Pitfall!
Atari 2600
Nostalgia Factor:
Here comes another game from 1982: Pitfall! for the Atari 2600.
Believe it or not, I’ve never played a game in the Pitfall series before. I’m someone who normally won’t touch established video game series unless I’ve been playing them from the beginning, so this is a perfect opportunity for me to get my feet wet with the Pitfall series.
Read on for my thoughts!
Story:
Unless I’m mistaken, this game doesn’t really have a story. You play as a guy named Pitfall Harry. It’s your goal to run through the jungle and collect treasure.
That’s all I got for you.
Gameplay:
Pitfall! runs on a 20-minute timer. It’s your goal to collect as many of the game’s 32 treasures as you can within the time allotted. You start with three lives. If you use them all up, the game ends and you have to start over. If the timer runs out, the game ends and you have to start over. I will make this abundantly clear right away: like many games of its time this is another “high score” game. You aren’t expected to actually be able to collect all of the 32 treasures. I mean, I’m sure there are people out there who have, but I’m also sure there are exponentially more people who have not. Really your main goal is to rack up the highest score possible.
You start with 2,000 points. Each treasure you collect gives you anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 points. Be careful, however. Touch one of the game’s rolling log obstacles or fall down a hole and you lose points. Since this is a high score game, you don’t want to do that. Finding treasure can be difficult to do. Treasure only appears once about every ten screens or so. To get through these screens to get to the treasure, you have to traverse the game’s obstacles. Aside from the rolling logs, this game throws the following things at you: pits, fire, snakes, scorpions, and crocodiles. All of these things will kill you if you can’t get past them properly. The fire, the snakes, and the scorpions are easy: just jump over them. It’s the other obstacles that can be a bit tricky.
There are two types of pits: the pits you can see and the pits that disappear and reappear. The pits you can see are easy to get by. Just wait for the rope to swing by, jump on it, and swing yourself to the other side. The other ones are a bit tougher. If you enter a screen and you don’t see any obstacles in front of you, don’t go blindly charging forward. I died many times doing this. You want to hang back a second and wait to see if one of the appearing/disappearing pits will show its face. If there is one of these pits, quickly run across it when it disappears or swing across it using a vine. If there is no pit – you’re good to go. You don’t want to hang back and wait too long, because as you remember this game is on a timer and every second counts.
The last obstacle you must surmount are the game’s crocodiles. If there’s a vine swinging above you, USE IT. Otherwise you have to jump across these crocodiles like stones in a river when you see their mouths close. They don’t stay closed for very long, so you really have to hurry across. This is probably the part of the game that kills the most people. Your timing has to be perfect. Your speed has to be perfect. One small mistake and you are dead.
This is a very simple game. You pick a direction (I always went to the left), you run, you jump over obstacles, you swing from vines, and you look for treasure. Each time you hit the edge of the screen the action pauses for the briefest of seconds while the game takes you to the next screen. This isn’t like Mario or any other 2D platformer where the screen scrolls with you. This is only 1982. We’re not quite there yet!
I’ve heard that you can use the underground tunnels to traverse the jungle faster, but all the dead ends were annoying to me and I quickly decided that it wasn’t worth it. I pretty much stuck to the top the entire time I played.
Graphics:
This is a pretty primitive looking game, but in comparison to some of the other 2600 titles that were released around this time it doesn’t look bad at all. The jungle is clearly a jungle. The crocodiles are clearly crocodiles. The logs are clearly logs, etc. You aren’t just running through a barren area where everything is composed of detail-less shapes. I like Pitfall Harry’s design, in particular his haircut. I referred to him as “Buzz” in my mind as I played this game.
There really isn’t a whole lot to see here, but I think you have to factor in that this game was released 40 freaking years ago. Visually, Pitfall! accomplishes everything it sets out to do.
Sound:
There’s no stage music in this game, so expect to listen to eerie silence as you are playing. Pitfall Harry makes noises when he jumps, gets hurt, dies, etc. I love the Tarzan-like sound effect that plays when you swing over a rope. But this game is very, very primitive in the audio department. The silence makes the game feel so empty and quiet.
Overall:
Clearly this game is a bit outdated by today’s standards, but I tried to open up my mind and put myself in the shoes of someone in 1982 who was playing this for the first time. I can imagine they must have been quite impressed. I’ve played a handful of 2600 games in my life and there’s nothing out there that is quite like Pitfall! It’s fun, it’s challenging, and the game feels like it has an actual purpose and a goal for you to obtain – collecting all the treasures. I find it has more depth and replay value than other “high score” games of its time.
If I was a gamer back in 1982 I am sure I would have loved this game. But let’s be real. This is 2022 and there’s not a whole lot that Pitfall! has to offer anymore. It’s fun for a little while, but then it quickly gets repetitive. I’d say I made about 5 attempts to beat this game. The first several attempts ended in me dying before I could even collect three treasures. The fourth attempt went pretty well. Got a decent score. The fifth attempt I used save states and tried to get all of the treasures, but I still wasn’t good enough.
After those five attempts, I feel like I don’t really need to play Pitfall! anymore. I’ve seen everything the game has to offer, and I don’t feel like doing the same thing over and over anymore. I’m ready to move on.
I appreciate Pitfall! and I realize it was an important game in the history of video games in general. I’m excited to play other games in the series and see how they build on the original. But will ever return to this game again in my life? Probably not.
Final Score:
C
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