Chapter 67: The Bear Witch Project

You bounce up, and up, and you see the hole! Last time, it seemed so small, but now that you are a frog, it’s like a big open doorway, and you fly right into it, only to land on a pile of black fabric. Looking around the dark interior, you see the walls are made of some kind of dimly glowing crystal, and gems and jewels are scattered everywhere. There is a large bubbling cauldron nearby, and on a shelf are skulls, voodoo dolls, pentagrams, and… Melvin! You call out to him, only to realize three things:

1)  You are still a frog, and can only make croaking sounds in frog language.

2)  Melvin is trapped in a large crystal bottle, and can’t hear you.

3)  You did not land on a pile of black fabric, but rather in the lap of the witch, and your croaking sound just woke her up. 

Melvin does seem to have recognized you, however, judging by the way he is bouncing around in the bottle.

“Well, my pretty, what do we have here?” the witch cackles, snapping you up in an instant. She leans her enormous and grotesque face down to peer at you, and cackles some more, giving you a revolting view of her disturbingly decayed teeth. “Why, you’re that little frog from yesterday!” She dangles you by one foot, and turns you around. “Some excellent work, if I do say so myself!” Her face is fishbelly white, and her eyeballs are completely black, which is intensely disturbing, especially when you are being dangled upside down. She continues to peer. “Now… why would you come back here? You know my only choice is to destroy you.” She starts to raise her wand. You suddenly remember the pearls that you have been carrying inside your froggy guts. You cough, and the pearls spill out onto her lap. You keep coughing your froggy cough, though, because one pearl seems to be stuck. “Well!” she says. “A frog who collects pearls!” She looks out into the dark space of her crystal castle, where you see gems scattered everywhere, and various weird creatures roaming about. She looks back at you and taps her bulbous chin with her wand thoughtfully. “I suppose you came back here hoping that I might change you back if you gave me these pearls, eh? Well… that seems like a fair deal.” She sets you on the floor, and stands up from her rocking chair. She raises her wand, and ZAP! You get hit with a bolt of energy, and you feel it transforming your whole body. You are growing, rising up, almost as tall as the witch! You no longer have flippers! You reach up to touch your face, and it is… hairy? And you have claws? You look down at your hands and see furry paws. A cloudy mirror hangs on the wall, and you see in it the reflection of… a bear!

“I think I’ll call you Bentley,” she cackles. “Frogs are no good for collecting gems. Bears, on the other hand, are much better suited. And I need someone to clean up my gems, because this place is a mess!” She turns sad now. “These past two days have been quite chaotic! First, my pet Zuul grew far too big from eating too many ghosts, and then some horrible human blasted him with a ray, blowing him to bits, and scattering my precious gems everywhere.” You see, indeed, there are gems scattered all over the floors of her vast palace. Weird creatures wander about, sometimes picking them up, sometimes… eating them? “I’ve tried to get some of my enchanted creatures to pick them up, but they do a sloppy job at best. Then that missile showed up, and I had to trap it in a bottle.” She gestures to the bottle that Melvin is in. “Missiles are trouble, you can’t ever trust them. When a missile is around, a Player isn’t far away.” She looks at you again, and says in a sickly sweet voice, “But I can trust you, my little Bentley Bear.” She scratches your neck with her overgrown fingernails. “Because if you don’t pick up all my gems, I’ll eat you for dinner! I’m going right now to prepare the Bearnaise sauce!” She cackles loudly at this. “So, gather up my gems like a good little bear, and watch out for my pets! Oh, and to make sure you get nice and sweet and fat, I’ve left some honey pots out for you! Eat lots of honey, because if you don’t, swarms of bees will come and sting my little Bentley Bear to death! Find enough gems, and I’ll make you human again. But if you don’t…” She licks her lips with a disgusting green tongue, “it’s bear stew for me!” She flies off on her broomstick, cackling madly. You look at Melvin, and Melvin seems to be gesturing for you to go for the gems. You think about what the frog said about how much she likes gems… maybe if you gather enough, she really will change you back? There isn’t much time to decide, because a creepy crystal ball is rolling right toward you!

Place the Crystal Castles cartridges into your Atari 2600. Use game select 1, and place the difficulty switches to b. Play until you can score 75,000 points. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.