“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

Looking back on the history of video games, there are key points where any life-long gamer remembers getting sucked in. As a child of the 80′s with three older brothers in the house, my first experiences were on the Atari 2600.

We never bought an Atari new, but my brothers had a knack for finding lots of old games and systems at garage sales. Most games sounded amazing. Play as Spider-Man and stop the Green Goblin? How could that not rule? (Spoilers: It didn’t).

Then there was a little game called Pitfall! that showed me games could live up to the box art.

Using nothing but my own hazy memory of my childhood, I believe Pitfall! is the first game I ever played in one of my favorite genres, the platformer. You take on the roll of “little running man” (OK, he didn’t have a name just yet, but he is now known as Pitfall Harry), who is running through the jungle trying to collect treasures while avoiding baddies. You have only 20 minutes and 3 lives to collect the games 32 treasures. A feat I’ve personally still never managed to accomplish.

It’s a simple enough concept, but it stands out for a couple of reasons.

First of all, the graphics and animation were way beyond other games on the console. Nearly every Atari 2600 game has horrible flickering in the sprites to compensate for how underpowered the console was (even for the time). The animation was incredibly smooth, and while looking back the graphics look primitive, this high quality of animation really sucked me into the game’s world.

Second is the feeling of exploration Pitfall! invoked in me. We were a family that did a lot of camping and outdoorsy stuff in the few months when it’s nice in Washington State. This was the first time a game had given me that same feeling of exploring a world that hiking through the woods did. I never knew what was going to be around the next corner. Was it a rope swing with alligators like on the box? Would it be rolling logs I would have to perfectly time my jumps to avoid? Or would it be the dreaded scorpion, the baddie that took me forever to figure out the correct timing on?

The dual levels of play helped add even more to this phenomenon. Climbing down to the lower levels of Pitfall! felt like cheating at first. “I can run under all that junk!” I thought to myself. Then the aforementioned scorpion would come out of nowhere and kick my ass.

Why did I pick this game?

When I think back to the games that originally got me hooked on the hobby of gaming, Pitfall! ranks right near the top.

I spent hours just trying to get good enough at Pitfall! to run out the clock. My friends and I would pass the controller back and forth, not trying to out-do each other’s scores, but to cheer each other on as we made our way through the jungle maze.

How does it hold up with time?

Pitfall! is still an amazing platformer. The controls are tight and hold up well, and it is genuinely fun to go back to.

So many games for the Atari 2600 were so abstracted because of the limitations of the console, I couldn’t even tell what was supposed to be going on. Have you tried playing that Raiders of the Lost Ark game? It makes no sense.

I think David Crane’s idea of a man searching for treasure in the jungle is such a simple game concept and executed so exceptionally well on its hardware that the genre might never have taken off the way it did without Pitfall!‘s influence.

All gamers should take the time to revisit Pitfall! from time to time and get a sense of the roots of one of the most influential gaming genres.

Tags: activision, atari, Atari 2600, David Crane, Friday Old Games, Pitfall!, platformer

This entry was posted on Friday, September 24th, 2010 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.