I wanted Pitfall bad as a kid. The day came when I ate something that gave me the hives. I remember it like it was yesterday: never having hives before, my parents took me to the hospital. Once home, my mother asked if there was something ‘special’ I wanted. I said ‘Pitfall’ for my Atari. The following day - while resting on the couch feeling miserable (and covered in lotion to stop the itching) - my father came home from work with a copy of Pitfall wrapped inside a Montgomery Wards’ bag. I couldn’t control my excitement! My mother made me wait until after dinner to play the game, though, which felt like an eternity. Lol Since my father loved video games, he sat down with me to play this incredible game. It was a magical experience for us both, and I will never forget it.
It can't be understated how amazing this game was back then. We used to play this for hours, taking turns tying to see who could get far enough to see new treasures. And just to be able to go the wrong way and make it harder for yourself was really innovative.
Yes, I 100% agree! It's still my favorite Zelda actually. Used to spend hours burning every damn bush in the forest but it was fun! Zelda 1, Commando, and Metroid were the reasons I bought a NES in the first place.
It's still fun now! That's the hallmark of a great game. That's why I can go and play something like Ms. Pac-Man or Galaga and it doesn't lose a step. Speaking of Galaga, how innovative was the whole 'ship gets captured / win it back / shoot two bullets' thing back in the day? My child mind was blown haha. Great job on these videos, Patman!
@@DelDuio As a kid after baseball games our dads would take us to the hot dog joint that had Galaga and Pac Man and the Ms. as well among others, they'd drink their beer and watch tv and we'd play games until closing time.
I think the lady was Lucille Benson, She was in various movies n tv shows such as Duel, Silver Streak, 1941, and was Sheriff Roscoe s Momma in a episode of DOH, as well as countless others.
Pitfall was one of my favorite games on the 2600. I always wondered how 'Activision' made better games for the system than Atari did. Now I know. Thank you, Patman QC, for making such an interesting and informative video~!
Pitfall was my first platform/adventure game. I had the Atari 2600 back in the day and Pitfall was one of my favourite games back then. I have Pitfall the Lost Expedition for the PS2. I think Pitfall was one of them games that paved the way for Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Horizon Zero Dawn and so many other action/adventure games.
Really REALLY loved The Mayan Adventure. My favorite part was when you got to the end and rescued Pitfall Harry, and it was revealed... It was the Atari 2600 sprite of Harry. XD
allen harper I remember having lots of fun playing through The Mayan Adventure as a teen just like I have fond memories of the original duology on Atari.. The PS2 version admittedly I still gotta finish.. Interestingly I dreamt once there was a game called Pitfall 4 which was a modern iteration of the series totally on par with Uncharted.. Dunno what’s taking Activision so long to come out with something like this..
@@Mintcar923 They don't think it will sell, so they won't put any money into it. A billion dollar company doesn't wanna spend even 4 million to make something new. Sad times we live in
ricky sanchez I see new IPs here and there by known companies.. Well not that Pitfall is actually considered new hahaha Newsflash if a game is done correctly and marketed appropriately it will definitely sell..
I now still play Pitfall on an Atari-Activision Plug and play Joystick that I bought back around in 2009. There was a Pitfall game made for the Adroid mobile phone that is like a temple run game.
This was quite literally my first video game. I played the original Pitfall on the Atari 2600 over and over and I loved it so much. But I became completely obsessed with Pitfall 2 once that came out, so much so that I got it again for my Atari 5200 later on. I played that game so much, I drew pictures of it, pretended to be Pitfall Harry and ran around, all that stuff.
And David Crane would go on to make the 1989 NES video game "A Boy and His Blob" where the boy feeds his blob a jelly bean which would turn into something useful like a rocket, meanwhile dodging snack foods that would do him in the blob in.
For years....YEARS....I never realized that Pitfall was doing the "Tarzan yell" when he swings on the vine. About 4 or 5 years ago, a buddy of mine pointed it out and my head exploded.
Great vid, sir! I've got Pitfall on the iPad. It's an into the screen endless runner, but it's good fun. It starts off with Harry playing the original in the jungle, then the volcano erupts and he runs for his life. The achievements make sense now, as they are homages to the Explorer Badge!
But the smartphone app game is named Pitfall and definitely pays homage to the original, it’s a runner like Temple Run, but I think it definitely has the feel of Pitfall, you swing on Vines, jump over scorpions and crocs, collect treasure and go through tunnels and jump over pits and logs . . Uhhh how can that not be Pitfall? Lol. The game is great!!!! :-)
@@philiple8890 I know what you mean... they really did do a good job with it. And I like the different costumes you can get too. IIRC in the intro, Harry is playing Atari VCS Pitfall on some mobile device when the volcano erupts and he has to run for his life. Perhaps 2 years younger me was just wrong :)
Pitfall 2 was *incredibly* advanced & ahead of its time for a 2600 game. Even back then I couldn't believe they were able to put all that into an Atari cartridge
Pitfall.....played it endless hours on my Atari 2600. Remember when i went into the store in the 80's and my father asked me: ok son, your choice. Pacman or Pitfall? And i took Pitfall.....will never forget how my father looked at me....totally shocked ;-)
Wonderful video, very informative! Im in a community for Pitfall: The Lost Expedition and came across this video when looking up Pitfall stuff on RU-vid. Nice to learn the in-depth history behind the original!
Pitfall was my favorite 2600 game. I once scored around 22,000 but didn't know about the patch. I do remember getting to a certain point in the game where there were several screen in a row with gold bars and that really jacked up the score.
Another great review. I first played Pitfall back when it was released on the Atari 2600, my cousin in Arizona got an Atari for Christmas and I stayed with my Grandparents for the summer, I’d go over his house and we’d play for hours. Then we got an Intellivision and that was one of the first games we got, me and my sister would play it along with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and Burgertime, such fun games and they hold up today.
Thanks for the nice words. It's amazing how these classic games the dawn of time hold a much better than the stuff they're putting out today. Thanks for sharing your story
It ranks pretty high on my list of action-adventure games for the 2600! Of course I'm also a big fan of Adventure, Haunted House, Superman, Frankenstein, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Frostbite, Mountain King and Adventures of TRON!
Another improved C64 port of Pitfall! was included with Garry Kitchen's GameMaker (1985). It was programmed by David Crane as a demonstration of GameMaker's features. The graphics and gameplay can be modified and played.
As a promo for the game I had a 3D cardboard diorama of the box art that was given to me by a sales rep trying to promote sales of the game before it was released.
Pitfall has had a number of homages and parodies of it in more recent games. In the first Marvel ultimate alliance, there's a carnival section by the villian Arcade, who has a machine puts the hero you're playing into classic pitfall, which you need play thru a bit of it to advance. In Fallout 4, they made a homage/parody called Pipfall, after the pipboy unit the character wears. It plays the same but has all green graphics like an old school computer. I didn't own an atari 2600 as a kid, but my older cousin did. When I went to her house, I played thru all titles she had, and Pitfall was leaps about bounds more interesting than anything else on it. It's one of the few 2600 games with any real depth. A real gem as most games of that era didn't age very well.
Didn't know about the parodies . But it sounds cool. Thanks for the info. The reason pitfall has age so well has to be due to David Crane squeezing every out they could from the humble Atari 2600. It's amazing what they could accomplish back then. .
Pitfall was indeed groundbreaking. The fluid animation for the 2600 was something never seen before in a home console. It was just so different than almost everything that came before it on Atari at the time, it was destined to be successful. Also using the look and feel of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, which was a huge blockbuster just a year earlier was brilliant. BTW, the use of that scantily-clad babe in the thumbnail is clever clickbait, but you should at least show her in the video so people don't get mad at you... Unless I missed it.
If you think about it, Pitfall is the original cinematic platformer: its detailed backgrounds and character animations are a definite attempt to create atmosphere, and the game even follows most conventions of cinematic platformers such as flip screen and forced perspective. More controversially, I would argue that it's also the original Metroidvania game: it could definitely be called an "open world platformer" and it also has the genre's typical ruins/wilderness type of setting. It lacks the element of character growth opening up new areas, but collecting gold is a character growth of sorts (it does boost your health, and the game remembers which gold you did and didn't collect), at the very least the Metroidvania genre seems very inspired by Pitfall.
Great vid! This was my FAVORITE Atari game w many hours played! Yar's Revenge, Laser Blast and Defender were great also and close behind on my list of faves. Good times!
This was the very first Atari 2600 game I remember playing when I was six Christmas Day 1981 after my older sister woke me up screaming "WE GOT AN ATARI!!!!!!" 😱 and dad hooked it up to the living room TV. Combat was the other game, it was the one that came packaged with the system. I think he uh I mean Santa Claus bought it from Sears but it was an actual 2600 not the Sears knock-off system.
It’s 11.54pm. Early rise for work tomorrow .I’m almost asleep. It’s a notification on my phone and it’s The Patman. It’s Pitfall. It’s me sitting up now watching a video 🤣
Pitfall was a night and day upgrade to Atari 2600 games before and after. Didn't know there was a Colecovision version. Coleco titles where hard to come by. I recall the local toy stores were the place to get them. Mall Electronic stores like Video Concepts strictly carried Atari 400.
1:45 what a complete Jack off of a boss! Those four guys are basically the reason for Atari’s success, and he compares their achievements to remedial labor. I’m at least glad that they didn’t take that bullshit anymore, and decided to create Activision, which I never knew the story to before you told it. Also, I can’t believe that Jack Black’s first appearance was as a kid in a Pitfall commercial! He’s just as funny, and charming as he’s ever been, and it’s really interesting seeing him as a kid! Thanks for this awesome video my friend ❤
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries Of course, no problem! Your definitely the best gaming historian channel in my book, I just love your style of videos. Your my go-to-guy if I ever need any information on arcade games -so that I can make pirated copies- so that I can have fun with them, and definitely not make any pirated copies of video games!
David Crane is a pure genius. I got to meet him at a retro event and have my picture taken with him. He is also a great ambassador of classic games. I never got the Activision patches back in the day but bought the vintage Pitfall patch and several others on eBay to finally own.
My brother & I just went to Freeplay Orlando last year and David Crane the creator of the game & the founders of Activision were there and told their story it was very interesting they were the 1st 3rd party company.
@@ShinobiShowdown Well Atari execs in the eighties screwed up royally, being greedy and over confident. Now it looks like modern day video game execs are doing the EXACT same thing?🤔
Pitfall2 'LostCaverns' on Atari2600, Had Some Cool Ass Music! Even When It Dragged Ya Back To TheStart! I Think I Remember Trying To Make it Across Some Balloons...It's Been Forever. (Somebody Swiped All My 2600 Games at WVU College...like 50 of'Em. I Let My Brother Borrow Them...& They Got Jacked. CosmicArc, YarsRevenge, KeyStoneCapers...All Of'Em.)
the Atari 5200 and 8 bit machines had identical code. We use to have disks full of atari 5200 games. This game on the 2600 literally was a fully summer for me and my childhood 'crew'
Very nicely covered and as ever fascinating use of images and other system comparison videos. Pitfall and River Raid were quite a shock, it was almost like a new, more powerful console! Pitfall was classy, polished and very playable. A remarkable game, especially when apparently the VCS was only designed with single screen games in mind, such as Combat.
I had the honor of interviewing Mr. Crane for my 2014 book Memoirs of a Virtual Caveman, and he had some interesting things to say about Pitfall II, which is my personal favorite 2600 game.
That commercial with Jack Black was good to see. Nice coverage of this classic. I still remember completing Pitfall 2 on Colecovision as a kid. Those balloons were cool rides.
Great video! On a side note, the Pitfall Harry action figure you showed is a fan made mod of a GI Joe figure from the 80's. It's not an official figure though I bet the person who made it will take it as a compliment.
Thank you! All these years and I didn't know the sound was Tarzan. I remember getting calluses between my thumb and forefinger with all the hours of playing.
Got the actual cassettes of the original Pitfall! game for my Atari 2600 and ColecoVision. I also got the original cassettes of Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure for my SEGA Genesis and Game Boy Advance. I even got the Activision compilation discs for my PlayStation 1 & 2. I also got Pitfall The Mayan Adventure downloaded to my Wii via the Virtual Console.
Thanks for the great video, I never played the original, I was playing "pip fall" on fallout 76, it's a nice little throw back but I had enough fun playing it I just had to check out the original and your video was perfect. You had the progression the back story and most importantly you made it feel nostalgic even though I had never played the original. Thank you and I hope to see more of your videos
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries I've always known of Pitfall and the references in shows like South Park, as well as the Supercade cartoon. For some reason, I just never got to play it myself. I'd say the 2600 and Colecovision versions are so far equally decent.
MYSTERY SOLVED! When Jack Black first started to become popular, I was like "man, why does he look so familiar?" I must've seen that Pitfall commercial dozens of times as a kid.
Reminds of of Mac from Always Sunny was in a No Smoking commercial when he was a teen and could never realize why he looked so familiar to me when Always Sunny first aired.
Missed this one the first time around. Surprised no mention how the Atari 400/800/5200 version of Pitfall II had an entirely new adventure open up once you beat the game.
I remember this game, because my older Cousin's had Atari 2600. I was around 2 or 3. Who remember Coleco consoles? Yeah, I'm getting up there in age. We living in the Projects, in Chicago I think they might be the first to have a 2600 there. The PC's or Prairie Courts Housing Projects. Brought back some Memories.
Fun fact: David Crane is from Nappanee, Indiana, which is the heart of the Amish community in Indiana. His dad owned a furniture factory there and based on what I know about Nappanee having grown up just 15 minutes away, probably employed several Amish workers. Apparently his dad would bring home various old electronics to David when he was a kid and David would take them apart and make something else with them.
Both are grammatically correct if you study linguistic anthropology just one is more common parlance. Always makes me laugh when people correct that because they are in fact incorrect. You can check this out by the way it is very true. It is like raising your pinky finger when drinking tea, also not what people think.
I like how the boss told the guys that anyone can program a game, to defend not giving them a raise, did he do that , just hire anyone to make the ET game?
To be fair to the designer of the ET game, he was on a horrific time crunch (about a month from start to finish) and as far as I know, he worked alone. Having played it and beaten it as a kid, I can say that the game could have been improved with more time... the worst thing about the game is the constantly falling down the holes. Well, and if you try playing the game without the manual, you'll have no idea what you're supposed to be doing.
I remember hearing that Sony refused to have any PSX games which weren't 3D, so there were a lot of bad 3D versions of things. Then Dracula X / Castlevania Symphony of the Night was a big hit and they sorta changed their minds.
I got SOTN , MGS, and FF7 w/ my psxwith $ from Xmas and first job, best game purchases I ever made all on one day, best game on a system of 3D hits in spite of its (gorgeous) graphics, easily elevates it to art, so many hours put into SOTN, best game
9:57 My all time favorite arcade game! Used to play it religously in the arcade in the summer holidays as a kid. Had the rom for the mame emulator a few years back too and to this day its the only arcade game ive ever finished 👌
Great history. It's also a nice case study in branding. I always saw Activision games as a cut above other Atari games (and other Atari software brands.) But as a kid I never knew why.
Pitfall was the first game I bought after I had my 2600 for Christmas 82, I think. It cost £30. My dad was earning about £100 per week. My parents must have had some concerns about affording games in the future. Fortunately Atari went bust and I could pick up games for about £5 from Woolworths shortly after.
We didn't have a whole lot of money growing up so in 1983 when games dropped to five dollars we thought it was a sign from the heavens. Who knew what was really happening with the videogame crash. Thanks for sharing your story
There was actually an Arcade "Pitfall" Cabinet, I played it many times, in Goleta, California (in a moderate size arcade near Fairview). There were many other classic Atari games there as well; I believe now that they had to be market test machines, as I have NEVER seen anything like them since!
I remember when I was a child and I got The Lost Expedition on the GameCube. At the time, I never played the original title or even the sequel (or the numerous conversions), because, well, we didn't have an Atari lol. I can say I really enjoyed how it played as much as I did Metroid Prime, often considered as one of, if not the best Metroid titles to this day. Controls were smooth, music was decent, and the story was cheesy, and the exploration from what I remember was really fun. I'm considering getting it and doing a playthrough soon as I get myself a Wii. Edit: forgot to mention in my hyperfixated ramble, but I've been watching a few of your videos (Golden Axe, Altered Beast, etc) and I love the vibe you give your content. Informative, honest, and the rabbit hole of each game definitely pulls me in as the onion layers peel off
I've played the NES version, Super pitfall game. I thought it was difficult because it was so clunky. But the game drove me insane till I beat it. It was an amazing experience.
Good video!, Pitfall II was my favorite game on the ATARI 2600 and probably across the board, considering the time period and technology. It was the only game I knew that had an ending, which was something I was questioning in my mind about the games back then. (Oh! just remembered ET has an ending too!... and KARATEKA which I played even earlier than that on my friend's monochrome Mac). You didn't mention the second level of PITFALL II of the ATARI 5200 which has an entire new world to explore!. (I found out around 15 years ago that there was an ATARI 5200 and a 7800 !.)
Loved the history. Played the original Pitfall and Pitfall 2 games a lot. I was only disappointed that the iOS version in 2012 wasn't included in the video. It was the only other Pitfall game that I got addicted to playing. That aside, great job with this.
There is also a version of this in Marvel Ultimate Alliance where you have to save either Nightcrawler or Jean Grey from Arcade (voiced by Mark Hamill and sounding very much like his version of the Joker).
It's amazing how many short sighted fools are in charge of major companies that can't recognize the talented employees working under them who made it successful to begin with, like those mentioned here they often move elsewhere and leave the company to rot. It reminds me of a story about Thomas Edison, he was working at a telegraph office and his main job was to send a signal on the hour every hour to ensure the wires were still up, but one day his boss came in and found him asleep having created a mechanical device to do the job automatically. Instead of realizing he had come upon someone who was uniquely brilliant, talented and then (after reading him the riot act about goofing off) moving him perhaps to a research department where he'd be better used he just fired him on the spot.
Can't recall the name of that racing game that Activision had. You would drive on snow, at night in fog and so on. If you sent a picture of your score, you get an achievement awards. Those were the days.
