Pitfall!

Pitfall is game released for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. It is a action platformer game and is one of the most popular games on the Atari 2600 selling over 4 million copies. Many consider it one of the first platformer games.

Creation and Development
A programmer of Activision, David Crane created the game Pitfall!. In an interview he said that he drew a stick man. Then later he drew a path for the stick man to travel on. He also drew trees for the location and treasure for the goal and that is the concept of the game. The graphics and sprites were great and non flickering sprites. The programming of the game took up to 1,000 hours. It was also ported to computers like the Atari 800, Commodore 64, and TRS-80 Color Computer. It was ported to other consoles include the Atari 2600 ColecoVision and Intellivision.

Gameplay
The player controls Pitfall Harry a treasure hunter through a huge jungle. Pitfall Harry must be guided to retrieve 32 treasures within 20 minutes. The jungle contains many hazards and enemies. He must dodge, jump, duck and climb his way through the jungle to avoid these hazards. Enemies include, crocodiles, snakes, scorpions, and bats. Obstacles to get around are tar pits, quicksand, water, fire, walls, and rolling logs and some can be avoided by swinging on vines. The screen contains a ground level and the underground.

Enemies

 * Crocodiles
 * Snakes
 * Scorpions
 * Bats

Sequels
A sequel called Pitfall II: Lost Caverns was released in 1984 including similar gameplay but contains different aspects such as no timer and if hurt the character will be pushed back to the checkpoint and it has its own soundtrack. The levels are also longer.