Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure

"Any similarity with Indiana Jones is just mere coincidence."

I remember having played the original Pitfall in the house of a friend who had an Atari looooooong time ago, and well, I didn’t liked it honestly, I have never liked those old Atari games like Pong or Frogger, I started my life as a video game player with the Nes, and I have never been interested on any Atari system really. This new version has absolutely nothing to do with the original Pitfall, excepting to the game’s title, but it also holds the original Atari version of Pitfall, so this may add a little of interest for those that are still fans of the original.

This time Pitfall Harry has been kidnapped by some kind of Mayan demon, or god, something like that during an expedition and now his son (Pitfall Harry Jr.) will have to go and rescue him.

The gameplay is very standard, Pitfall is a very typical platform title, you won’t probably find anything you haven’t already seen before, but there is nothing wrong with that is the game is well developed right?, right, and that is exactly what happens here, even if it is very typical, Pitfalls does a great job being “another adventure title”.
The stages are the typical you would expect from a Mayan adventure, jungles full of snakes and crocodiles and that kind of friendly animals, temples full of traps like big boulders or flames pillars, caves infested with spiders and bats, etc, where the main objective, aside from finding the exit is to find treasures (gold, diamonds, etc) to obtain continues (they aren’t really necessary but well...).

As I said before, if while playing this game you feel nostalgic, this game gives you the opportunity to play the original Pitfall it, it is hidden in the second stage if I remember well, or maybe it was not hidden?, I can’t remember exactly, but the thing is that it’s very easy to find.

Pitfall’s graphics are splendid, the scenarios are very beautifully done and the animations are excellent. About the music I can’t say anything because I can’t remember a single tune, which also means that it wasn’t something worth mentioning.

This game is very easy, I finished it without dying and obtaining all the lives possible in each scenario a lot if times, I don’t know why but I found myself replaying this game a lot of times even after having found everything, like in that Capcom classic that was Aladdin.

Fans of the original won’t find anything familiar here, but for platform/adventure freaks this Indy rip off is a great choice, it has great graphics are it is very fun to play, if you like platform games this one is very recommended because I think Activision did a neat job here, very good.

”My lack of vocabulary and grammatical errors (if there’s any) are because I’m not from an English speaking country, sorry about that.”

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/04