Reviews from

in the past


don't use your jagen he steals exp

31 de 32 tesouros. Trinta. E. Um. Fodendo. Tesouros.

Ok, vamos dar uma pequena marcha ré.

Já joguei Pitfall antes, mas só agora realmente joguei Pitfall. O que quero dizer é que minhas experiências anteriores com o jogo se limitaram a rodar ele num emulador, dar uns pulinhos por cinco minutos, falar "é, é um jogo velhão mesmo" e ir fazer outra coisa.

Essa foi minha experiência com a maioria dos jogos do Atari 2600 por muito tempo. Quem olha pro meus logs pode pensar que sou imune à barreira da idade, mas não é bem assim. A verdade é que não sou lá tão jovem assim (31 anos e contando), então as gerações 8 e 16 bits fizeram parte da minha infância. Já coisas mais velhas que o NES por muito tempo pareceram irremediavelmente datadas. Foi só nos últimos 5 e tantos anos que comecei a expandir meus horizontes para temporalidades lúdicas mais longínquas. Ou, em bom português, deixar de ser fresco na hora de jogar jogo véio.

Pitfall é um monumento histórico. Se Donkey Kong firmou as bases dos jogos de plataforma, foi Pitfall que transformou plataforma num gênero específico, desmembrando-o de forma clara dos maze games e arcades de ação. Esta é uma verdadeira aventura focada no domínio do movimento - talvez não a primeira, mas certamente a mais influente.

Mas mais do que um simples monumento a ser contemplado, Pitfall ainda é um game que vale a pena ser jogado. Se seu aspecto visual pode ser rudimentar para alguns (ou "cheio de charme", como diriam outros), uma vez em movimento ele se prova incrivelmente moderno. Sua intuitividade nascida de sua limitação técnica esconde certas profundidades, como o fato de ser necessário usar de forma inteligente os atalhos subterrâneos para se pegar os 32 tesouros à tempo, ou como cada obstáculo o caminho mais otimizado é o da esquerda, não da direita.

Algo que veio em minha mente enquanto eu o jogava era como o game, anacronicamente, me lembrava o subgênero contemporâneo de "precision platformer". Apenas passar pelos obstáculos é uma tarefa relativamente simples, mas o limite de 20 minutos para pegar todos os tesouros impede o jogador de se mover ao próprio bel-prazer. Literalmente cada segundo conta. No momento em que você entra numa tela, já é preciso fazer uma série de decisões: quantos pulos dar? Pego a corda agora ou espero ela voltar para ser mais seguro? Será que dá tempo de correr até a metade da tela antes do lago me engolir? A jornada de alguém com Pitfall assim se torna não muito diferente de um jogador moderno com Celeste ou Super Meat Boy, uma série de tentativas, erros e pequenas vitórias determinadas por pulos de um pixel feitos no último segundo.

Depois de quase sete horas com o game e inúmeras tentativas enfim cheguei perto da glória. Com o caminho mais eficiente gravado em minha mente e cada obstáculo impresso em minha memória muscular, me senti um verdadeiro Indiana Jones em busca dos 32 tesouros.

Dos quais só consegui 31. Com 22 segundos restando para pegar o último tesouro, só me deu tempo de passar por mais duas telas e sofrer internamente pensando que pulo eu poderia ter feito de forma mais eficiente, nas telas em que fui cauteloso demais esperando jacarés se moverem ou um lago drenar e deslizes inconvenientes que me torturariam para sempre.

31 de 32 tesouros. Trinta. E. Um. Fodendo. Tesouros.

(obviamente tentei de novo depois com save states e rewind. me envergonho mas não me arrependo)

I wonder what the kid in the ad is up to nowadays (not Jack Black, the girl who was weirdly into the Atari sprite)

activision wont let me in the pitfall harry adventurers club, due to "the promotion having been over 3 decades ago". Sad. This one is a more well-aging atari 2600 title, mostly due to the fact that this game doesn't try to involve itself with shooting things or exploring a monochrome maze, which seemed to be the trends roughly at the time for game design. It's instead a 2D platformer, and a pretty solid one at that. Not really much of an end goal, just a target score in the manual that activision tells ya to aim for. Other than that, its one of the better lil diversions you can experience on the atari 2600.

Unlike every other Atari game, this one doesn't get bullshitty impossible difficulty wise after a few screens which I almost want to praise, but I feel it ends up going in the exact opposite direction and becomes really mind-numbing and boring for how easy it is. Finding out how to stand on the alligators heads was the peak of the experience.


One of the best games in the Atari. I remember spending hours playing this game with my brother. Even though it hasn't aged well it was very impressive for it's time. 4/5.

one of the most ambitious 2600 titles that paved the way for 2d platformers. it's fun for a few minutes

One of the best Atari 2600 titles and still fun today......................................................................................................................................................................................................... for about 7 minutes.

Retro Yearly List #8 [1982: Pitfall!]

I was not aware of Pitfall franchise being born in Atari, the first time I saw it was on SNES, later I discovered that this is a pretty iconic title for Atari players back in the day and one of the "must try" of the console.

For me, playing it for the first time, it's an ok game, the controls are nice, it's just a little bit repetitive. It has similar mechanics to the original DK but with a different approach, you have to collect all treasures spread along several screens before the time runs out, you can go to the right or to the left, or by the underground to travel faster through the screens.

The objective is not clarified by the game so imagine discovering that by yourself without any tip, at least this was the case here in Brazil, it seems that this game's ending was an urban legend, people used to just try to survive for 20 minutes while randomly walking through the several screens.

The actual challenge is tough, to beat it you have to almost have a perfect run, you can see TAS videos beating it in about 17/18 minutes, and an average player is supposed to beat it in 20, that's insane.
Didn't accept the challenge tho, as I used save states.

There's a lot to like about Pitfall, but most of its appeal has less to do with its design and more to do with the fact that its aesthetics look more modern than most 2600 games. The animations are smooth, the sprites are clear, the setting is iconic.

I try to rate games (and movies, shameless letterboxd plug) contextually, so I can't be too mad at Pitfall's very era-appropriate design. However, I would say that Adventure proved 3 years before this that adventure games could have more interesting objectives. But Adventure also looks like barf compared to Pitfall, so it was all trade-offs I guess. If anyone has any solid 2600 games that really pushed boundaries, let me know.

To sum up my experience with Pitfall: after fiddling around, dying, and resetting for 10 minutes, I finally found my first piece of treasure, and then was immediately swallowed up by a surprise pit and lost my last life. C'est la vie!

I think at the time this game was released, it was an experience like no other. These days, it's a game that's fun to look back on for how impressive it was on the limited tech of the 2600, but it's not necessarily a captivating game.

Pitfall de certa forma pode ser considerado o pai dos jogos de ação e plataforma, onde o objetivo não é um puzzle a completar ou inimigos para vencer. Apenas uma floresta que você deve explorar na busca de tesouros.
Pelo menos é isso que eu entendo do jogo, porque eu acabo nunca jogando mais do que 10 minutos, sem saber para onde ir, dando em caminhos bloqueados e telas repetitivas. Sem falar da clássica tela em que se deve pular sobre crocodilos, o tempo é muito exato, e na maioria das vezes, dá que você cai na boca aberta do terceiro.

Outro obstáculo clássico são os buracos em questão, que dão o nome Pitfall ao jogo. Em jogos mais recentes da série, é revelado que esses buracos são bocas de criaturas místicas, pois elas abrem e fecham algumas vezes. Na maioria das vezes, para passar deles, você terá ajuda de um cipó que estará convenientemente balançando de um lado para o outro, ao agarrar nele, um som indecifrável é ouvido, que muito depois, alguém se deu conta que é o personagem fazendo o grito do Tarzan...

Em geral, o objetivo do jogo é acumular o máximo de pontos dentro de 20 minutos, coletando barras de ouro e desviando de troncos de árvores que rolam pelo cenário e tiram sua pontuação, e dos animais que te matam de primeira. É só isso mesmo.

Uh... Have you played Atari today?

The kind of videogame that I try not to play nowadays so that I won't change my mind and still think it is a nice game.

Claramente o jogo que a galera é mais nostálgica sobre o Atari, mas na realidade tem outros jogos do mesmo console que são ligeiramente melhores.

Hard as fuck and has aged like milk

Decently fun time, but once you know how to get past the screens (most of them are repeated) its gets boring. Really great effort from the atari tho

A simple platformer with a nicely fleshed out jungle environment. It gets dull once you get the timing for jumps down and spend most of your time running back and forth to collect the treasures. Could have used a bit more excitement a la Jungle Hunt.

Aff, nobody in the favela plays pitfall! (1982).

certainly one of the most ambitious games on 2600, and a first stepping stone for adventure and platformer games of the NES era to succeed. That said, it's uh, not great to play today.

I played the minigame of this in Marvel Ultimate Alliance
It certainly was a video game

Besides being weak, the 2600 was a nightmare to code for. Pitfall is a feat of technical wizardry which shows a glimpse of the kind of console games we'd only see a few years later.

But does it hold up well today? Hell yeah it does! Largely thanks to its responsive controls and intuitive challenge, this is a game that's very hard to hate.

Might just be the most well aged Atari game ever? It's gameplay loop isn't going to hook you for double-digit hours, but its mechanics encourage a lot of skill building. It's also one of the nicest looking Atari games, using a limited color pallet to make sure the threats pop while the enviornment stands out nicely in the background. Even the cheesy "Tarzan yell" emits charm, although it can get annoying after awhile.

App Store revisionism made me think this game was an auto runner for years.

Pitfall is a novelty. Pitfall wasn't always a novelty. Pitfall is probably one of the best games on the 2600, even if that doesn't really mean anything. 3D Tic-Tac-Toe is one of the best games on the 2600 if you can convince a friend to play it with you, if you want a measure of how little it means to be "one of the best games on the 2600." But once upon a time, Pitfall was one of the most sprawling video games ever developed, one you had to spend several weeks slowly, methodically mapping out and then several more improving your executional skill to be able to get even remotely close to beating it.

Nowadays, after running around aimlessly for 10 minutes or so, you can just look up a map of the game. If you then decide to follow along, you'll probably get maybe 70% of the way through before time runs out even with heavy use of emulator rewind. Then you'll probably look up the TAS and see that you've got less than 2 minutes of wiggle room from frame perfection if you want to "beat" Pitfall. I did not beat Pitfall.

Fun game. The actual main goal is tough to achieve, but it's still enjoyable even just casually running and jumping through. I beat this for the first time, and it was pretty intense to do so - I had just 16 seconds left on the clock at the end. A satisfying challenge.

I was going to try and answer the question of if this game has aged poorly, but that's a silly question. Of course it has. Pitfall is a hard-as-shit Atari platformer more about routing than platforming if you're actually trying to beat it. What, do you think that would be good?

What's more interesting to me is more a question about the Atari in general: What differentiates the lovely pieces in the Atari library from the painful garbage best left in the past? I'm thinking there's a few categories of good Atari games: immortally simple sports games, the black voids of space with earfucking explosions, the eerily quiet and lonely directionless whatthefuckdoidos, and of course the arcade games that still exist in some form on practically every platform today.

Pitfall doesn't really meet any of the criteria that make those groups of games simply fun or at least charming. It's a historical piece and nothing more. It looks gross and muddy, is mechanically bland, and doesn't have any of the magic and sheer wonder at THINGS MOVING ON SCREEN that brings you back to Atari.


It tried its best to be a complete adventure game in the early 80s. System limitations crippled it, but it remains as a gem of gaming, nevertheless.

~ Juegos que Hay que Jugar Antes de Morir ~
Parte 2 — Los 80: Caída y Resurgir

Juego 34: Pitfall! (1982)

Te diviertes hasta que te acuerdas de que estás jugando en una Atari porque ni las hitbox ni los controles van bien.

This game's ok. I'm going to use this space to complain a little bit about my system of writing reviews cuz like idk it's pitfall

Basically what I do is I open this random year generator and have it give me 8 years, and then I dig through the years until I find something I have something to say about. Even though I'm an old head who's spent a lot of time playing games from well before my birth, every time it gives me an early 80s game I sigh because it's tricky for me to figure out anything to say about like Time Pilot or whatever. I think I might stop reviewing 80s games soon.

anyways pitfall's alright. It's got a sound effect good enough that Call of Duty exists now.

WOW! This is a great game. It has great parkour and adventure for all around fun. It's got great stages to challenge you and then the controls and gameplay are fantastic. Highly recommend!