Oh hellll yes.
This week, we’re delving into a major piece of video game history. This is also the first Retro Roulette game that is older than I am. Neat! Let’s talk about the classic Atari 2600 release Pitfall!.
As the adventurer “Pitfall Harry,” your task in Pitfall! is to collect 32 treasures strewn about a jungle filled with pits, lakes, scorpions, crocodiles, and other hazards. You have three lives and up to 20 minutes to jump over obstacles and find as much treasure as you can. That’s really about it.
While the concept is simple, especially by today’s standards, it was revolutionary back in 1982. It is remarkable how many game design concepts can be traced back to Pitfall!. The basic of platforming and traversable screens barely existed before Pitfall! popularized them. A 20-minute time limit may not seem like much, but most Atari games of the time were even shorter.
The game also employed numerous programming and graphics tricks to make a more complex game than Atari 2600 users were accustomed to – the multitude of screens and swinging vines are just a couple of examples. For a game made 36 years ago, it’s truly quite the achievement.
Seriously – on a home console in 1982, that rope swing was a sight to behold. Another fun fact about Pitfall! is that its goofy TV ad was the first on-screen appearance of Jack Black, who was 13 years old at the time:
Who would have thought this would be a sign of things to come:
But I digress… Pitfall! is a genuine classic – it profoundly changed the industry.
David Crane, the designer of Pitfall!, has had an interesting career – prior to Pitfall! he worked on numerous other solid Activision games including Freeway and Kaboom!. Years later, he created the unique and very enjoyable A Boy and His Blob and was a programmer for the highly controversial Night Trap. He attempted to launch a new game in 2012 via Kickstarter, but the campaign came nowhere close to its lofty $900,000 goal.
Pitfall! has received a few sequels – Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns was released in 1986 and largely followed the same format. That game was re-made into the NES release Super Pitfall, which is awful and should be ignored by everyone. A measurably better 16-bit sequel subtitled The Mayan Adventure followed in 1994. A couple of modern takes on the game have also been released, though they’re nothing special – the original is truly where it’s at, and is an essential piece of any retro gamer’s collection.
Join me next week, in which I’ll be traversing the cosmos like it’s 1986.