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REVIEW: Super Pitfall (スーパーピットフォール) (Famicom/NES)

Developer: Micronics

Publisher(s): Pony Canyon (Japan), Activision (North America)

Release Date(s): September 1986 (Japan), November 1987 (North America)

Pitfall, the brainchild of Activision’s David Crane, is a rather significant video game. Released for the Atari 2600 in 1982, it was an early example of a side-scrolling platform game, and it went on to be one of the best-selling games for the system. Naturally, a game this successful would warrant a sequel. Pitfall actually had several, and Super Pitfall for the Nintendo Famicom was one of these sequels. I was a bit curious about the game, so I decided to play through it on my NES last night.

Something that should be noted is that David Crane had no involvement in the development of Super Pitfall; instead, the development of this game was handed to Micronics, a Japanese developer that generally shied from taking credit for its work. Considering this game’s quality, this might not have been wholly a bad idea.

In Super Pitfall, you play as Harry, the series’ protagonist. Super Pitfall appears to be a loose remake of Pitfall II; in both games, Harry must collect the Raj Diamond and rescue Quickclaw, his pet lion, and Rhonda, his niece.

Additionally, Harry must collect several objects adorned with card suits (heart, diamond, spade, club) along with a key for Quickclaw’s cage and a potion to turn Rhonda back to normal.

Where Super Pitfall begins to fall apart is its design. As an open-world game, Super Pitfall encourages the player to explore as they search for objects. The issue with this is how it’s implemented; nearly every object in the game (including those that are necessary for progression) are initially invisible, and the player must jump in a very particular area to reveal each. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it weren’t for another bad design choice; each area where the player needs to jump in order to reveal an object is also invisible.

These design choices make the game incredibly cryptic and render it nearly unplayable without large amounts of trial-and-error unless the player has a guide handy. This cryptic design also extends to moving between areas; in order to warp to other areas in the game, the player generally must jump into specific walls, and these walls have nothing to distinguish them as warp zones. One warp is hidden in a vulture, which also is visually identical to every other vulture enemy in the game. On top of all of this, much of the level design is bland and uninspired; many areas of the game are hard to distinguish from one another, so drawing a map is almost a necessity for navigating these caverns. 

Beyond the game’s incredibly puzzling design, the gameplay itself is weak. Besides the running and jumping that Harry is known to do, he also wields a gun. The big issue with this projectile is that many of the enemies in the game are too short to be hit by it, and other enemies move in odd patterns that make them difficult to hit. Additionally, Harry’s gun has limited ammunition; with quite a few of the enemies’ (especially in the last area of the game) requiring several shots to defeat, having an empty gun is far from uncommon. Excluding this weapon, Super Pitfall really doesn’t do much to expand on the prior Pitfall games; much of it is simply exploring. While it can take credit for being an early open-world game, the enigmatic treasure hunt that is thrown in makes the game simply not very fun to play.

Another large issue with the game is its programming. To some extent, it feels unfinished. The collision detection is so lacklustre that Harry can clip through walls simply by walking against them for a long enough period of time. This collision detection also makes swinging on vines a chore as Harry generally falls through them. The physics are also implemented awkwardly. While Harry can steer his jumps, the steering is stiff and generally ineffective. If Harry simply falls off a platform, he falls straight down while the player is entirely unable to control his movement until he lands on something; this more often than not leads to a collision with either an enemy or a spike bed. Additionally, the waterfalls that are scattered about the game’s areas also cause the player to lose control of Harry as he falls onto either a platform or a body of water. These quirks make navigating the game’s areas much more frustrating than it should be. The game also simply feels glitchy and unpolished. Random sprites will occasionally flicker on the screen, and the game will slow down at random intervals even when not much is on the screen.

The game’s presentation isn’t special. The graphics are bland, and the music will tire any player relatively quickly.

Verdict: Super Pitfall simply isn’t a good game. While it had the potential to be decent, many missteps in its design and programming instead make it a miserable journey.

Score: 3/10

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