Pitfall

Pitfall!  September of 1982 gave us this great, iconic game.  You play as Pitfall Harry as you work your way through the jungle trying to collect 32 treasures in 20 minutes.  You get three lives to make it to the end and lots of perils await: alligators, scorpions, campfires, snakes, rolling logs, quicksand and pits.

Play-through for me consists of simply completing the game.  It doesn't have to be a perfect game with no points lost and no lives lost... just complete it.

And it was freakin' hard.  I've spent the last several days trying to beat it.  To explore the game I played through it going only one direction, left or right, just trying to survive for the full 20:00.  After that it was pretty apparent that you can't complete the game without taking shortcuts through the underground. With 256 screens (8-bit!) there's a lot to explore.  Each underground screen equals 3 above ground screens and you have to take the right underground passages because some of those passages lead to dead-ends and some bypass treasures.  So, I downloaded a map showing the optimal route.  But. even with a map, it takes a good amount of skill to finish this game.  Many times I died before the time limit and once I ran out of time with one life still remaining and two screens to go to the last treasure.  That one hurt.  My final play-through was very tense at the end:  I had no lives left and I missed the last two vine swings, delaying me precious seconds.  I managed to run across the last obstacle and grab the last bar of gold with 2 seconds remaining.  I was ecstatic.

The game doesn't offer much of an ending.  It just freezes and shows the publisher logo alternating with the copyright year.  I'm not really sure how much replay value the game has either.  I suppose you could try to improve your time or your score, but I think I'd take a break for a while first.  This game is hard in that way only old-school videogames can be.

I did have a great time with this game and it is definitely a deserving icon in videogame history.  I think the game holds up pretty well today and is still quite fun.

3 lives, 20 minutes, ready?	Aha!  A diamond!
Digital tarzan yell is music to my ears.	Two seconds to spare!  Whew!