Pitfall!

In the Atari 2600 original, Pitfall Harry swings over a pit.

The player controls the character (Pitfall Harry) through a maze-like jungle in an attempt to recover 32 treasures in a 20-minute time period.[4] Along the way, players must maneuver through numerous hazards, including pits, quicksand, rolling logs, fire, rattlesnakes, scorpions, and crocodiles. Harry may jump over or otherwise avoid these obstacles by climbing, running, or swinging on vines. Treasure includes bags of money, gold and silver bars, and diamond rings, which range in value from 2000 to 5000 points in 1000 point increments. There are eight of each treasure type, with 32 in total. A perfect score of 114,000 is achieved by claiming all 32 treasures without losing any points. Points are deducted by either falling in a hole (100 points) or touching logs; point loss depends on how long contact is made with the log. Under the jungle there is a tunnel which Harry can access through ladders found at various points. Traveling through the tunnel moves forward three screens at a time, which is necessary in order to collect all the treasures within the time limit.[5] However, the tunnels are filled with dead-ends blocked by brick walls, forcing the player to return to the surface at one of the ladders, and try to find a way around again, thus wasting time. The tunnels also contain scorpions. The player loses a life if Harry comes in contact with any obstacle (except logs) or falls into a tar pit, quicksand, waterhole, or mouth of a crocodile. The game ends when either all 32 treasures have been collected, all three lives have been lost, or the time has run out.

Pitfall! was created by David Crane, a programmer who worked for Activision in the early 1980s. In a November 2003 interview with Edge he described how in 1979 he had developed the technology to display a realistic running man and in 1982 was searching for a suitable game in which to use it:

I sat down with a blank sheet of paper and drew a stick figure in the center. I said, "Okay, I have a little running man and let's put him on a path [two more lines drawn on the paper]. Where is the path? Let's put it in a jungle [draw some trees]. Why is he running [draw treasures to collect, enemies to avoid, etc.]?" And Pitfall! was born. This entire process took about ten minutes. About 1,000 hours of programming later, the game was complete.

The game's technical achievements included non-flickering, multicolored, animated sprites on a system with notoriously primitive graphics hardware. Innovative techniques were used to keep the code space within the 4k limit, including a polynomial counter to create 256 screens within 50 bytes of code. The swinging vines are created by repeatedly displaying the Atari's one-pixel "ball" sprite at different offsets.[6]

ColecoVision Pitfall!

Several ports were made for computer systems, such as the MSX, Commodore 64, Atari 800, as well as for home consoles, such as ColecoVision and Intellivision.

Versions of Pitfall! were ported to other home computers under different names around 1983. One version was 'Trapfall' by Ken Kalish[7] through Tom Mix Software for the Tandy Coco, which was licensed and sold as part of the Cuthbert series on the Dragon 32 as Cuthbert in the Jungle by Microdeal in the United Kingdom.[8] This version was then re-ported back to computers like the Commodore 64.[9]

When Pitfall! was originally sold, anyone who scored above 20,000 points could send Activision a picture of his or her television screen to receive a Pitfall Harry Explorer Club patch.[10] The television commercial for Pitfall featured then-child actor Jack Black at age 13 in his first TV role.[11]

Reception
Review scores Publication Score AllGame [12] Arcade Express 8 / 10[13]

Possibly because of the great success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pitfall! for the Atari 2600 was the best-selling home video game of 1982 and the first quarter of 1983.[14] By mid-January 1983 it had been the top-selling game on the Billboard chart for seven weeks—much more successful than rival E.T., which Atari had paid $21 million to license[15]—and remained in the number one position for 64 weeks in a row.[16] Danny Goodman of Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games stated that Pitfall! was "a standout" among the dozens of 2600 games announced at the summer 1982 Consumer Electronics Show, a "very original cartridge no VCS should be without".[17] Arcade Express reviewed the Atari 2600 version of Pitfall! in August 1982, stating that it "may well be the best adventure game yet produced for the VCS" and giving it a score of 8 out of 10.[13] Electronic Games in June 1983 praised the 2600 version's "superb graphics and varied play-action".[14]

Goodman was surprised that the Intellivision version's graphics were not greatly improved on the 2600's.[17] Video Games in March 1983 criticized Activision for not enhancing the Intellivision version's graphics: "We all know you can do more with graphics on Intellivision than on the VCS. So why no improvements in Pitfall?"[18]

The 2600 version of Pitfall! was awarded "Best Adventure Video Game" at the 4th annual Arkie Awards.[19]^:108 In 2013 Entertainment Weekly listed it as one of the ten best Atari 2600 games.[20]

Pitfall! is generally viewed as having created the side-scrolling platforming genre;[20] although it did not scroll, it had all the features of such games, such as the ability to travel up and down on multiple levels of play.[21] The game was also much longer than other Atari 2600 games of its time, which typically lasted only a few minutes. This was due to the majority of such games being ports of arcade games, where short play time encouraged players to spend more money.[22]

Pitfall! is considered one of the most influential games on the Atari 2600 system;[20] it introduced the jungle setting to video games. Many of the game mechanics were used in games like Prince of Persia.[4]

Pitfall!'s success brought national attention to Activision, which had become the first third-party developer for a console. Several new companies saw the potential to follow in Activision's success. While some brought in experienced talent for programming and marketing as Activision's founders had been, numerous others tried to take the same approach using newly-educated programmers and without a strong business model, and most titles produced from these lines were of poor quality. The volume of games released by the end of 1982 flooded the market, and was a contributing factor towards the video game crash of 1983.[23]

• Pitfall! at MobyGames
• Pitfall! at the Internet Archive
• Pitfall! at AtariAge
• Legends of the C64 article on David Crane and Activision (includes Pitfall! info)
• David Crane GDC 2011 Pitfall post-mortem video at YouTube
• The Atari 2600 version of Pitfall! can be played for free in the browser at the Internet Archive