Pitfall II

''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns'' is a video game developed by David Crane for the Atari 2600. It was released in 1984 by Activision. The player controls Pitfall Harry, who must explore in wilds of Peru to find the Raj Diamond, and rescue his niece Rhonda and their animal friend Quickclaw. The game world is populated by enemies and hazards that variously cause the player to lose points and return to a checkpoint.

The game is a sequel to ''Pitfall!'' (1982), one of the best-selling Atari 2600 video games. Crane said the Atari 2600 hardware was out of date when developing the sequel, which led to him creating a custom computer chip called the Display Processor Chip for ''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns''. This allowed for more complex graphics and background music in the game.

''Pitfall II'' received positive reviews for its expanded gameplay, with reviewers finding it superior to ''Pitfall!''. It became the top selling console game of the year and was ported to other consoles and home computers. Retrospective reviews have continued to be positive, with ''Retro Gamer'' listing it as the best game on the Atari 2600 and other critics noting its gameplay innovations, such as being among the first games to include a checkpoint system.

Gameplay

''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns'' is a platform video game set in Machu Pichu, Peru where the player controls Pitfall Harry. The goal is to get Harry to find and rescue Quick Claw the cat, his niece Rhonda, and recover the Raj diamond.

Pitfall Harry moves left and right and can jump over and onto objects, can climb up and down ladders, ascend via balloons and swim to seek treasure and his cohorts. The player can additionally collect gold bars scattered throughout the playfield for more points. Unlike the original ''Pitfall!'', there is no swinging on vines, time limits, or lives. Accidentally falling or interacting with traps and enemies causes the player's score to diminish. The player can find red crosses across the ground that act as checkpoints. When the player is hit by an enemy, Harry returns to the last red cross he found.

Development

The release of David Crane's previous game ''Pitfall!'' (1982) was a major success for Activision and was the company's best selling release at the time. It led to large amounts of merchandising including board games, jigsaw puzzles, and the cartoon show ''Saturday Supercade'', episodes of which featured Pitfall Harry and new characters such as Harry's niece Rhonda and the cowardly mountain lion Quick Claw. These characters introduced on the television series would later appear in the sequel ''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns''.

Crane stated he made the sequel to ''Pitfall!'' "at a time when the Atari 2600 should have been replaced by a new gaming system."
He had training as an electronics engineer and felt that the Atari 2600 "needed a boost" and designed a custom computer chip called the Display Processor Chip that was unique to ''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns''. The chip allowed for additional graphic capabilities for the Atari 2600 and a music circuit. The chip contained special indexing registers that reduced the processing time for graphics operation by over 40%. Crane spoke about the developing the game and its graphics for the Atari 2600 at the 1984 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, stating that he would "stack ''Pitfall II'' against software in any other computer under $10,000. I might be able to make the boulders look more like bounders n any other machine but I could not make the game any better."

The chip allowed the game to play music that included a melody track, a harmony track, a base track and percussion. This made the game the first Atari 2600 game with a full scored polyphonic musical track. The score features a four-part musical score composed by Crane. It features a central "heroic" theme that plays before becoming a loop of more atmospheric music. The main theme in the game plays the bass through one channel, two channels play the melody and harmony while the last channel plays percussion sounds. The song " Sobre las olas" plays when Harry ascends using a balloon.

Crane explained that when Activision ported the game to other systems, another game programmer was assigned to convert assets and rewrite the code, as it was not a good use of his time to re-do a game he had already designed. The ports of the game for the Atari 800 and Atari 5200 were written by Mike Lorenzen, using Crane's original code with new graphics routines for the Atari hardware. The ColecoVision port was written from scratch by Robert Rutowski, and the Commodore 64 version was written from scratch by Tim Shotter.

Both the Atari 800 and Atari 5200 versions of the game included more areas to explore than the original Atari 2600 version. Lorenzen found time during production to create new levels that appear after the first game was completed. He explained he made the extra levels as he did not just want to recreate Crane's work, he wanted to "do something and make it better." This version is subtitled "The Adventurer’s Edition" on the title screen.

Release

''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns'' was released in February 1984. The game debuted at 9th place on ''Billboards list of top 20 selling video games. Activision's national sales manager stated that the sales of the game exceeded the company's expectations by 25% to 30%. The game had a higher retail price ($34.95) than the usual game for the system due to Display Processor Chip.

Activision had reported slumping sales with operating loss of $4.1 million on $13.2 million in sales in the second quarter of 1984 and sought to remedy this with the release of ''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns''. By the end of the 1984, the game became the highest selling console game of year.

At the June 1984 Consumer Electronics Show, Activision showed ports of ''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns'' for Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit computers, ColecoVision, IBM PCjr, and the Coleco Adam. The game was released for Atari 5200 in November 1984. The versions for the IBM PC Jr. were released in the fourth quarter of 1984.

''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns'' was included in various video games collections. These include ''Activision Anthology'' (2002) for PlayStation 2, and for portable devices as ''Activision Hits Remixed'' (2006) for the PlayStation Portable. The game is available as a hidden feature in both '' Pitfall: The Lost Expedition'' (2004) and '' Call of Duty: WWII'' (2017). It was released digitally as a downloadable title on the Xbox Game Room in 2010.

Reception

Contemporary

''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns'' received positive reviews. Lou Hudson of the ''Fort Worth Star-Telegram'', Bill Kunkel of ''Electronic Games'', and the publication ''The Video Game Update'' all felt it was superior to ''Pitfall!'', which Hudson and Kunkel felt grew repetitive with repeat play sessions. The graphics received praise, with Kunkel stating that it was "the kind of videogame that would be impressive if presented on a 48K computer. On the tari 2600 it's simply beyond belief." The reviewers also wrote about the gameplay, with Hudson describing it as "immensely improved action formula", while ''The Video Game Update'' enjoyed that the player could not die in the game, giving them more opportunity to explore the world. Kunkel concluded that the game "offers the most remarkable breadth of any 2600 video game yet produced." while ''The Video Game Update'' stated that "We have the opportunity to play and review hundreds of games every year, and there are very few that we feel ''must'' become part of your personal collection. ''Pitfall II'' is one of those."

Michael Blanchet, author of ''How to Beat the Video Games'' (1982), found that the game improved on the original with more enemies and obstacles to avoid and that it had a grander playing field than the original game, but concluded that the storyline for the game was sappy and the lack of having the character die made you lose incentive to play the game. Blanchet also opined that the constant presence of music was annoying.

In January 1985, ''Pitfall II'' won the award for Program of the Year for the Atari 2600 from ''Computer Entertainer'' magazine in their 1984 Awards of Excellence.

Retrospective

Skyler Miller of AllGame awarded the game 4 1/2 stars out of 5, stating that the game was not as innovative as the original game, but that it expanded upon the original to create one of the system's most accomplished games. Miller specifically praised the graphics and music. Brett Weiss included the game in his book ''The 100 Greatest Console Video Games, 1977-1987'' (2014) stating the game was even better than ''Pitfall!'' and noting that it offered a variety of fresh features.

John Harris of Game Developer said that the game was not quite as fun to play in 2007 as it was when it was first developed, but declared it to be one of the most advanced games for the Atari 2600, comparing its gameplay to the later Nintendo game ''Metroid'' (1986). Harris noted innovative elements such as being among the first games to include a checkpoint system. Writing for ''USgamer'', Jeremy Parish echoed the ''Metroid'' comparison, stating that ''Pitfall II'' was the turning point in platform games. Parish said it led to games within the genre to have exploring, stating that "In the style of non-linear platformers to come, such as ''Metroid'', there was no such thing as death by falling; dropping into a pit simply led Harry to another screen, and a vast underground lake lined the bottom of the game world. In many ways, it was a game years ahead of its time."

In their list of the top 25 Atari 2600 games, Stuart Hunt and Darran Jones of ''Retro Gamer'' magazine listed ''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns'' in the number one spot. The two wrote that the game was far more ambitious than the original and that it was "as playable today as it ever was." In the same publication, Mat Allen included the game along with '' Kaboom!'' (1981), ''River Raid'' (1982), ''Ghostbusters'' (1984), ''Little Computer People'' (1985) and ''Alter Ego'' (1986), as one of the best games from Activision's classic period.

Legacy

Following the release of ''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns'', the Atari 2600 reached the end of its lifecycle as a system for new games, and no other games for it were developed using Crane's Display Processor Chip. Crane was often asked if he would develop a third ''Pitfall'' game, he responded that "after one sequel, I was happy to move on to other ideas." Following work on ''Pitfall II'', Crane began work developing games for the Commodore 64, starting with ''Ghostbusters'' (1984). Crane stayed with Activision until 1987.

Sega developed an arcade game titled '' Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns'' (1985) which featured gameplay elements from both of Crane's ''Pitfall'' games. The Japanese company Micronics developed '' Super Pitfall'' for the Nintendo Entertainment System, which was described by Stuart Hunt of ''Retro Gamer'' as a "loose port" of Crane's ''Pitfall II''. ''Super Pitfall'' featured a similar storyline to ''Pitfall II'' involving Pitfall Harry exploring caves to seek the Raj diamond and rescue his niece Rhonda and Quickclaw the lion who have become trapped in the cave depths. Crane stated he had seen all of the later ''Pitfall!'' games and has played a few of them, and said he felt they were not "''Pitfall'' sequels as much as other games with the name ''Pitfall'' placed on them."

See also

* List of Activision games: 1980–1999
* List of Atari 2600 games

References

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External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pitfall 02: Lost Caverns
1984 video games
Activision games
Apple II games
Atari 2600 games
Atari 5200 games
Atari 8-bit computer games
ColecoVision games
Commodore 64 games
Open-world video games
Pitfall (series)
Video game sequels
Video games developed in the United States
Video games set in Peru
Single-player video games
Video games designed by David Crane (programmer)