Pitman

Pitman is a tiny puzzle game with an outsized history. In August 1985 the Japanese magazine Oh!MZ printed it as a type-in program for the Sharp MZ-700 computer: anyone who wanted to play had to copy the whole listing by hand first. Its author, Yutaka Isokawa, had hit on an idea strong enough to be reborn five years later on the Game Boy under the name Catrap. The version hosted here is a DOS port from 2004 that faithfully reproduces all fifty original levels.

You play a little explorer working through single-screen caves full of ladders, boulders and treasure. The goal of every level is simply to collect all the valuables; the catch is gravity. Boulders can be pushed, but the moment their support disappears they drop, and nothing you do will ever lift them back up. One careless shove can wall off the last treasure for good, so this is a game of planning, not reflexes.

The most remarkable feature is the one where Isokawa was years ahead of his time: you can rewind your moves. That sounds trivial today, but in 1985 it was an extraordinary courtesy. Undo makes experimenting painless, and the game openly invites you to walk into dead ends until the solution finally reveals itself.

Do not expect spectacle. The graphics are built from character blocks, there is barely any sound, and the difficulty ramps up briskly within the first dozen levels. Even so, these fifty puzzles are better constructed than many commercial puzzlers of the era, and it is easy to see why a magazine listing grew into a whole family of remakes. If Sokoban and its relatives are your thing, this is essential archaeology.

You can play it on oldgame.cz right in your browser, with no installation and no retyping required.