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Pitfall!
1982/Activision
....Review by Polas - 7/20/02....
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I've probably used Mario and Sonic as examples in several places across this site, and with good reason, as both are appropriate measuring sticks for the overall genre of platform gaming. But before both of those, as well as pretty much every other platform game ever made, David Crane had an idea. An idea to make an Atari game with not just one screen, not 2 or 3, but 256. A side-scrolling game with freedom and complexity never seen before in a video game. A game with a little green man named Harry, possessed fart-inducing logs, and three alligators in every pond. It's Pitfall!.
There are two objectives to Pitfall. The most evident goal is to score as many points as possible in the twenty minute time limit. Excuse me for the tangent, but I've never been too high on time limits in games, and they're one aspect of gaming that I'm actually glad has been phased out. Short ones are fine, like giving you 30 seconds to escape a certain area, but instances with time limits of "600" always seemed blatantly unnecessary. Which brings me to my point: twenty minutes? Sure, there's a lot more value in this game than most other Atari games, but in those other Atari games, you just keep going until someone dies and you hit Reset. Here, if you want to beat someone's high score, you're in for a third of an hour of similar screens, unless the player really sucks at alligator hopping.
I've also heard rumors of a way to actually beat the game by collecting every treasure. There's not much of a chance I'd even try this for fun, let alone for the review, as it supposedly takes close to the full 20 minutes to pull off, and that's if you know where everything is dispersed across all 256 screens. If anyone out there has done it, knows how to do it, or has a means of cheating I'm unaware of, you can send in a description or screenshot of any "reward" you might get, and I'll add it to the review with your name.
Back to the general gameplay. As stated, the main way to earn points, aside from not fucking up too often, is collecting the treasures strewn throughout the game. Treasures such as these:
The moneybags, likely dropped by careless bank robbers in black and white striped outfits, are the most common, gold and silver bars are less common, and the ring is the most rare, and thus gives you the most points. But life isn't all peaches and cream for Pitfall Harry, as there are just as many ways to lose points, or worse:
First up, we have the Campfire, which rather than getting snuffed out from stomping on it, kills Harry instantly. Dying in this game is of course accompanied by the final five notes of the solemn music they'd play on Dragnet when Friday would nod a lot. The snake, or "Sparkplug", if you're Polas when he was 5, has the same effect. Now things get tricky. For now, we're introduced to the log. Not only can it roll over every kind of pit, lake and other trap without falling in like some people, it magically reappears at one side of the screen after rolling off of the other. I guess Ren & Stimpy were on to something. Its main power is draining points for as long as you touch it, but it also causes Harry to squat in place and emit a noise that sounds very similar to ... well, let's just say that safaris were often riddled with severe dysentery.
Points are also lost by falling into the little square holes, although this is how you get to the underground. You can make progress here too, except that going left or right warps you several screens to the left or right instead of one, oftentimes you'll do this 6 or 7 consecutive times in a row, only to run right into a brick wall and have to go back. Or even worse, the Scorpion. The Scorpion is the big badass of the game, lurking just below you on the majority of screens, daring you to try and take a shortcut or fall into a hole like a big green dumbass. Just the sight of him is enough to scare you into standing still while an entire lake expands and contracts in the middle of the floor in order to suck you in. And you'd better believe that even though it's obvious that the most you could possibly sink is a foot and a half, falling into a large hole or the water kills Harry dead. If you do make it to the Scorpion, he can be leaped if you time it right, but he's a pesky little bastard and goes in the same direction as you, as opposed to standing still like the Snakes or rolling aimlessly like the logs.
Last but not least are the alligators. These can be your worst nightmare, unless you know how to jump them when there's no rope around to save your sorry behind. When their mouths are closed, you can skip merrily across them, using them as stepping stones. But when you realize you're about to overjump and land in the drink, and you freeze on the second gator as he opens his yap, what DO you do? Why, stand on his eyeballs, of course.
RIGHT WAY
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And so, that's Pitfall!, the green-tinted grandfather of all platform games. Speaking of which, in addition to Pitfall 2, Pitfall Harry's kids appeared in some unofficial sequels on various other systems, all the way up to the 16-bit era, and pretty much all of them were excruciatingly horrid. And games like that have never made it into these hallowed halls .... what? Don't give me that look.
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