Pitfall!

A swing on a vine over a pit full of crocodiles, and Harry Pitfall forever changed the notion of what a game console could do. In 1982 Activision brought a game to the Atari 2600 that defined the entire genre of the adventure platformer and became one of the biggest hits of the whole era.

Pitfall! from the workshop of the legendary David Crane sent players into a jungle full of traps. Swinging on vines, jumping over holes, avoiding snakes and scorpions, hunting for treasure, and racing against time, all of it spread across an incredible 255 screens. On hardware that had only a few kilobytes of memory available, it was a technical marvel and proof of Crane's programming mastery. The game sold more than four million copies, making it one of the most successful titles on the console ever.

On the Atari 2600, Pitfall! was so influential that it became a kind of template for the adventure action games that came after it. The smooth movement of the character, a meaningfully interconnected world, and a sense of real exploration were things that thrilled players of the time and that we take for granted today.

The release on the later Atari 7800 showed the game in a more powerful guise, but even here its charm remained in its simple yet addictive essence: get as far as possible, collect as much treasure as possible, and survive. Activision was also among the first studios at the time to build on the names of its creators, and thanks to Pitfall, Crane became one of the first stars of the gaming industry.

Pitfall! is not just an old game, it is a milestone. It showed how far the hardware could be pushed, and it inspired an entire generation of developers. Without it, the platformer genre would look different.

Why play: A founding classic of the adventure platformer that everyone who wants to understand the roots of the genre and the genius of the early era of games should go through.