Pitfall, 1982 Activision/David Crane (20 From Atari 2600 #15)
12One of the absolute signature titles of the Atari 2600/VCS. This also really put David Crane on major notice as one of the greatest game programmers around. This is a fixed-screen adventure game with literally hundreds of screens with various dangers to overcome-- including crocodiles, opening/closing pitfalls, rolling logs (not lethal, but they deduct from your score), scorpions (hard to jump over!), fires, and rattlesnakes. Touching any obstacle (apart from the logs) is lethal, and you only have 3 lives to start and cannot accrue more. The game doesn't really indicate any set goal, but you should try to get as many of the 32 treasures in the 20 minutes allotted (not much time!). The game will end if you run out of time, run out of lives, or get the last of the 32 treasures. As far as the crocodiles are concerned, they sometimes have a vine swinging over them (easy to jump and grab and safely swing across), and then you move the joystick to drop onto the ground. But sometimes there is no vine, and you have to jump onto each crocodile to get across. This can only be done if you are standing on their head or when their mouth is closed. This isn't too hard to do after a little practice. Vines may also show up over croc-free ponds or over pitfalls. The pitfalls are fairly easy to learn the timing of. Fires and rattlesnakes don't move, so you simply jump over them. Note that in this game there is an above ground floor and a floor below ground-- here is where you often must deal with the tricky scorpions. There will also be ladders back up to the top floor and walls which bar passage to the next screen from below. The treasures are money bags (2,000 points), Silver bars (3,000 points), Gold bars (4,000 points) and Diamond rings (5,000 points). The best path I know of to get all the treasures before the 20 minutes is up is in this video. DO NOT DAWDLE-- 20 minutes is not a lot of time and some of the paths make you span several dozens of screens at a time! Revolutionary title for its time, but could use some music, extra lives, helpful items, or something. The sequel is WORLDS better and will be featured later in this series. Created by David Crane.