Adaptation and Re-adaptation: The story of Pitfall II

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2021-07-09 06:00:02

The video game console originated as a way to bring arcade experiences (specifically, Pong) into the home. But the home game took on a life of its own; playing a game in your house that you can play indefinitely is very different than a game that needs to constantly shuffle through new players to get the quarters of each. One early game that understood that difference was 1984’s Pitfall II. Let’s put on our amateur video game analyst hats and take a look into gaming history.

Made by David Crane in 1982, Pitfall! is arguably the first video game that originated on consoles (as opposed to the arcades or computers) to be a real hit. Selling over four million copies on its original Atari 2600 and countless more on successive platforms (like the MSX, pictured above), the flip-screen game created the side-scrolling platformer, creating a large world that extended beyond the bounds of the television.

Pitfall! never made it to the arcades; it being the flagship of Activision, which never really entered that realm, and instead pioneered the concept of a third-party console publisher. Still, when we look at the game, it does have something of an arcade mindset. The game is built around a strict 20-minute timer; even if you play perfectly, your game will end when time is up. The player is further limited by a small number of lives.

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