game is always in cocktail mode. If I try to take it out of cocktail mode, the player 1 and player 2 buttons no longer work. Needless to say, I have not emulated cocktail mode, nor do I plan to so only try 1 player games for now. No high score saving yet. Cannot change the settings of the game. Vertical scrolling is wrong. Is horizontal scrolling right?

PLAY INSTRUCTIONS:
- Magic hat makes you invincible. Wear it and you can kill BERTHILDA.
- Catch GEM eaters when they are eating and stay away when they are moving from GEM to GEM.
- Take too much time and the swarm returns.
- Jump over trees to stun them.

LEVELS: 37

Other Emulators:
* Retrocade

Romset: 57 kb / 11 files / 26.4 zip
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