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When you fall into a pit full of snakes, it's not about physics. It's about the fact that you're an idiot and didn't see it coming. Pitfall from 1984 is simple as a brick – you jump over obstacles, collect treasure, and try to escape the jungle alive. Nothing more. Nothing less. And that's exactly what makes it incredibly addictive.
You play an explorer in the jungle trying to gather all the loot and get back home. Between you and the goal stand chasms, crocodiles, pits, snakes, fire, and plenty of other things that would love to kill you. The game is a platforming puzzle where you need to figure out the sequence of moves, timing, and jump direction. Every mistake sends you back to the start. It's primitive, but absolutely functional design that doesn't resemble any of those modern mobile-sick gesture games in the slightest.
Controls are straightforward – move, jump, occasionally you have to throw yourself down at just the right moment. Graphics are pixels that look like someone drew them on paper and then scanned them in. Sound is one song and a few sound effects that'll get on your nerves after a while. But that's exactly where the game's strength lies – you don't need to concentrate on voices or how it looks. You concentrate on not dying. Again. And again. And again.
Pitfall was a phenomenon in its time. It became a cult classic on the Atari 2600, and on the PC version everyone here will be throwing their hands up because moving a game to a computer never happens without some ugly compromise – slower animation, weird controls, weaker sound. Yet the game holds up. Even twenty years later you'll pick it up when you want to feel frustration and a certain harshness that no longer exists in the gaming world. Modern games coddle you for failure; Pitfall punishes you without mercy.
Today it's more of a curiosity, but a curiosity that still works. If you want to try what fun looked like in the eighties without training wheels and this-game-is-broken-design nonsense, Pitfall in your browser is exactly that. You'll be surprised how long that thing keeps you by the throat.
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