Pitfall! – Hardcore Gaming 101

This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Pitfall!

In 1979, Atari was making millions in software sales. Several programmers, who were responsible for some of the highest grossing Atari 2600 games, asked Atari for a raise based on this information, as they were each making only about $30,000 per year. Upper management’s response was that they were no more important to the creation of Atari’s 2600 games than the people on the assembly line. This group of programmers responded by leaving Atari and founding their own company, Activision, that same year.

One of those programmers was David Crane. The first few 2600 games he created at Activision were hits, but in 1982, he struck gold with the release of his brand new adventure game Pitfall!: Pitfall Harry’s Jungle Adventure. Influenced by films and cartoons, like the then-recent Raiders of the Lost Ark and classic Heckle and Jeckle cartoons, Pitfall! is an adventure through the deep jungle, looking for lost treasures while avoiding the wildlife and obstacles lurking in wait. Pitfall Harry is a well defined man, wearing a light green shirt and dark green pants. He has no defensive capability; in fact, all he can do is run and jump. You have twenty minutes to gather as many treasures as you can. If you manage to collect all 32 treasures before the twenty minute time limit expires, the game ends. You have three lives to do so. But there are 255 jungle screens to travel through, which makes the task very daunting. However, a network of underground passages can cut down the number of screens to travel through – if you know the way to go. If not, you’re liable to run into an unbreakable brick wall, and will have to turn around and go back, wasting valuable time.

Along the way, Harry encounters quicksand, swamps and tar pits. Some of those have vines swinging back and forth above them. Successfully jumping onto a vine will swing Harry across these hazards, accompanied by a recreation of the famous Tarzan yell (which sounds more electronic than an actual sampled yell from a Tarzan movie). You can stay on the vine as long as you want, but be careful when you leap off it. A mistimed leap will send Harry straight down, and you’ll lose a life. There is no way to earn new lives, so you have to be extra careful. Some of these hazards constantly open and close, and if there’s no vine above them, you’ll have to time your run across them when they close up so that you don’t get swallowed up when they reopen. Other obstacles include rolling logs, which won’t kill Harry, but will rob him of points, and pits that lead to the underground passages. If you take a ladder down, you’ll be fine, but fall down a pit and you’ll lose more points. There are also fires, which are stationary, but if you’re not careful, you can run right into one and die. There are also stationary logs, which will drain your points if you move onto one and don’t move off quickly enough.

You’ll also encounter Cobra Rattlers on your journey. These snakes don’t strike, but they serve the same purpose as the fires: run into one accidentally, and you’re dead. Scorpions prowl the underground passages, marching in your direction. Only by carefully timing your jumps will you be able to make it past them. Finally, there are the swamps full of crocodiles. They won’t swim towards Harry, they’ll just sit there, three in a row, constantly snapping their jaws. Some of their swamps have vines swinging overhead, which makes it easy to get past them. The crocodile-filled swamps with no vines are the trickiest obstacles in the game, though. You have to leap across them, using their heads as footholds. Land too far down on their snouts, and when they open their jaws, you’re crocodile food. With enough practice, though, jumping over the crocodiles becomes second nature.

The treasures scattered throughout the jungle are laying right out in the open. At first, you just find money bags and diamond rings. Then, the further into the jungle you get, gold bars start appearing. Make it even farther into the jungle, and you’ll start encountering silver bars. If you manage to collect all 32 treasures and don’t lose any points along the way, you’ll get a perfect score of 114,000 points.

There is no music in the game to speak of, aside from a short victory fanfare when you pick up a treasure, and a short dirge that plays when you lose a life. There are barely any sound effects either, aside from the sound of Harry’s jumps, his Tarzan yell, and the grinding sound you hear when a log runs him over. Harry is very well animated, and unlike a lot of early 2600 games, everything looks like what it’s supposed to. You can tell you’re in a jungle, and you’ll never confuse a scorpion for a crocodile.

Pitfall! became one of Activision’s best selling games of all time. As such, it received a substantial number of ports to other consoles and PCs. The first port was to Mattel’s Intellivision, which was nearly identical to the original 2600 game, aside from some extremely minor differences. This was followed by ports to the Atari 5200 and 8-bit computer line. As the 5200 was just a consolized version of the 8-bit computers, these are identical. Taking advantage of the more powerful hardware, there is much more detail to be had in the backgrounds: the trees look more realistic, and there are clearly identifiable bushes lining the jungle floor. The underground passages are completely paved with brick as well. However, at heart it’s still the same game released for the 2600, so there are no new gameplay additions or anything like that, nor have the sprites been altered very much, aside from the fact that Harry’s pants are blue now.

The Colecovision port plays just like all of the others, but doesn’t quite look as good as the Atari 8-bit version. Harry is now wearing green and brown, and his proportions are a little more defined. There’s more detail in the trees and bushes, but they don’t look quite as good as the Atari 8-bit versions. Also, for some reason, Activision decided to add a “clipping” sound which are supposed to sound like footsteps when Harry is running, but just ends up sounding super annoying. The MSX version is nearly identical to the Colecovision version, with no real differences at all.

Then there’s the Commodore 64 version. It’s Pitfall!, there are the same kind of graphic improvements in the backgrounds, but Harry looks odd. He’s now much shorter, his head is covered with a thick mass of black hair, and he’s also wearing a blue shirt and black pants. Harry’s movements are much choppier than any of the other games, and the footstep sound effects are back, although not quite as annoying as they are on the Colecovision or MSX.

In the end, the 2600 version remains the version that’s most remembered. It’s appeared on several Activision compilations, among them Activision Classics (PS1), Activision Anthology (PS2), and Activision Hits Remixed (PSP), as well as being featured as a hidden extra in the Activision-published games Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, and Call of Duty: BlackOps Cold War. It was also released for mobile phones, as well as being released as part of Microsoft’s Game Room service – and in an interesting bit of trivia, Jack Black appeared in the TV commercial for Pitfall! This commercial was including on Activision Anthology as an unlockable, but can easily be found on YouTube.

A year after its initial release, Pitfall! went on to appear on Saturday morning television, on the 1983 CBS cartoon show Saturday Supercade by Ruby-Spears (this show also featured cartoons based on Q*Bert, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Frogger). Accompanying him on his adventures were his niece Rhonda and pet mountain lion, the cowardly Quickclaw. The cartoons were your typical early ’80s Saturday morning cartoon fare, filled with sight gags and overused tropes, but at least Ruby-Spears threw in occasional nods to the game, such as the three crocodiles that would turn up, still hungry for Harry. Pitfall‘s Saturday Supercade adventures only lasted through the first season, but little did we know that we hadn’t seen the last of Harry, Rhonda or Quickclaw.