Atari 2600: Pitfall : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive (2024)

Pitfall! is a video game released by Activision for the Atari 2600 in 1982. It is the second best-selling game made for the Atari 2600 (after Pac-Man), with over 4 million copies sold.

The player must maneuver a character (Pitfall Harry) through a maze-like jungle in an attempt to recover 32 treasures in a 20-minute time period. Along the way, he must negotiate 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 gold and silver bars, diamond rings, and bags of money. Under the jungle there is a tunnel which Harry can access through ladders found at various points. Travelling though the tunnel moves forward three screens at a time, which is necessary in order to collect all the treasures within the time limit. 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, which can harm Harry.

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 vines were drawn as a stretched "ball".

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Reviews

Reviewer: Michael Rock - favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite - April 15, 2022
Subject: Keys to use?

Mac
Control jumps
Option + Down is get off of the vine
Arrow Keys to move

Reviewer: Anonymous - favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite - March 26, 2022
Subject: Legendary video game

Legendary video game about Atari 2600 era. And extremely fun

Reviewer: ripjaw121219 - favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite - October 25, 2021
Subject: pitfall

this nostalgia came back to the best site ever thx for uploading
hint: jump is ctrl you can change this on emu settings

Reviewer: tyrosmokeco*ke - favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite - October 16, 2017
Subject: pitfall

best of all recaP

Reviewer: dr2600 - favorite - October 15, 2017
Subject: Jump???

Looks like it would be great - if there were a way to jump! Please add control FAQs. No key strokes for jump or duck mean the game is impossible to play...

Reviewer: Nythauq - favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite - May 24, 2017
Subject: Keyboard Controls

Argolis007 & FireVaney

If you still haven't figured out the keyboard controls yet, I've found the 'CTRL' key is jump.

Reviewer: Argolis007 - favoritefavorite - May 23, 2017
Subject: Keyboard Controls???

Found:
P - To Pause Game
C - To cycle the game from Color to Black and White
Arrow Key Left - To move left
Arrow Key Right - To move right
??? - To Jump

Reviewer: FireVaney - - April 25, 2017
Subject: Keyboard Controls?

Hi!

Thanks for making all these games available online! Please consider posting the keyboard controller options for each game.

Thanks, again!

Reviewer: Pontori - favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite - August 9, 2016
Subject: Time Machine

Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! My son and I are building a mid grade gaming computer. Poor ole boy is listening to me talk about gaming throughout the 80's and 90's. Last time I built a computer the Pentium II was king and AMD was a better chip. But alas...time sucks.
Anyways, what a great game. If you're under 40, you've got to play just to see what it's like and get a "feel" for what we early gamers thought was awesome. This was an early 80's game and for a 13 year old at the beginning of gaming, everything was magical and amazing.

Reviewer: SourJim42 - favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite - January 24, 2014
Subject: One of the first real platformers

One of the biggest games for the 2600. Difficult to complete, even with the map.

20 minute time limit.

Sadly, the game is the same every time you play it. Once you get good at it, the challenge is gone. On to Pitfall II.