Retronauts - 576: Pitfall! [The Later Years]

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Jeremy Parish, Stuart Gipp, and Kevin Bunch dig in the underbrush to find the games in the Pitfall! series that its original creator had no involvement with. From the infamous Super Pitfall to the cartoon-like Pitfall: The Lost Expedition, it's all here. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week in Retronauts, if your pitfalls hairy, maybe shave it. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts episode. 176. I am Jeremy Parrish, and this is a follow-on from Retronauts episode 574 called Pitfall Series Part 1. This is called, wait for it, pitfall part 2. It's not Pitfall 2. We already talked about that. And if you haven't heard it, that's because it was a patron-exclusive episode locked behind a paid firewall. That's right. We're extorting you. If you want to learn about the classic pitfall games, you have to pony up. Here we're going to talk about the semi and non-classic pitfall games. This is mainly a Stuart Jip episode.

Stuart, hi. Introduce yourself. Oh, hello. I'm Stuart Jip. I'm still reeling from if your pitfalls, hairy, maybe shave it. That's something else right there, Jeremy. I want to pause you for that well done. Depilatories are also fine. And also with us here this week, we have Quick Claw's greatest fan, Kevin Punch. Hello, gentlemen. Thank you for joining me for this continuation of our pitfall docudrama. So like I said, in episode 574, look at that. I'm so organized. I actually know the numbers. We talked about pitfall, pitfall two, and a boy in his blob. Oh, also super pitfall. We talked about super pitfall, didn't we? Or did we? No, I don't think so. We sort of touched on it very briefly. Oh, that's where we're starting today. Okay, that's exciting.

What a great place to start. Yes. I mean, really, it can only go up from here. That's not true, actually. Super Pitfall is really interesting. It's really bad and sloppily designed, but that's on a technical level. In terms of ambition, it's actually very interesting. So if you would like to hear our thoughts on the groundbreaking legendary pitfall and pitfall two and all of their variants and also avoidance blob, basically the games that David Crane designed around the idea of running and jumping and walking down into sewers and cats. go check out that previous episode available at patreon.com slash retronauts for anyone who subscribes at the $5 a month or higher levels of the Patreon tiers. You can check those out and get real learned, real smart, real good. This week, this episode is not about those games, but I think it's still going to be interesting. And if it's not, well, this episode is free so you can't have a refund. All right. So, let me ask both of you. All right, so let me ask both of you, when

did you first discover super pitfall? Is this something that you played as a childhood and carry the scars throughout your adult life? Or is it something you've come across more recently? Kevin, let's start with you. Let me know. Let me know. Come on, tell us. Share. So I remember renting this game for the NES back as a kid. You know, we were big fans of the original pitfall. So super pitfall on the NES. Surely, surely, this is going to be a great game in that same sort of a I had no idea what to make of this. I remember thinking, well, okay, you've got this weird Mario-esque sprite for Pitfall Harry, but hey, it's the NES. That should be normal, right? I don't understand why there's so many hidden objects or why I die so quickly. So I remember playing it quite a bit that weekend, but we never rented it again after that,

so I clearly was not a fan. I think right here we get into one of the defining factors between the David Crayne Pitfall Games and the not David Crane Pitfall Games, which is that Super Pitfall gives you a gun. And Pitfall Harry in Pitfall and Pitfall 2 did not have a gun. He did not have any sort of offensive capabilities whatsoever. He was a little guy who wanted treasure and was in danger of being stung by scorpions and eaten by crocodiles, alligators. I can't remember. which continent this game takes a place on. But in any case, pitfall is a nonviolent game aside from, you know, falling into a crocodile's mouth. Whereas Super Pitfall introduces, well, it introduces a lot of things. But one of those is giving Pitfall Harry a weapon and allowing you to shoot the hell out of things, which, you know, that's a change. That's a really dramatic change in the overall design philosophy of what pitfall is even about. Anyway, Stuart, where did you first stumble across pitfall to?

Where did you first fall into the hell of pitfall? Sorry, sorry, super pitfall. I mean, I kind of hate to say it, but angry video game nerd did a video about this game that made it look just like an atrocity. And I love AVGN. And eventually I decided I'm going to play Super Pitfall with a guide because there's no way I can do this properly. It's just not on the cards. And playing through the whole thing, like with a guide, with some speed up, you know, all that emulator trickery, I'm not going to

pretend I did it properly. I can't conceive of how a human being could figure that stuff out. Like, I don't know if the manual has any hints or anything. Like, if you jump in this space, this will appear, or the order in which you've got to do things, the way you've got to meander around the map to find all these different, like, what is it, like card suits, like Spade Club, of thing. I don't even understand why it worked what I did. Like, even following a guide that's explaining it in detail, I don't understand the purpose behind any of it. Like, the way that you finish the game is that you have to, like, fall off a certain platform once you've got everything. Why? And you, you leave the initial, like, Mayan Aztec pyramid area that you start

in, by leaping into a bird. Now, there's nothing in the game to indicate this is a bird you should leap into because every other bird that flies at you kills you. The difference between this bird and the other birds is that this one flies at a slightly different altitude than the others. So you're supposed to look at that and intuit, oh, well, this bird is flying slightly differently than the others. Clearly, instead of being fatal, it would be helpful and beneficial to me to leap into it, which would be suicidal under any other circumstances. There's no difference in color, in the way it moves, in the noises it makes. It's just, just a different altitude, but given how roughly this game is programmed, that could just

be an error. It could be just like, oh, yeah, this bird is just flying differently because they coded this one really crappily. I mean, that's the sort of thing that normally would be like crack to me, you know, a game with a completely unfair puzzle solution that has no indication whatsoever, like the old riddle of Master Lou game on the PC or something. But no, this is just, I don't even know what this is. Like, seriously, I never read the manual. Is there anything in the manual that could possibly help you with this game? Or is it really just go for it, go nuts?

I know, I'm going to look up the manual while you talk. I was going to say, I rented this game, and I don't remember having a manual, but I know I got past that initial screen. So I don't know how I would have figured out that I should jump into this bird. Maybe it was in a book or something. But I kind of feel like this game was designed to sell strategy books, like a lot of games were in Japan, except that only Japan got strategy books. So I'm looking at the Super Pitfall Manual, and the text description is actually for Pitfall, too.

I'm going to read this to you. This is when you open up the NES manual. It says, Pitfall Harry is back, ready to embark on the most dangerous, most impossible mission he has dared to attempt so far. All alone, with only a gun and his wits for protection, that's different. He must recover the priceless Raj Diamond from a vast subterranean dwelling, high in the Andes Mountains. And to complicate matters, he must also rescue his beloved niece Rhonda and feline friend QuickClaw the lion, both trapped in the dark, damp depths below. Quick Cloth a lion? He's a mountain lion, yeah.

Oh, okay. So that is the diamond, Rhonda, Quick Claw. That's straight up pitfall, too. This is no weekend caving adventure with no map to guide him. Harry must find his own way through the cave's inless passages over 7, 270 screens, infested with poisonous frogs, backs, snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, cavemen, lava pits, deadly condors, falling rocks and other evil creatures and hazards. Yeah, the whole like over 270 screens, that's, that's not how you describe NES games.

You know, once you've got scrolling into the equation, you have X number of stages. You don't talk about how many screens you have. I feel like this was, I don't know, this is all disconnected from reality somehow. It does have the feel of a, like an MSX game or something. You know, it doesn't quite feel like a console game to me. Well, there's a reason for that. Yeah. What's the reason, Jeremy?

Kevin, would you like to share that reason with Stuart? Sure. What's the reason, Kevin? So from what I was able to put together, mostly from Nicole, Express. This was originally published on PC 88 in Japan, which I looked up a playthrough of, and it looks, you know, it's still super pitfall. A little more tolerable. But it, yeah, it doesn't look super janky. It looks like the programming is actually held together with more than bailing wire. It's also a flip screen sort of game, but that's probably because it's on PC 88, and that's scrolling is just way out on that. Yeah, but I mean, that does at least justify the 270 screens thing. Yeah. And also, I feel like this game would probably work better as a flip screen game because I'm assuming that enemies and hazards don't transfer from one screen to another.

They're all kind of like self-contained spaces. So with that style, like I could see this becoming a series of sort of independent puzzles, which doesn't necessarily mean that it would be a better game. but I think the encounters and the hazards would make more sense when kind of contained within those spaces because in the NES game they can sort of sprawl and meander and it makes things a little frustrating when you know you have to kind of figure out the range of things and you have stuff kind of constantly appearing from nowhere.

What I found like when you finish the game, not to get ahead of self, but that's not the end. like there's like a second quest like they rearrange all the items and in theory i suppose you could just play super pitiful forever it'd be like the worst imaginable hell but you could do it well what what uh what circle of dante's inferno is this oh god i don't know um dante's inferno that's a pretty good game though i could switch to that no i don't i honestly i don't hate this i can't hate this it's just charmingly weird you know okay so stewart i uh in the manual found a section called Staying Alive, which is not a Bee Gees reference or Abba.

It is. It is. Oh, it is? Okay, never mind. It is. So in the disco, you have to deal with invisible objects. Besides the medicine and the key he needs for rescuing his allies, Harry will discover many other items hidden in the cave that will give him special powers to help him in his mission. Among them are crystal balls with a heart, spade, diamond, or club inscription, useful for opening up rock doors, spare pistols, and objects that can make him. Harry invulnerable to his enemies and help him earn points. The only way he can get hold of these items is to jump up and grab them at just the right moment. Since they're invisible, Harry should jump frequently as he wanders through the cave. So there you go. It's basically saying jump, jump everywhere. That's why it would be doing anyway.

Yeah, right? Yeah. I mean, the walking animation is so bad. You probably might as well jump everywhere. And it does give you some tips on playing the game. At times, his pistol seems useless against the endless hordes of creatures that come after him. If he manages to reach Ronda, he'll discover that the poor girl has been turned to stone and that the only antidote to this horrible condition is a flask of medicine, located somewhere in the cave.

And if this weren't enough, he can rescue the faithful quick claw. Not before he can rescue the faithful quick claw, Harry will need to uncover a hidden key. Even returning to the starting point is no easy task. To do so, Harry must find a photograph of the underground kingdom, which contains the only clue to getting back. the location of a launching site from which he can jump back to the beginning. So it does at least tell you how to jump to get back to the beginning. It still doesn't say anything about birds. I have to ask a question about QuickClaw, if that's okay.

Yeah, go ahead. Does Quick Claw do anything in any of the games? Well, I know he does in the latest one, but was he invented just so there could be another character for the cartoon? Probably. Yeah. Okay. No, we talked about this last time. Quick Claw was invented.

for the cartoon, the Saturday Supercade cartoon. And then David Crane was like, damn, that's such a good character. I'm just going to make him canon now. I mean, you want to take him away, you want to just put your arm on, David, and just go, is he, like, is he really that kind of a character? You know, he's pitfall hairy, he's little mascot. Yeah. And, you know, mountain lions are very majestic creatures. So I assume that when he's not a little eight by eight sprite, uh, kind of.

Quick Claw looks really cool. He's just also useless. Yeah, I mean, in the cartoon, it's just frit all the time. He doesn't want to do anything. Just like, I don't want to go on Adventures Piffel, Harry. It's like, come on. I mean, I live with cats, and that's sort of what they do. That's fair.

That's fair. Yeah, but they're not cowardly about it. They're just like, eh, piss off. I don't want to go on an adventure. One of them is kind of cowardly about it. The one time he got taken outside for a walk, he just flopped down and was dead weight the entire time. What a baby.

Mm, agoraphobia. It's so sad when that happens to a cat. So here's an interesting fact in the manual. The humanoid enemies in the game, I guess, that you find in hell or whatever that space is supposed to be. Those are cavemen, and they all have names. Their names are Gary, Norm, and Arnie. Interesting.

I don't know what to think about. that. Is he named after Gary Kitchen, do you think? Gary would have been gone from Activision by this point. I don't know. Were there people who, like, co-founded the company named Norm and Arnie? Not that I'm aware of. Are they characters from a sick?

Is Norm from Chiers? I don't know. Could be. Gary is Gary Coleman. Yeah. And Arnie is a Schwarzenegger. Yeah, of course. It makes perfect sense.

They all, right. Yeah. I always think about that trio. Yeah. The crazy film, my God, I'm thinking about their antics right now, and I'm just like, Oh, maybe, no, Norm, Norm is a fictional character. Maybe it's named after Norman Lear. Oh, yeah.

So Pitfall Harry is delving into the depths to shoot a bunch of people in their own home. Yeah, take out Hollywood stars. I can understand. No, the, the pit thing is really interesting because I don't know what it's supposed to be in the game text. They talk about the cavemen, so I guess you're in a cave. But it seems like you've entered hell. Like when you leap, and I don't mean that in a metaphorical way. I mean, like, it really seems like some sort of, you know, underworld abyss.

Like, you've passed over into the dark realm and you have to escape from Satan. That's as far as I've made it into the game. There's a point you get to where you have to leap across swinging vines, you know, very much inspired by the original pitfall, except consecutively. and it sucks because the controls and the collision detection in this game are garbage. And trying to leap from one vine to another with the proper timing is miserable. I hate it. So that's as far as I made it. I did that for like five minutes and kept falling because, of course, you fall a long way.

And then you have to climb back up and try it again. So after like five or ten minutes of that, I said, hey, you know what? I've captured enough footage for this game. I can be on with my life. I mean, it is very loosely like pitfall, the lost caverns with the way the label was laid out and like the frogs jumping over the ladders and things like that. Yeah. But it's just what was impressive on the Atari is, I mean, of course, it was better done on the Atari,

but what was impressive on Atari is just not impressive at all on NES. I mean, this to me feels like, I don't know, I mean, I don't think it was particularly early in the lifespan of the machine, but it feels early. You have that divide between early NES and later NES, and this feels like part of the early stuff for me, but I don't know if it actually was. I want to say this was originally released for, what the hell do you call it, PC88 in 1986. And, oh, no, okay, okay, no, yeah, I'm sorry, I misread. Okay, I'm looking at GameFax information. Their release dates are not always accurate, but it says September 8.

86 for the Famicom, November 86 for PC 88, and 1988 for the Tandy Coco, which of all the systems to put it on. How weird. I was looking into this. And there are a couple Japanese games on the Coco that Sierra brought over, because I guess I think it was Dexter did pretty well for them. Oh, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. And, you know, they were putting things out on the Coco and they were one of the few companies doing this. So I wonder if this is what inspired Activision to say, hey, let's get in on that, too.

Maybe it's what inspired them to acquire Sierra. They were like, whoa, Sierra's got this hoppin Japanese PC import to Tandy Coco business. We need to get in on that. That's what we need to do to expand our mediogenic empire. Yeah, we've got our own Sylphede. It's super pitfall. So from what I have read, it was developed by an American named Steve Bjork. And, you know, it's very slow-paced.

It's just, it's chugging on this system. It's a Coco-3 exclusive, which is, like, the most powerful version of the hardware, and it looks like it's barely able to run on that piece of junk. It uses the same artwork as the NES version, which I thought was really interesting. But, yeah, it looks like it plays probably the same, but not as buggy. And Bjork, he went on to make another Coco game called Mine Rescue

that he sold himself, like going into mines, sort of like Activision's hero, I guess. And that used the same engine, and I guess in that way, it's like a pseudo-sequel. Interesting. It's very strange.

I have never seen the Japanese box art for Super Fitful before, but since you mentioned the American box art, I decided to look it up. And this is really something, honestly. Let me, let me share it with you. Oh, hang on.

Oh, dear. Yeah. What's happened there? What's happened with this man? That looks like a spectrum. That is a spectrum ass cover right there. Although that spider, like those guys showed up in Super Mario, New Super Mario brothers.

Those are the spiders from New Super Mario. Have you seen the PC-A-8 cover? That's actually also horrible, but in a different sort of way. That's quite, this is what the PC-E-R-A-Rews. 88 version of Pitfall Harry looks like. It looks like they've taken the Pitfall 2

Lost Caverns cover, but they've changed it and made him look like Woody from Toy Story a little bit. He's got that Susumu Matsushita look about him. The guy who does the Famitsu covers and Maximo and what else to do? Adventure Island.

Like it really looks like his character design, although the actual painting quality is different. It's got more of a Yeah. He's got them cheeks. He's got them cheeks. And I mean on his face. Yeah. And a cleft chin. It's weird, though, because only his face and the hand that's extended toward the player look rubbery and cartoonish. The rest of him is realistic. So he looks like a, you know, like a Disney mascot character. Yeah, it doesn't quite work. Well, that kind of defines super pitfall as a whole. So I guess it's appropriate. Like this, well done. Well done, my chronics artist. You nailed it.

I will say props that the one for the NES and the Tandy is pretty good. Like, I think that's a pretty silly piece of box art right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's quality fair. He's the guy from Curious George. This is how he found the monkey. Yeah. And before we move on, I do also want to add that Activision almost put out this Japanese game, Atlantis, no Nazo, in 1989, is Super Pitfall 2 in the U.S.,

If you've ever played Atlantis No Nazo, it is also an extremely arcane game. But in such a way that I think it's actually less arcane than Super Pitfall. You know, I can see the thought process for why they would decide, oh, we should get this Atlantis No Nazo game and re-package it. So it must have sold okay if they were considering. Oh, Atlantis Noazzo was a big hit. Oh, you know, I mean super pitfall. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know. I don't say nausea because I saw Corny playing it. Sorry, I couldn't get through another episode without mentioning Cornyn. No, the Super Pitfall, I think, did really well for itself because, one, it has very compelling box art. I mean, you look at it, you're like, oh, that looks pretty cool. I want to play that. But also, you know, this was 1987 when it came out in America. And Pitfall was like five, six years old at that point. And there were a lot of people who cut their teeth on a tar. and were, you know, kind of reluctant. There was a lot of sort of hesitancy in the previous generation of console owners to get into this Nintendo thing because it was, you know, from Japan and you don't know if we can trust those foreigners, but the NES was beginning to blow up. And so I feel like this was the kind of game that would come in and, you know, it would appeal to people who remembered the Atari generation and were like, well, I want, you know, an experience

like I played on my Atari, where it was simpler and less cartoonish and just, you know, more about those kind of play experiences. So they would have picked up Super Pitfall and been hideously disappointed, turned off so many people like, this is where xenophobia comes from. Like, this made, this made hesitant Atari owners hate Japan even more because this was from Japan. Do you think this was like the seeds of the old right, this game, maybe like, started the whole thing? I'm going to go ahead and say no. Okay.

I also don't think that. That's good. That might be a little bit of a claim. I don't want to put that on Activision's shoulders. I mean, Bobby Codick kind of deserves it, but no. They're evil, but in a different way. He wasn't there yet, so we can't blame super pitfall on him. Well, I mean, yeah.

This does have, well, this did have name cachet at the time because it's pitfall. And, you know, like I said, I rented it basically because of the pitfall name. So, yeah, the fact that Activision didn't put out any other NES games for what, like a year after this or so, kind of suggests to me that they put this out, you know, just test the waters of the market. And once they were pleased with its performance, they were like, okay, here, we'll start developing some more games or licensing more games. Yeah, you know, there's this whole thing with American publishers being very slow to arrive on NES in the U.S. And that was, you know, a factor of a few things. The fact that the bottom had fallen out of the console market in the U.S. a few years earlier, and publishers were very hesitant to get back into that space.

But once the NES started blowing up, then American publishers were like, well, damn, we got to get on this because there's money to be made there. But the companies that jumped into the NES market earliest, you know, in like 87, 88, on the American side tended to license out Japanese games or work with Japanese developers. I mean, you look at LJN is a great example. People talk about how terrible LJN was and sure. But if you look at the games they localized and published in 1987, 88, 89 even, those are all developed by Japanese studios, mostly Atlas and subcontractors for Atlas, like Westone. So they were kind of leaning on Japanese development studios that had more experience with the NES hardware. And this kind of falls into that.

Activision, I guess, wanted a sequel to pitfall for the NES, but didn't. have any expertise for developing NES games. So they said, hey, let's reach out to a studio that makes NES games. Oh, the people who made that amazing port of Akari Warriors, they're the ones we should talk to. Ooh, they also made 1942 by Capcom run at 12 frames a second. Let's get them. So that's where this comes from. To detecting a hint of cynicism, you know, voice there. Just a little hint of snob. No, I'm not at all. I'm so positive about this. when you're publishing on the cocoa and everything already runs at 12 frames

a second, maybe that's just what they expected. Oh, cool, yeah. That's, you know, kind of creating a consistent experience across systems. This is transmedia experience. Shut up, 12 is plenty of frames. Just grow up. Like, it'd be ridiculous.

My favorite is sort of a reverse of this situation. So Atari games, back before they even had Tengen, they were looking into the Famicom because they saw how much money it was making in Japan. So they started working on a version of Milipede for Namco, which never got too far. They worked on it for several months. There's like a prototype that someone put together a couple years ago.

And they had to stop because then they realized they didn't still own the rights to Milipede because the Atari divorce was really, really ugly. But I think that's like the one case I come across of an American developer being hired by a Japanese company. to sell a Famicom game in Japan. It's kind of fascinating. The prototype that's out there is it actually plays all right for being half finished. So it would have been interesting to see that one come together. But I will say this for Micronix.

This game, Micronix deservedly has a bad reputation among people who know what games they produced for Famicom. but at the same time, the company did, like the studio tried to do interesting things. It didn't succeed ever, but they at least, you know, they weren't just churning out direct ports of arcade games. I mean, sometimes they were, but sometimes they were doing weird, interesting stuff. So, you know, their Akari Warriors port is bad, but they greatly expanded the volume of content by making the levels much longer, which is bad. I don't want more of a bad thing. So that was a poor impulse. But I can understand where it came from.

Like, oh, more content for the home player. But if you look at their sequel to Akari Warriors, Victory Road, they also developed that for S&K for NES. And they added a lot to that game. They added like a shop system and these weird arenas where you go in and you fight enemies one-on-one and can win prizes and stuff. it's it's really very interesting it again plays like crap but they were they were doing something different and you know really trying to build on the existing content and create a more polished more expansive home version and I feel like that's kind of what happened with super pitfall because you know Sega had published Pitfall 2 as a kind of streamlined arcade game

taking away the non-linearity of it for the most part. And I kind of feel like my chronics looked at that version and said, oh, we need to make this more of an expansive home adventure. And also, it's mid-1986. And the biggest thing in the world right now is Super Mario Brothers. So we need to kind of draw some cues from that. And they took all the wrong lessons from those games. They imitated exactly the incorrect things that they never should have

touched on. But, you know, they were paying attention. They were, they were looking at other people's big hits with envy and saying, we can do that too. And it turns out they couldn't. But at the same time, I still do kind of admire the ambition and the spirit here. It's horribly wasted. It's a disaster of a game. It's like, if, you know, fun were matter. This would be anti-matter. It's anti-fun. Yeah. But God damn it, they try. and I respect that. They whiffed it, but, you know, they got plucked, and I respect it.

Yeah, you got to, yeah, exactly. It doesn't, it's not about winning and losing, you know. They did their very best. Plus, I want to give them some props because they did a port of one of my favorite arcade games, Sun Son, and they did a pretty, I mean, it's flickery and it's got slowdown, but it seems pretty decent to me. So, you know, well done for that. The version of Twin Cobra is all right.

I like that one. You know, it's, I can't even be mad about them for some of the design aspects of this game just because so many other Japanese Famicom games of this time we're doing the same basic thing, like Mylon Secret Castle or Super Mario Brothers, just everybody looking at the secrets in Tower of Draga and to an extent Zevius and thinking, yeah, what if we just did that for our entire game? Masanobu Endo has so much to answer for. Yeah. I just did a cut together a video on mystery quest for Famicom. And that's exactly the same thing. That was, you know, Milon's

Secret Castle was looking at Mario and Tower of Duraga and saying, ooh, we need to do the more of that. Mystery Quest was actually looking at Milon's Secret Castle and saying, ooh, we need to do that. And like, with every, you know, it's like, you know, multiple generations of a videotape copy. It just degrades more and more

and gets worse and worse. And I can also understand why Activision looked and said, you know, Super Pitfall was a big hit for us, even though it made so many children sad. Atlantis No Nazo would be a great follow-up to that because it was doing the same thing. Like literally, the designer at Sunsoft has said, yeah, Super Mario Brothers had 32 levels, and we wanted to outdo that. So I made a game with 100 levels. And, you know, they're not good levels, and they're full of weird controls and this, instead of having a fireball, your little guy has a bomb that, like, rolls and then explodes. And you can explode yourself if you're not careful. And every level has like a different

secret to get out of it. And there's, there's no direct, you know, link between stage one and two and three and four. And you can warp all over the place. You can warp into a stage that literally just consists of you fall, like you appear in midair and fall into a hole. And you do that three times the game is over and you can't do anything about it. So it's punishing and weird and almost impossible to complete. But, you know, it was, it was kind of released at a time where people wanted more of that Mario Draga thing and they were hungry for it, you know, in the Famicom audience. And, you know, these companies were trying to answer that. And they were still figuring out the basics of how to program for the Famicom, the NES. And, you know, these companies,

And, you know, what actually is good game design? And that would be hammered out, like 1987, 88, and, you know, moving into the 16-bit generation when this sort of like weird, ambitious, inventive, disastrous jank, just, you know, you didn't really see that anymore after a while. So there is something really interesting and appealing about this particular period of Japanese console design, you know, for Famicom especially. And I don't necessarily want to go back to it, by God, no. but I do I do enjoy the fact that it existed because it showed that developers and publishers

were looking at kind of, you know, what people wanted, what people were responding to and saying, yeah, let's try to do that. And then kind of reverse engineering how to design a good game from there. And it took a few iterations until they actually got there. But, you know, eventually you get to stuff like from Atlantis No Nazo to Blastermaster to Batman from Sunsoft and it's you know, like there's real progression there. So this is the

weird cutting your teeth era. That said, I'm glad Atlantis and Ono did not come out in America as Super Pitfall 2 in 1989 because I've been playing some 1986 games. Yeah, I've been playing some 1989 NES releases from 1986 and by and large

they are crap. I do like Mapiland, but the rest of them, no, just like put them in a toilet and flush. Get rid of them forever. Harsh words, sir. But correct. Fair, fair. Well, I didn't expect half of this episode to be about Super Pitfall, but here we are,

almost 40 minutes on. Yeah, what do you know? It's part three. Listen, it's great. One last thing on Super Pitfall, someone added a note about Super Pitfall 30th anniversary. Was that, that seems like a Kevin thing to add. Yeah, yeah, that was me. So this is a hack of Super Pitfall that was done, I think, in 2017, which would line up.

uses an MMC3 chip. It fixes a bunch of the bugs and makes various tweaks to design, like there's no longer hidden objects and whatnot to make for probably as good as an experience as you're going to get out of super pitfall. That's about the best I can say for it. Well, I am downloading that hack right now, and I'm going to try that out sometime. That's actually a pretty interesting InesWorks episode.

Yeah, it's, okay, are they read, all the graphics, they've done all the music, no invisible items, the warps are now just doors you go in, the HUD shows you what you've collected, and it saves your progress. Okay, that's pretty crazy. Yeah, actually, this would be a good Retronauts episode, just when fans redeem interesting but bad video games of the past. Oh, there are so many of those to talk about, for sure. Redemptive hacks. Absolutely, yeah. We're going to be able to be. Anyway, we've spent a lot of time on sewer pitfall.

Probably more time than most people who rented the game actually spent on the game back in the day. They turned it off and said, Thanks. I want my money back. Give me my two dollars. Anyway, so let's move on, jump ahead seven years to the next pitfall game. We would go from 1987 in the U.S. to 1994 with Pitfall the Mind Adventure for Genesis, Super NES. It's on 32X, isn't it? It is. It's on Jaguar. It's on lots of systems. It's worse on 32X than on Genesis. Oh, my God. Don't even get me started. Actually, do get me started. I think that's kind of the point here, isn't it? the main the lead platform was the mega drive and you can always tell i find when that's the case the uh the super nintendo version is basically like the same except it's just a bit worse because it's not you know native so to speak it's it's it's a clearly a port it doesn't quite feel right but uh yeah the 32x version is a tragedy because it has much nicer higher res graphics but it runs at like half the frame rate for god only knows what reason i think they had the choice of like we can either make this look nice we can make it run well. So the 30s, more pixels, but you can't do both.

It runs at half the speed of the, or half the frame rate of the megadrive version, and it is therefore just like worse in every regard. It makes the game feel worse, you know. It's for the super pitfall Coco fans. Yeah. But the best version is the Windows version. The Sega CD version is good too, but the Windows version has the high-res graphics and it's 60 frames per second, and it has the CD soundtrack, which is absolutely outstanding.

Does it have the CD extra stages? Because I know Sega CD did get some next. There's two extra. I think there was one or two extra stages. I can't remember exactly which ones they were, but they're quite short. They're sort of thrown in like, yeah, okay, here's another level. But I love this game. I'm a huge fan of this game. I'd probably put this in my top like 20. I'm massively into it. I think it's, I genuinely think it's great. Like, I respect the problems people have with the way it's been made. It's got that kind of Aladdin thing, Disney Genesis Aladdin, where it's a little bit dodgy. G collision-wise, like your attack, your main attack is this like sling that you use as a whip

and it's not very precise. Like you can be standing there swinging it and a bat will come down for above and will just effortlessly fly into you and hurt you. So it's not the kind of game that you're going to fall in love with if you don't want to take damage ever and if you think that taking damage is a sign of sloppy

design, basically. Because it is a bit, I think it's the top example of the airplane hanger game. that we've been talked about before. I think it is the absolute apex of this because every level is like that. It's this big, let's think of the first level.

You start on the ground in the jungle, you go into the tree tops, which heads you back towards the left, where you started, you climb higher and high using these bungee cables to get to the top, then you slide on a big zip line all the way to the right, then you climb up again, fall down through a hollow tree,

and then up one more final time to get to the exit, which drops you right down to the bottom below everywhere else to fight a Jaguar, you go all over the place, and it's kind of nonstop, like, outrageous extreme things like the bungee courts where you'll hang on to them and you've got these beautifully bespoke animations for Pitfall Harry as he, like, bends and... I think you mean Harry Jr. Excuse me, Piffle Harry Jr., yes.

You know, I'm getting ahead of myself here, because we haven't even talked about what this is, which is this was like this big kind of comeback game for Pitfall because they were going to do River Raid, and I think Kaboom as well. But Riverade never manifested, which is a shame because Riverade is such an awesome game. I think a new one would be cool, but I would digress. This is the only one that came out, and it was this big push,

because not only was it this, working with this animation studio, Croir Films, who did Fern Gully, and there's like a sort of a, I'm not sure if it's a kind of a Don Bluth look to it, because it's not him, but that's the vibe I get from it. It's very beautifully animated.

You know, that kind of, Disney's Old Men, the Seven Old Men or whatever, that kind of like classic super rubbery, extremely fluid animation with a very sort of distinct visual style,

clean yet detailed, I guess would be a way to describe it. This is a very lush game. It is. It feels like expensive. Like when I play it, you think this was, there's money here.

It's crazy how much effort's gone into it in places. Yeah, I think this game, makes an interesting contrast to the other big jungle platformer for 1994, which was Donkey Kong country, because there are two very different schools of design thought happening in these games, both of which feel very distinctly British. You've got like the big kind of sprawling open stage design of pitfall, the Mayan adventure. And then you've got the very linear, super challenge-based design of Donkey Kong country from Rare.

And, yeah, like, both of them are games about doing stuff and finding secrets and exploring jungles and caves and riding mind carts, but they go about it in very different ways. It's the thing that always I find remarkable about the Mayan adventure is no matter how many times I've played it, and it's probably like in the hundreds, because I played it a lot when I was a kid and I played it a lot more when I was an adult

because I did I think about it for retro gamer but I keep finding new stuff whenever I play it I'll think out like just sort of like I wonder if there's anything here

and the answer is almost always yes to the point where it's almost like there's more secret pastures than there are our legit walls there's so many extra lives all over the place and like it's just dense

is how I would describe it there's no downtime it's not like I mean Aladdin is an all right game but Aladdin has a lot of bits that feel very sloppy to me or feel like just thrown together or levels that are just kind of like there and in

Pitfall every single level is just like rewarding as hell to explore that you're going to constantly find stuff, you're going to useful stuff because this game is not easy and I never get tired of playing it for that reason. I love the way it uses set pieces and things are quite limited

but when they turn up they're quite spectacular like you've got these you go into like a temple and you've got these flaming balls on chains that swing into the foreground and background, which is a bit like Aladdin, but it looks even cooler because they're on fire. That's how you make things better. Yeah. It's an incredible looking game.

On the Mega Drive, there's a lot of dithering, as you'd expect, which doesn't look so good on a LCD or whatever, but... Right, but that's not how it was meant to be played. No, it was not meant to be viewed that way, absolutely. Something that I do find interesting is this was the first third-party Windows 95 game, and they were developing it while Windows 95 wasn't really a thing yet. so they were constantly getting sent new versions of it while they were working there

to push it so it would come out with the operating system and it's a really good showpiece for Windows 95 it's the best version of the game it looks great, it runs great, it's got the save feature instead of using like passwords although I don't think it even had passwords it was just one and done

there's even like a GBA version but we're not going to talk about that because it sucks it's absolutely horrible I don't even know what else to say about it It's just too good. It's start to finish. It's atmospheric.

It's exciting. It's not, it's challenging, but it's not unfair. There's maybe, like, one or two bits that are a bit mean, but that's necessary for a game to be memorable, I think. The way that it takes you into the jungle, into the waterfall, into these temples, then into these tombs, then back out to a different jungle that's at night. The location, like, variety is really, really impressive. The fact that it has, like, a, not a meta game, but, like, to finish the game 100%, you've got to clip the, these letters that spell out pitfall and they're just hidden really, really

well throughout the game. And it's only relatively recently that I managed to find all of them, so go me. But then you also have to finish it on hard mode, which is a tough call, because the final boss is incredibly difficult. Even if you've cheated to get 99 of everything, it's still incredibly difficult.

So, yeah, great game. I don't think there is any way legally to buy it right now. I think it was on the Wii virtual console, but that's it. You just can't buy it. So why not download it illegally for free? Please disregard what Stewart just said. Retronaut does not compone theft and piracy.

Then again, you can't buy this game legally right now. We've released a goddamn game, but not on Gog or something, you lose it. You're only allowed to steal the 32x version. That's the rule we're setting up. No one wants that. If a thief stole that legit in real life back in the 90s, they would have returned it. Yeah, why isn't the PC version? on Gog. What the heck?

It's right there. It's not. It's so good as well. It's such a shame. I mean, the Gog has Earthworm Jim, and that wasn't Windows 95 port, but the version they sell is not the Windows 95 version. So what the hey? On the plus side, if you do have a legit PC version of it, you can get it running on a modern PC pretty easily. You just need a certain DLL. And since you legitimately own it, and you haven't just downloaded the ISO from one of the many websites that hosts it, which would be so easy to do, but you mustn't do it, obviously. No, clearly. Then you can just find that DLL and you'll be able to play the game right now.

You could be playing it while listening to this podcast. Yeah. Now, to address the, I'm looking at the notes, and to address the whole idea of, like, the whole thing where the game is so lush that there are things like obscured by its visuals. Like, the visuals are so intricately drawn that sometimes it's not clear what is and isn't a platform. Oh, yeah, that was me. That was my experience with it. I think that's fair enough, and I think that the fact that I did play this when I was a kid is definitely a big factor in why I'm so forgiving of that.

Because I don't remember having the problem with that, but at the same time, I see it, you know, I see it. And I wonder if maybe I've just got a sixth sense for that kind of stuff. You know, I don't understand. I just don't, there is a level mid-game, the second major jungle level, which is at night, the one I mentioned. And there's a point where the only way to approach, is you have to get onto this like tree stump and crouch and it sinks you down and then

bounces you back up like a spring and that's not addressed like anywhere there's no real like there's no way that you would you would know that yet somehow I did it you know it's all that maybe I don't know how I did it like it came back it must have come to me in some kind of flash of inspiration I mean they could have make a musical called Stewie and it's about a there's just a savant at obscure video games yeah the who would do the soundtrack it would be a musical, it'd be amazing. That would be really good, yeah, yeah. I'd like that.

Did you have trouble with the barrel and Sonic 3? No, never. In fact, I think... Oh, you triggered him. Don't get me started on that. Jesus Christ. You've become the chosen one. I never will understand that.

I will never understand that. You get into that room where the only things you've got are up, down, left, right, and the jump button. And you're like, well, the jump button's not working. Guess I'll try the only other thing. And nobody... Nope, left and right don't work. Nobody went, everyone just kind of went like, I don't understand.

Hey, you know, I figured it out. It just took seven minutes. And I had to redo the level because I ran out of time. But, yeah, I'm baffled by that. I wrote an article about that on The Retronauts, and I got yelled at it. It was great. It was like, look at this guy flexing on kids. And I'm like, it's a joke.

It's not real. I don't, if I write, here's the rules. If I say or write something that's obviously insane, I'm probably doing a joke. But no. I still like, probably. I still like that the ending of mine adventure. Yes. Just like totally takes the piss out on the premise.

Because you save the original pitfall hairy and it's just the 2,600 sprite. Just like blown up. It's so good. Yeah, he's like chained to like, he's like attached to this, the monolith and it's hilarious. Yeah, the great thing about it is that it's not just like the Atari 2600 sprite. It's like a new perspective, you know, where you're kind of seeing him face on with his arms up in the air as he's chained to a rock. So they actually put some thought into this. And they don't even bother to explain it.

It's just like, yeah, that's just how it is. Deal with it. It's what he looks like. I mean, there's respect for the Atari game in there because of course, like, level four, you can, when you start the level, it's the first temple stage. And above you on a platform is an Atari 2600 scorpion sprite. walking left and right and you're like huh that's curious it's standing next to a door and the only way to get there is to climb up

and do like a ridiculous leap of faith to the left which I you figure out sort of intuitively and then you go through that door and there's like a portal and when you go into the portal you are suddenly playing a conversion of Pitfall on the Super Nintendo or the Mega Drive or whatever and it seems quite faithful

I don't really know because I'm not super familiar well I am familiar with Pitfall but I don't know about the sort of intricate specifics of it. It seems like just pitfall. I feel like this might have been one of the first reissues of an Atari game on a new platform, just having this hidden in the Super Nintendo, Genesis, et cetera, versions. Is it the first time that, like, an old game was presented like this, like as a sort of secret addition to a newer version of it?

That seems kind of like an exciting thing. I think so. I can't think of another one. Maybe that's why Activision does it with the Call of Duty games. now. They're just like, you know, we've been, we've pioneered this. This is fine for us to do. Yeah. And then, you raise your hands, like, excuse me, why are there arcade machines in World War II?

They're like, shut up. How do you think they won the war? Exactly. Oh, God. This game was, like, it was made by kind of, like, movie or TV guys who were brought in. They didn't,

like, when it started, I think it was Scott Craigor was his name, an Activition, who worked on this game, and not knowing what a sprite was in the beginning and going from that to putting out this what I think is one of the best 16-bit games

or at least 16-bit platformers like it's better than Earthworm Jim it's better than Aladdin in my opinion and it's probably the best example of this version of platforming while it has got the big airplane hangar design it doesn't feel loose because you're always going through

essentially kind of linear paths It's just that there are so many secrets of the sidepath that have worthwhile things that you can feel a bit overwhelmed, I think. There's just so much in here. It feels so premium. It's just outstanding. I don't understand why it's not talked about more.

The only reason I can think of is that it's not from a major franchise, you know, or not from a major Japanese franchise or major kind of, I don't even know. It's good. It's great. It's a great game. All right. So, we've gone from Stewart's favorite game to...

Nobody's favorite game. Talking Pitfall 3 Beyond the Jungle. Someone had to like this thing. Someone, someone out there. I mean, I like it. Okay, well, there you go. I think it's okay. It's a very strange game because it's, well, as has been noted here,

it really is like a combination of like Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot or any other sort of kind of mascot game. Yeah, I mean, if you look at... If you look at Super Pitfall, sorry, I'm cutting you off here because I want to do this while. It's still fresh in my brain, so I don't forget because I have a memory span of like five seconds. What was I saying? Just kidding. No, so you look at Super Pitfall, and that was clearly a game designed in the style of, you know, Pitfall 2 meets Mario meets, you know, like Tower Draga or something with all the secrets. And the Mayan adventure was clearly kind of riffing on the large, open-ended platform design of the 16-bit era, which kind of descended from games like the original arcade Bionic Commando and Wizards and Warriors and that sort of thing.

And here you have a game that is, again, Activision chasing after the latest trend, which are 3D PlayStation games. Anyway, I will let you continue. What it is It is just essentially a 3D platform There is exploration elements But it usually amounts to like You've got to activate four switches You go into four different paths

And each of the path is essentially a linear stage You are Piffle Harry Jr again I don't know if they actually specify Junior this time Yes they do, sorry And you're voiced by none other than the cult chin man Bruce Campbell, which is, you know, good value if you like Bruce Campbell, which I do because I'm a big Evil Dead fan.

Yeah, this game has more Bruce Campbell per minute than any other form of media on the planet, and that includes the Evil Dead games. Yeah, even more than Tacky on the fringe. Can you believe that? But no, it's not good. It's quite badly made. Like, it feels shunkey when you play it.

Like, the controls are so stiff. The way that you like, You have scorpion enemies, and the way you fight them is you have to crouch down and then hit them with your pickax. But to have to crouch down in the first place, like the first enemy in the game is so weird to me. It's like you didn't want this to feel breezy at all. Everything you do is so, it feels like you have to be so precise, because the way that the camera works is so fixed that when you get moving platforms, sometimes it's very unclear exactly when they're aligned. And you have to... The landstocker conundrum.

Yes, pretty much. although they do make an effort to help with that, but that means that if you're doing anything other than following the very prescribed linear path, you're going to probably die because there's no real room for experimentation. There are some fun touches like, aforementioned scorpions, if they get you,

they don't just sting you, they grab you and smack you back and forth like it's asterix or something. Wow. Which is quite funny. But then you also have these enemies that are weird, spinny moth things that are just like, there's no impact, you know? It's like, you don't want to be fighting like moths

and little scorpions. You want to be smacking people in the face. But then you've got the... Oh, so it's the dicetana trouble. The issue of diktana where you're... You know what? It does actually kind of remind me of that. You've got the ultimate weapons and a friend

and you're fighting little frogs in the swan. It actually does kind of remind me of that, yeah. They do throw in some of the pitfall tropes like the logs that roll back and forth and you've got the pits with the teeth that open up and close. And they've got teeth now, which is hilarious. So those are terrifying. Are they supposed to be sarlax? I'm not sure.

The vagina and tatas. I think I'm wrong. I think it's the next game where they have teeth. And here, they're just an omnit. They're just a presence. It's the first time we've seen them in 3D. So they're a little bit jarring and like what's the word? Like lovecraftian almost. Yeah, yeah. That's the thing is it feels like you're going up against alien technology or something. You travel into this, you know, a far future temple or something. It's very like that part feels very much like Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider 2 where, you know, the further you get into the game, the more unhinged and detached from reality it becomes. to the point where you're like, well, this has gone a long way from me poking around some Mayan ruins. What's what's going on here? I think it's a little bit of polish away from being a much better game, to be honest. But I don't hate it. I think it's fine. I do quite enjoy it when I play it, but I am really forgiving of this kind of shit.

So that's probably why. You know, the 3D platforming seems fine. I think they pulled these lessons from Tomb Raider, but they didn't pull the lesson where Two Murder's Combat, you know, it's there, it's okay, it's not awful, whereas trying to do close combat with a pickax in a 3D platformer from the PlayStation era is just wretched. Like, I'm not saying maybe they should have given Pitfall Harry the gun from Super Pitfall, but I'm also not not saying that.

Give him his sling back from his pitfall to mind adventure. Yeah, but that would have been smart. That was a big part of what made Tomb Raider, and even Mario 64 work, is that you don't need a lot of precision with your physical attacks. I mean, Mario is, you know, attacking melee and punching dudes, which is kind of weird the first time you play it, because that's not how he does. But you don't really have to necessarily be facing your enemy directly and be, like, right up against him. It, there's a lot of forgiveness and kind of auto guidance. And, yeah, Tomb Raider, basically, you pull out your guns and Lara just, she's, she, shoots. Like, she automatically aims. So you'll be running around and she's just like swiveling, pivoting,

and, you know, drawing a beat on enemies. And that makes it a lot more tolerable than if it were a proper third-person shooter. Like, the technology just wasn't there. But speaking of, you know, Tomb Raider and all that, I really feel like they looked at Tomb Raider. They said, well, obviously, Tomb Raider is a game descended from the pitfall tradition and, you know, kind of processed through Prince of Persia and then into 3D. So we should reclaim that. But they didn't really go full Tomb Raider with this in any respect, where it's not a free-roaming exploratory action game. They really went with the sort of linear design of Crash Bandicoot or, you know, knights or something, pandemonium.

I don't know. So they kind of wanted to give the impression like, hey, it's Tomb Raider, but in the classic Pitfall Harry style, and not actually go all that way, which honestly was probably the right choice. I don't think the people who made this game could have pulled off a proper Tomb Raider alike. And that's okay. I wish they had made the voice a bit less aggressive. There was a real habit in the late 90s, early 2000s of saying, well, we had the technology to put voice clips here. We paid an actor a lot of money to record a lot of money to record a lot of.

lot of dialogue. So this should be the only thing you ever hear. And it's, it gets, it gets old really fast. It's, um, it's a game that I feel like it had something of a turbulent sort of development. It feels like it didn't know, I don't like using this phrase, but it feels like it wasn't very confident. Like, it's not very confidently made. And, uh, it's not really an adequate follow up to what I think, what we've just talked about, the mind adventure, which I think is a pretty spectacular effort. This game, sort of interestingly enough, I think,

if you put in a certain password at the beginning, you unlock like all these cutscenes that are like comic book drawings. They're all drawn by the artist who did the character design whose name is, I want to say Christian something? Name escapes me.

I'll look it up or something. But it's like they were all originally the cutscenes for the game and then they were replaced with these shit CGI. horrible crap. And it's a shame because the comic book stuff, while maybe there was that fear of kind of like, oh, it's 2D, it's not 3D, you know, it's not good. It's called Piffle 3D. We need to have, we need to have 3D. But the comic book gives it so much a nicer of an identity. It's a real shame they did that, I think.

The only other thing of note that I like is you can also unlock the original Pitfall again. But it's got button codes that do funny things. Like one of them makes Pitfall Harry's head turn into a giant David Crane hair. one of them makes one of the crocodiles say hi mom on the crocodile's screen just dumb shit which makes me happy you know I didn't even know crocodiles had mothers apparently yes apparently they do when are these games going to let you unlock pitfall 2 they're always letting you unlock the original pitfall

in one game's time Mr. Parrish in one game's time we're going to be getting pitfall 2 it's happening oh that's amazing yeah unfortunately unfortunately will be required to 100% a mid-game. Whoa, that's a lot. So, yeah, I don't really have anything more to say about beyond the jungle. Very much a product of its time and very much a product, as you noted, of executive meddling

where clearly, you know, whoever was in charge of this project kept going waffling back and forth. They would see the latest thing and say, oh, no, we got to add this. Oh, we got to do this to keep up. And that's, do you want Duke Nukem forever? That's how you get Dukuncom forever. Oh, my God. Yes, nobody wants that.

Anyway, so that's beyond the jungle. Although he doesn't really go beyond the jungle. He goes into those temples, but they still feel like they're in the jungle. So really, I kind of feel like it's false marketing. Do you think it's worth mentioning very briefly the absolutely shocking Game Boy Color version? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally forgot about that. Please do, because it's clearly an adaptation of the beats of the PS1.

game, but done in a very different way. There is no reason why a pitfall game on the Game Boy Color should be bad, but this is absolutely dreadful. It's unbelievably ugly looking. I'm not sure if it's meant to be a hybrid cartridge that works on the Game Boy as well, but if it's not, they have

no excuse for how bad it looks. And it feels awful. No, I've seen it. It's a clear card. It's not black. Right, right. Okay. I think my one is black. Maybe it's fake. Holy shit. Maybe I'm misremembering. The collision section is so dreadful. where you'll fall through platforms

that you absolutely should have landed on and the way that you jump is so restrictive and weird that you don't feel any sense of freedom and it's honestly just awful, just an awful, awful, awful game and you shouldn't play it. And they have like all these enemies in it that don't really seem to do anything?

It's like, why should you even bother putting this in just have it be like an obstacle course? Yeah, it be like that Rayman game on the game by color that has no enemies. You're like, all right, here's an enemy. I'm just going to slap it with my pickaxe and it's down. All right, let's keep going. Okay, you are correct.

I was miscorrect, incorrect. Yes. Love him what this happens. Yeah, yeah. The Game Boy Color version is a black cartridge. Jip 1, Parish, nil. Damn it. Sorry, let me get that right.

Jip 1, parish, several thousand. There we go. This was meant to be backward compatible with Game Boy. Well, I mean, if it's on a black card, then it is. It is monochrome. well, there we go. That sort of at least slightly justifies the fact that it looks like crap. Not that Game's all that crap, but you know what I mean?

It can't do the full range of color, basically. It's okay, Stuart. I understand. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't look great even for a Game Boy game from 1998. No, it doesn't. No. I mean, I don't know. Like, looking at footage of it, it seemed like it could have been okay, but I didn't have the discipline to actually try it.

So I'm going to take your word on this one. I mean, if you don't like it, I feel like, yeah, there's some real issues because this seems like it would be kind of your jam, honestly. That's what makes it hurt. That's what makes it hurt. I had that today. I played this terrible Tarzan game for the Game Gear,

and I was like, this is going to be great. And it was horrible, and it was really unpleasant to play, and I hated doing it. Thanks. Okay, so we're going to be able to be able to the year, so we move along to the year 2004. So jumping ahead again, a gap of like six or seven years. Sometimes pitfall just needs to take a rest. And we come to the Lost Expedition for basically every game or every, every platform of that generation. Yeah, PS2, Xbox, GameCube and PC. There's also a Game Boy Advance version that's

totally different. We'll get to that. Right. So this was developed by a company called Edge of Reality, who had previously ported lots of games. to N64, including, I think, like a Tony Hawk game. And at some point, Activision was like you have been graced with the ability to create your own game. It has to be pitfall. And so they created an original pitfall sequel that is, I haven't played this, I admit, but just watching the footage of it, you know, watching through videos of it, I'm really drawn to it in a sort of like, aw, that kind of way. Like, it's such a piece of 20 years ago that it really, it appeals to me in a way that

I guess it's just nostalgia because I was getting kind of my start in games journalism at one up and so forth 20 years ago. And so having been a fledgling writer in the press at that point, they would allow me to do the alternate angle reviews on EGM reviews. actually get to do the lead review. So I had to like play a game for 12 or 15 hours and then write 50 words about it. And they gave me $75, which, you know, looking back, not that great, but I was hard up for money. So what can you do? And it was exposure. Everyone loves exposure. That's what you can eat for dinner, right? So yeah, like this was the kind of game that basically

fed me for two or three years. It's just kind of this rubbery, loose-looking, very mid- tier platformer, very generic. I mean, the game begins with an inmedius res boss fight for like no clearly explained reason. And then it does a freeze frame and essentially does a, yeah, that's me.

And then goes into a flashback to explain how pitfall hairy, not junior, pitfall hairy, horrible looking pitfall hairy. My God, the character designs in this are grotesque. It's so bad. It reminds me of the claymation from Moonwalker. Do you remember that? It's really not good looking.

I mean, it's impressive technically maybe, but, okay, it brings me some joy to report that this game is pretty good. Like, I like it. It is what you're saying. It is very much a kind of what you'd expect for the middle-of-the-road platform, but it's also solid. It's got some interesting ideas. Like, for example, they lean into the explorer thing.

So, like, you have this canister. It's almost like an estus flask. I'm sorry to make that comparison. person, but whenever you find... It's fine. It's fine. Everything's Dark Souls. I get it. When you find water... Yeah. But when you find water, you can like stand in it and fill up the canteen.

And the way that works is the right stick or the sea stick is like your right arm. And you can move it around and wobble it around. And if you're holding like a torch, for example, you need to move it around to light up dark areas or burn spider webs so you can make your way past them. If you're holding the canteen, you dunk it into the water and you wait while it fills up and then every cube of water that you drink is like more health, which is quite forward thinking in a way,

an interesting way of handling healing, I think. It's a bit Metroidvania-ish in that there are areas where you'll get there and it will say, like, you need this skill to get past hill up like a high ledge, you need the rising punch that you get later. Yes, Pitfall Hairy's famous Sharukin. Or you get like a dynamite, which is more sensible, you know. It seems more in line with what I'd expect. pitfall hairy. As a result, there is a genuine feel of exploration, like, I can now get further into this jungle, I can get deeper into these mines, I can solve these puzzles. There's like a really cool area with an enormous tree, like giant decu tree sort of thing, where you're climbing the tree as this water is rising beneath you and it doesn't drown you because you can swim in it, but it means that it changes the complete, you know, the way that you platform around it changes completely because some of the platforms are gone now, they're underwater. And there's so much just more going off.

that there needed to be. I mean, you can even do the morph ball. You can roll into a ball with no... It's not even a scale. You just hold the Y button and Harry just contorts himself into a little ball and rolls around. It has problems. Like, the humor is very, like, dream works of its time,

like Shark Tale sort of... I mean, you know what you're in for with that opening... Yeah. It's not that it's not entertaining, but it's like... I was a shout-out when I point this. stuff out, but, like, it's not great in terms of the, like, the way that Pitfall is, Pitfall Harry is constantly leaching over after the only woman in the cast. Like, that's, that's the whole role. As you expect, you know, it's like, yeah, of course,

that's what's happening. But, uh, it's of its time to an extent. And it is sort of funny in a way. He's a hideous man. He's a ugly, ugly character. But in fairness, everyone is ugly in this game. True. But basically, the basic premise is you've got to get through the game, rescue all these explorers, defeat your rival, and you find these idols, and they're like your currency. They're like the jiggies or the stars, power stars, you know. And as you get more, you can go and talk to this shaman and buy things from him, like new moves on maps to where the secrets are and things. But one of the things you get... So it's culturally sensitive also. Very much so, yes. Oh, it's extortionally, extensively racist. I guess extortionately in the

fact that they charge you for it. But, you know, it's tropes. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's genre. And while it is problematic, it is what it is. I like Indiana Jones. It's fine. Yeah. What you get is you find these items that are called like mystery item. And the first one is free. And when you take it to the central sort of hub, give it to the shaman, he will let you use it. And that lets you play pitfall, the first one. And I'm not sure if it's in every version, but the last item you get when you get all the idols is Lost Caverns. I'm almost certain that this is in the game. And that's a really good reward for finishing. the game, in my opinion. You finished this middling game. Now you can play a really good game. Yeah. I mean, I think middling is fair, because middling doesn't mean bad, you know.

I think it's better than stuff like Scalar, you know. It's not total, like, dross, but it's got character, it's got charm, in a sense. They have clearly put more reference to the level design than most people would, given this project. You know, it's not

super long either. It doesn't have to stay. It's welcome and it runs, you know, 60 frames, decent graphics, and they ported it to the Wii, and it's exactly the same on the Wii, instantly. It's called Pitfall the Big Adventure. Yeah, what you were saying about middling, not being bad. I think people abuse the term mid now and just mean bad when they say mid. And that's not what mid means.

This is like when Shane Bettenhausen and I, on EGM, reclaimed 6.5 for good because 6.5 is still above average. Average is five. That's the whole idea behind a scale. We in England, we nailed this 30 years ago, okay? It's called the edge scale. If it's a five, it means it's average, okay? If it's a six, it means a good game. Anything above five means good.

That's how American magazines used to be. I mean, if you look back at the early days of EGM, nothing got a 10. Nothing ever got a 10. And a game that got a five or six would be like, yeah, it's okay. I honestly, I bet. No, how dare you? When I've revisited old EGM magazines, I really like the review crew way of reviewing games. I think it's great.

And that's Femitsu, right? It's kind of a Femitsu thing. Oh, yeah. They just totally stole from Fomitsu, sure. Was it also like Femitsu in the whole, like, you know, getting paid to, like, review things well kind of way? No, they actually did not do that. I am familiar enough with their processes that I can say. Like, it doesn't, you know, I'm not claiming any credit for that.

I'm just saying, nope, they did not. It was not pay for play. And that's actually why EGM kind of got killed. So Zip Davis above board, nothing bad to say about them. Oh, yes. No. Zip Davis itself, I have opinions about. However, the Zip Davis magazine group before the bankruptcy that was largely caused because of the refuse to pay for play, the magazine group was actually very highly ethical. That was just kind of a given for them. So they probably gave this, you know, like a nine out of ten because of all that big Activision cheddar, I'm sure.

Yeah, you know, I think we can put the blame on the review scale shrinking, almost entirely on American schools, grading everything where anything under a five is failing and like a six is bad and a seven is kind of bad. so you can only really succeed on an 8 to 10 and I think people just sort of ran with that when they got older or I guess most people reading these magazines would have been teenagers so they were probably very familiar with that scale we're getting a little off track of a pitfall since you're talking about the pitfalls of the scoring scale

yeah because this is pitfall hair you don't have Bruce Campbell doing the voice anymore I'm pretty sure yeah all right went up dot com gave this game a 65, but that URL is no longer working. Surprise, thanks if Davis. I would add a 10 to that, but all the same, a reasonable score. Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it a 57. Oh, that's not fair.

It's better than that. Not a 57 out of 10. Oh, okay. It's better than that. It's not fair. I'm glad that they shut down now. No, I'm not. Wow.

All right. I'm sorry. I'm not too glad at all. No, no, no. I mean, who cares about job security? Someone said something bad about a game. Yeah, exactly. Totally fair.

It's quid pro crow. They don't deserve to pay their rent anymore, bastards. It's fair. You weren't nice enough about this game that's kind of bad anyway. And like, I've already acknowledged that it's mid. But all the same, I will take everything that you have. Fair enough. That's the modern way.

What is actually quite bad is the Game Boy Advance version, which is another size crawler. It's much better than a game by color one. But the problem is, game Pivel Harry is way too big on the screen. So you're constantly taking damage in really unfair ways. Everything's too big that keeps changing genres in a really annoying way. Like, you'll suddenly

be in like a really bad schmup that goes on forever. Or like a, you'll be in like suddenly being tube in, you know, the midway game. Which is kind of weird. But the humor is quite funny. Like it's funny in that kind of, again, dream works the ants kind of way, except without the alleged, you know,

never mind. Minus the Woody Allen is what you're saying. Yeah, basically. Yeah. But it's, it's little things that have stuck with me, because I played it a long time ago when I was much younger, and I didn't really go back to it, but I remember some of the comedy for it, because it just seemed unusual. Like, for example, you'll run into explorers at the end of stages and things, and I'll be like, yeah, it's really lucky that I just happened to be here at the exact terminus point of this route. And then Harry's like, yeah, we should probably not think about

that too hard. Well, then I'm like, now here, I'm going to give you this hang glider, which I's had on me somehow, despite not having a backpack or any kind of storage. Wow. That is extremely mid-2000s humor. I will take this and I will use it and it will appear when necessary and nobody will question it. And all of the humor is kind of just this kind of like silliness, which I liked. It worked for me. It's very mid-2000s, but it's rare that you see that in a Game Boy game, you know? I will take your word for that.

I never really paid that much attention to the humor of Game Boy games, to be honest. Also, real quick, I want to shout out the one cool thing in the Game Boy Advance game, which is the final boss, because while you're fighting it, your friends, they've got like this racist mind curse on them, and you have to heal them by standing over them while their health drains, while the whole time you're being attacked by the boss. And it's this really weird, like, interesting set piece, because you're constantly trying to keep you around, like spinning plates, you know. And it's the only part of the game that's inspired, in my opinion. Sounds like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Oh, really? Do you have to carry a bucket around?

Not, to my knowledge, but maybe he does have a bucket because, as mentioned, all his items turned invisible when he has them. Aha. Yeah. No, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, it's a multiplayer game and everyone has to stay within a certain range of the main, like, the lead character in the party. It creates like this aura that protects everyone from the miasma outside. So if you stray too far away, your health drains.

So you're always kind of trying to manage spatial proximity to the bucket. carrier versus enemy attacks and that sort of thing. See, now I'm imagining a series of games that's just called Bucket with an exclamation mark and it's an alternate history. It's all like Bucket Harry. I feel like I mentioned this before, but when my friends and I in high school tried to set up a GERPS campaign because we were too cool for Dungeons and Dragons. We never really actually played.

We just spent like three sessions creating characters and everyone had a bucket. For some reason, they asked me to, they commissioned me to draw the, the characters for the party, and we all decided that everyone should be holding a bucket. We were the bucket brigade. I'm kind of sad we never went on an adventure together, because I feel like we could have done amazing things with those buckets. We can make it happen still, Jeremy. We can have the bucket brigade.

We'll live again. I'm going to start pitching this to Josh at Limited Run and say, hey, can we make a bucket brigade game? And he's going to fire me. That's going to be great. What a ride. That's the one thing you can't say. Anyway, we're going to wrap this up by the final this up by talking about the final pitfall game.

And deservedly so. This one killed it off forever. That is, I think it was just called pitfall, but it was an endless runner for iOS from 2012, developed by the blast furnace. I think it was meant to be kind of like an interest driver for David Crane's Kickstarter attempt to bring the series back, which did not pan out. And if this was their promotional effort, maybe that's why. I don't know. I don't know. Because I remember that campaign, but I remember it.

It wasn't pitfall, was it? Pitfall-esque? I don't know. Yeah, it was like an off-brand pitfall. I could have sworn it was pitfall, but you're probably right, and I'm misremembering because I'm old. Whole drop. Exactly. Jungle Adventure.

That was the game he was trying to fund that didn't make it. Okay, okay. Sounds familiar. Sounds suspiciously familiar. Yeah. I mean, I played this briefly because it's pitfall. I mean, it's a piece of shit. Like, it's, you know, it's not even, okay, I'm not going to get on my high horse, but like, it's just a fucking gambling waste of time.

It's like funnel money into it and you might get further, but who cares? It's one of those? Well, it's microtransactions. It's, I don't think that I want to, I mean, you know, I don't like. No, this was, this was peak candy crush era, so I get it. Yeah. I just, I just feel like, you know, even as someone who does play at least one of these games, it's, it's like, there's nothing to analyze. it's just you run down these three track paths dodging shit and then when you get far enough

you fail and then it says hey do you want to have another go that'll be two quid and yeah yeah no thanks it's a very what's the word ignominious end for the series i would say and it sucks because pitfall is the easiest home run ever look at uncharted that's just pitfall yeah i mean that's that's how we should end this episode not with this wet fart of a game game, but with talking about Pitfall's influence, because, you know, it was an influential game. As we discussed last episode, the previous episode, you know, it really was the first kind of breakout console gaming original. Lots of console games, original console games, existed before pitfall, but this was the first one that really had cultural clout. It had traction.

I sort of wonder if this string of, again, mid-games has much. meant that that brand is now a little bit like, I mean, every time it comes up, it's going to be compared to this not very strong legacy. I mean, I mean, yes, the Atari is, you know, world class, but if you want

that by Atari flashback, I guess. I kind of get the sense that most of these have just been memory hold outside of mine adventure in the Atari game. Even mine adventure doesn't get talked about much, much more than I really feel like it should do.

True. That one, it's sort of like, if you were there in the moment, you remember the game. And if you don't, then you probably are not familiar with it at all. But the first two, yeah, I think that's still pitfall in most people's heads, which probably works against it a little, because that just seems very archaic. You know, you're thinking, well, it's sort of like with Pac-Man, too, right? Like, no one's really thinking about newer Pac-Man games necessarily. They're thinking about the original Pac-Man game from 82. When they should be thinking about Pac-Man 2, the new adventure. Oh, hell, yeah. They should be.

Yeah, that is the best Pac-Man game. Bastards. I find that hard to disagree with, Kevin. I mean, Pitfall really codified the platform action game. They existed in various forms before this. But, you know, up before Pitfall, they were all kind of self-contained single-screen creations, like Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., kang kang kang kang. you know, space panic, that sort of thing. And Pitfall said, hey, let's open it all up and kind of expand it and make all these individual

screens link to one another so you can go back and forth and, you know, created these interesting challenges and sort of a sense of verticality, not only in jumping, but also in climbing between two levels of the jungle. So, yeah, there was a lot happening here in a very small amount of memories, space and really kind of defined how these games work and, you know, the idea of like a rambling, uh, forward scrolling action game that, you know, quickly was followed up by things like Packland and Super Mario Brothers. Yeah, there's, there's even the Japanese book.

I think I mentioned it in the last episode, uh, from 1988 that Mark's pitfall as part of the lineage to Pac-Land and Super Mario Brothers, and I have no idea if there's an interview somewhere in Japan where they talk about Pitfall as a source of inspiration for Packland. I would love to read that, though, because, you know, it's not like Japan didn't get pitfall. Sega made the arcade game, they made the SG-1000, so that they were aware of it.

I'd really be interested in knowing what they thought about it. Yeah, and you look at other. I think probably, Kevin, you put this in the notes, games like Smurfs and Cabbage Patch Kids for Colico Vision were very much clearly inspired by Pitfall. Yep. B.C.'s quest for tires was one. Yep. Man, Colico Vision was all over Pitfall, huh? There was this unreleased 2,600 game that was to be published by Calico called Tarzan.

And, you know, I've gotten to see it in action. There's a prototype floating around. I don't think it's online yet. And it's very, very pitfall inspired. It is clearly a game made by people who saw pitfall and said, let's try and do better than this. And they sure made an effort. But you also have games like Activision's own hero.

You mentioned that earlier. Spelunker, Jets at Willier in the Notes, like all of these games where you have the idea of contiguous space, you know, that exists as individual link screens. And eventually the individual screens gave way to open scrolling. And, I mean, even by the time Pitfall 2 came around, you have scrolling in multiple directions. Yeah, I just feel like Pitfall is a seminal work and has largely been forgotten, as you mentioned earlier. And that's a shame because video games owe so much to Pitfall. And it would be nice if actually

Activision would actually invest some thought into it. But at this point, it would probably be a game as a service. I don't know how that would work. So maybe it's probably for the best. They should just like spin it off, sell it to someone. Yeah, let's... Let's... Let's see what the new management does with it, I suppose.

Yeah, yeah. If anything. Activision, if you're listening, I'll direct it. I've never directed a game before, but I'll do a great job. Just bring me in. Anyway, I think we've said all that there is to say, about the Pitfall series. So, well done us. We actually managed to fill two full episodes with this. Thank you largely to Super Pitfall. What an amazing time filler that was.

It's a game that exists to fill space and time. It's just a real quick code. Just very, very quick to counter the Japanese sort of influence of Pitfall. I do remember reading interviews with Japanese developers that mention the arcade game quite frequently as an inspiration. which I thought was interesting and Sega's conversion of the lost caverns and such but other than that it didn't really come up unfortunately Well there you go

Interesting All right well anyway That's pitfall Farewell Harry Goodbye Arriva Doichi Goodbye Harry You have gone for the last time Into one of those pits

That opens up and then closed Oh out of lives Start over from the beginning But it's fun because he just kind of like Slides right into the crocodile mouth In another world that we could have been playing Keystone Capers sequels up to the GameCube. Ah, alas.

I mean, that's just called Bonanza Brothers. That's true. Keystone Capers is awesome, though. Come on. You know, there is that off-brand Keystone Capers that the original developer was working on. I wonder how that's come along. Now, this I've got to find out about. Yeah.

That's probably overestimating the enduring appeal of that series. But, oh, well, anyway, thanks everyone for listening to this latest episode of Retron I hope you enjoyed it. And if you didn't, well, good news, there's another episode coming again soon. So you can just wait for that to come along. But I think this was a fine discussion. And again, it built on a previous discussion that was available through our Patreon. Patreon. Patreon.com slash Retronauts. Sign up for five bucks a month or more. And you can listen to that previous episode and learn all about pitfall, pitfall, pitfall. I know a boy and his blob is not called pitfall, but we explained it in that episode, which is why you need to go listen to. It's good. In any case, Retronauts is supported through almost entirely through Patreon subscriptions. You allow us to actually survive while we record these podcasts, and we thank you for that. If you are not a subscriber, we'll check it out because you could have listened to this episode last week. Everyone who subscribes to our Patreon for $3 a month or more gets every episode that comes out on Monday the Monday earlier than it comes out on the public feed. Does that make any sense? I don't know. Anyway, the point is, we get people early access to our podcasts, and it comes out at a higher bit rate with no advertisements or promotions. So that's, I think, pretty appealing. If we're those who subscribe for $5 a month or more, you not only get the bonus episodes every other Friday, which includes

the predecessor to this discussion, you also get Discord access. And every weekend, Diamond Fight, puts together a great mini-column and mini-podcast talking about something that happened this week or this month in video game history in a previous year. So there's a lot of stuff there that will appeal to you, a human being, who likes listening to classic video games. So that's patreon.com slash retronauts. I'm done with my pitch now. Stuart, pitch yourself.

Do you what? I'll pitch myself. Okay. Hello. I wrote a book called All Games Are Good. And you know what? the book itself is also good. That's just my opinion. I believe there are some

pitfall games in that book, are there not? I believe so. And also, there was going to be an Atari 2600 chat, but I cut it. So, yeah. What? That's not happening. The bulk. I know. I know. I know. But I realize people just don't really need to know what I think about barnstorming. It's just

like, this doesn't need to be in there. Well, now that you say, I'm curious. So you need a sequel. More games are good. More games are good coming 2025 or not. Where can they find that fine book? You can find it on limitedrungames.com, where it's currently on sale, I believe, until Cyber Monday, 15% offer. Time this goes out, that may not be true anymore. But all the same, even at its full price, it's a bargain because it has like 400 plus pages.

It's crazy how many pages are on that thing. A lot of pages. And they're really thick pages, too. I used like when I get spected out, I was like, let's give it, you know, that kind of toothy paperback kind of paper. And it's nice. It's like a Michael Crichton movie, except the word ars is used more. And also, you can buy it on Amazon now, the Evil Corporation Amazon.com, who have some copies of that book, or they did, at the moment they don't, but they will do again, hopefully, because everyone's bought it.

It's the most popular book in the world. It's number one of the bestseller rank. I can't believe it. I'm rich, rich and beyond my wildest dreams. Well, congratulations on that. That's great. Thank you. Oh, and also, I want to plug Ninsight, Real quick, because I'm doing the retro stuff for Ninsight,

which is a new Nintendo publication that's coming out soon. Google it. I have a website for you. Ninsight. It's like Insight with an end on the front. It's clever. It's about Nintendo. Ah.

Yeah, it's better than Ninty Fresh. That's a terrible title. Yeah, I don't like that one. Anyway, that's Stewart's pitch. Kevin, what about yours? I also have a book that you can buy at Limited Run Games and on Amazon. So that is Atari Archive. It looks at the first two years of the Italian.

2,600's library and sort of delves into the history of early video games, mostly in the U.S. So it's pretty cool. Check it out. If you want to learn anything about 1970s video gaming, I Got You Covered. I also have my YouTube channel, Atari Archive, where I'm delving into the games in chronological order for the 2600. And that is also supported by a Patreon under the same name, Atari Archive. archive. And you can find me, Jeremy Parrish, doing this retronauts thing. You can find me on my YouTube channel, which is called Jeremy Parrish, doing things that are not actually Jeremy

Parrish. They're talking about old video games, including Super Pitfall in the past, and actually pitfall and pitfall, too, as part of Metroidvania works, where I document the evolution of exploratory platformers, which, you know, I kind of got into at the end, although I think my video series is more eloquent because it's scripted as opposed to me, tiredly rattling off improvisational comments extemporizing. It's tough, kids, especially when you're my age. And finally, you can find me doing stuff at limited run games. Yes, that's right. I've created this racket where I publish books by the people who are on our podcast and then pitch them to you, the people listening to our podcast. It's a diabolical loop, and I make no apologies.

Anyway, that's it for this episode. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back soon. Check out the previous episode, Patreon.com slash retronauts. And watch out for them, Crocodile. I'm going to be. I don't know.