Developer: Micronics Publisher: Activision Release: 11/87 Genre: Platformer
This fucking game. There are few games I hate more in the NES library than Super Pitfall. For a generation of older gamers like myself Pitfall is one of the most seminal Atari 2600 games of all time. So the idea of taking that groundbreaking title and bringing it to the NES should have been exciting. Instead what we got is a confusing, clunky, and frustrating platformer that fails to capture the spirit of the original. Instead of expanding on the simple but addictive Pitfall formula, it buries players in a maze of bad design choices, invisible secrets, and clunky controls. At almost every turn Super Pitfall is a broken mess of a game that is not worth your time.
As Pitfall Harry your goal is to recover the Raj Diamond hidden in the Andes Mountains while also rescuing your niece and pet lion (!) Quickclaw. Super Pitfall started out as a port of Pitfall II. Somewhere along the way it would become its own unique game and things would go horribly wrong. I do not know how you screw up something as simple as Pitfall but somehow they found a way.
As shocking as it may sound Super Pitfall was a game that everyone seemed to own. It released early enough in the NES life that the pickings were slim. No one liked this game; we tolerated it until someone else got a new game. It is historically interesting as an early attempt to bring a classic to the NES. But as a game, it is nearly unplayable without heavy use of guides or maps. Ironically some of the computer ports of the game fix the most egregious flaws and render the game playable. Not that you should however.
Right from the start the game is obtuse. You have your overall goal but the game provides not guidance as to how to go about it. Almost the entire map is open from the start and that is the problem. You wander around this gigantic map aimlessly, with no landmarks to distinguish areas. About the only “clues” you will find are doors with keys based on card suites. So obviously you need to find these keys to open these doors to progress. The problem is they are invisible. In fact all important items are invisible and only become obtainable by jumping in an exact spot. How do you know where they are? You don’t. If it sounds stupid it is. It gets even worse, even ammo for your gun is invisible! This has to be quite possibly one of the dumbest design decisions in history and it ruins the game.
If you can believe it it gets even worse! Rhonda has been turned to stone and Quickclaw is locked in a cage. To save them you need to find the Flask of Medicine and a key, respectively. Good luck finding them. As bad as this is to even reach the final area of the game to accomplish your goal you need to jump in to a specific enemy to be warped to the location. There is no indication, hint, clue to this, nothing. Just a ridiculous amount of trial and error to figure out this stupid game’s idiosyncrasies. The sad thing is all it would take is a few adjustments to make the game somewhat tolerable. But it amazes me just how badly they fail at even the basics like Deadly Towers.
This is one of the hardest platforming challenges on the NES.
Even if all the numerous flaws I have outlined were fixed Super Pitfall would still be a chore to play. The controls are bad. Movement is stiff and unresponsive which makes the visual similarity to Super Mario Bros feel worse. Jumps are floaty and imprecise which makes platforming frustrating. Unfortunately there is a significant amount of platforming; this is Pitfall after all. You will dread any section involving swinging vines. Missed jumps lead to tedious backtracking, sometimes to the point you are probably better off just restarting the game. Add to that poor hit detection which makes avoiding enemies optimal and you have a game that is a lot harder than it should be. Cheap deaths come left and right and despite unlimited continues you start from the beginning of the map. At that point just play another game.
Embarrassingly on top of the lackluster gameplay Super Pitfall is also a technical mess. Although it looks like Super Mario Bros. you can immediately tell something is wrong. This is a Micronics joint and once again they turn in a subpar effort. Animation is stiff, with Pitfall Harry moving like he’s trudging through mud. On top of that the game runs at a suboptimal framerate with tons of sprite flickering and slowdown. The world is dull and uninspired with little variation in the environment and a lack of detail. The music is almost nonexistent and the sound effects feel like placeholders. Releasing the game in 1987 makes these flaws even worse as title like Castlevania and Mega Man were showing what the NES could do, leaving Super Pitfall looking outdated.
In Closing
I hate this game. I cannot say that enough. Super Pitfall is remembered today as one of the NES’s most poorly executed platformers and earns that reputation. Like Dr. Chaos they make every amateur mistake in the book and create one of the most inscrutable games on the system. I pride myself on working my way through games like Simon’s Quest and Zelda 2 on my own as a kid. But this one, this one frustrated me to no end. Now that I have gone back and finally finished it I can say it was not worth it. This was supposed to be cathartic. Instead it made me angry all over again.
