I hadn't been playing video games for very long, no, but still I was pretty sure that I had a strong "understanding" of what a video game was. A video game, I knew, was any product whose activities included slaying dragons, shooting hordes of aliens or outlaws, navigating through pellet- or trap-filled mazes, or guiding frogs or chickens through traffic.
That, I thought, was the medium's full scope. Those were the activities to which it was limited; they were the only ones that could possibly constitute a "video game."
That's why I was so surprised the first time I laid eyes on Pitfall. I could tell, just from gauging its very first screen, that it wasn't like any of those other games, no; it was something out of the norm. And because it didn't immediately fit into any box, I wasn't sure what it was.
The only thing I knew for certain was that I was enchanted by its presentation and its unique style of gameplay.
And as I exited that first screen, my sense was that I was about to take a big leap into unexplored territory.
The problem, of course, was that I didn't know where I was supposed to be or what I was supposed to be doing. All I could do was infer.
My assumption was that the greenly attired protagonist, to whom I referred as simply "Pitfall," was some type of adventurer and that he was traversing a remote forest in search of something. I interpreted the game's setting as a "forest" because its background scenery was consistent with what I imagined a forest to be: a place in which there were many tall trees whose foliage interweaved and flowed from trunk to trunk (I didn't yet know what a "jungle" was, so I'd be quick to identify any tree-filled landscape as a "forest" or "woodland").
The whole time, I was in awe of what Pitfall was showing me. It was by far the most realistic, most graphically detailed game I'd ever seen. Pitfall's running animation was as close to real as it got. The environments through which I was racing had recognizable shape and form. And the obstacles and lifeforms I was encountering looked and functioned just like those in the real world; logs rolled, vines swayed, and little forest creatures quietly engaged in their rituals.
I had no problem becoming acclimated to Pitfall's controls or figuring out how to navigate its screens, no, but, like I said, I just wasn't sure what, exactly, my goal was. Also, because I was completely oblivious, I wasn't aware that the game had governing rules; I gave no attention to the timer that was clearly displayed in the screen's top-left corner (and even if I had paid it any attention, I wouldn't have seen it as limiting because "20 minutes," at that point in my life, was such an immeasurably long period of time that it was basically equivalent to "eternity"), and the other numbers (including the Roman numerals that represented my life-total) didn't mean anything to me.
So what I decided to do was just explore at my leisure--have fun heedlessly running, jumping and swinging about--and hope to accidentally discover this intriguing new world's secrets.
Pitfall's world was alluring, also, because it was pervaded by an indescribable quality that made it feel somehow alive (I'd have described this quality as "atmosphere" had I known of the word). Even when the action was at a standstill, I could feel it. Somewhere, I'd sense, activity was occurring; somewhere--maybe even in the treetops seen in the background--danger was quietly lurking and just waiting for the right opportunity to dive out at me.
This was the first time in my life that I felt as though I was visiting a real, fully functional world--one that had its own systems, rules and structures. There was an entire ecosystem in play here; activity was occurring everywhere--even the spaces I couldn't see. This place was alive.
No other game world ever made me feel that way.
Though, Pitfall's world being "realistic" also meant that death felt much more consequential. I could visit its world and have fun exploring it, yes, but only for as long as I could stay alive. And that specter of inevitable death added a strong intimidation factor; it made Pitfall's world feel equal parts dangerous. That's why I'd begin to traipse my way through its spaces once I made it past the first 10-12 screens. I didn't know what was waiting for me, and I was afraid that whatever it was, it would surprise me and proceed to eat up all of my lives and thus rob me of the opportunity to see what laid beyond. It didn't help that any fatal mishap was would trigger a jarring, ominous-sounding ditty that only served to hammer home just how serious and consequential death actually was.
What I also found super-interesting was that you could choose to travel in either direction from the start. "Wait--I can start out by heading left?" I questioned with great surprise when the game allowed me to move westward from the game's starting point.
I was astonished by this finding because that was not how action games were supposed to work. It was supposed to be that you headed right from a game's starting point! By allowing me to move in the opposite direction, Pitfall was flagrantly breaking the rules. It was being audacious in the most curious way.
So I had to take a moment to consider the implications of this oddity.
My thinking was that the leftward path had to hold a greater level of difficulty because it was something "unconventional," and "logic" told me that "unconventional" was obviously equivalent to "very challenging."
"Whatever's over here has to be end-of-game-type stuff," I thought.
My suspicion was confirmed when I traveled over to the westward screens and surveyed their contents: Immediately there was an abundance of crocodile-filled pools of water and pairs of rolling logs. The rightward path, in contrast, had idle logs and small easy-to-clear gaps. So naturally I decided to stick to the rightward path. (For two reasons, I'd do the same in just about all of my future Pitall play-throughs: It was the safer choice, and it felt like the natural thing to do. I remained stuck in that mindset until Metroid came around.)
I couldn't define the nature of Pitfall's world because didn't have the words to do so (I wasn't aware of the term "open world," and even if I had been, I probably wouldn't have been able to fathom the idea it was communicating). So all I could say was that Pitfall "seemed endless." It contained screen after screen of obstacles formed from every permutation of stationary or rolling logs, engulfing pools of water, expanding-and-contracting swamps, crocodiles, snakes, and scorching campfires. And there was no obvious endpoint. No matter how many screens I cleared, there would always be more waiting for me. Pitfall's world, seemingly, went on forever.
Stubbornly, though, I kept searching for an endpoint. I kept traveling forward and cautiously negotiating my way over and around all of the obstacles that the game was throwing at me. The best part was that I could surmount many of the obstacles by taking advantage of my favorite aspect of Pitfall: the mechanic that allowed me to grab onto vines and heroically swing my way over them--over all of the large pools of water and their gluttonous occupants! It was a thoroughly satisfying maneuver, and I loved that a synthesized Tarzan "yell" would play whenever I was executing it. That sound effect would forever convey to me a sense of safety; if I was hearing it, I knew that nothing could hurt me--that I was protected from the dangers below and would continue to be for as long as I held onto the vine. In those moments, I was, much like Tarzan, the lord of the jungle (or the "forest," as far as I knew)!
And if I could endure long enough, I'd eventually locate some treasure. I'd enter a screen and see a silver or gold bar, a money bag, or a ring resting on its opposite side. In those moments, I'd get really excited because treasures were so rare and because their presence signaled to me that I was making meaningful progress (if I went more than 20 screens without discovering a treasure, I'd get stressed, and I'd start to think that I'd strayed far from the "correct" path). And I'd always get a boost from the energizing "Charge!" ditty that would play whenever I procured a treasure (it was usually a temporary boost, yeah, but still one that was much-needed).
Then there was Pitfall's other curios oddity: its lower route.
So some screens had pits that granted you access to underlying caverns (the "dark tunnels," as I called them). If you wanted, you could progress through the game by traveling through this lower route, instead. Though, I almost never did this. I avoided the caverns and did so for a couple of reasons. For one, I hated having to engage with the aggressive, stalking-type scorpions (which I originally thought were angry octopus-like creatures because I saw their curling tails as heads and their tail tips as eyes) that inhabited them. They just always had a knack for redirecting at the perfect time and thus spoiling my well-calculated jumps. So there was always a good chance that my engaging with a scorpion would result in the loss of a life.
Also, there wasn't much going in the lower route. There were none in the way of interesting obstacles, and there was no design variance. It was just screen after screen of stalking scorpions. And since treasures never appeared in caverns, there was no benefit to traversing them. The only thing I was likely to "earn" here was a Game Over.
And the other problem was that I was perplexed by the caverns' layout. It seemed to be incongruous with what I was seeing when I was traveling the upper route and thus somehow divergent. For instance: As I was traveling through a cavern, I'd look up to the surface and see a gold bar resting near an unoccupied pool of water, but when I'd double back to the surface and head over to that same location, I'd be on a completely different screen! This one would instead have a crocodile-filled pool of water and some rolling logs!
"How can that be?!" I'd wonder, my young mind struggling to understand such a logical inconsistency (which is to say that I wasn't yet able to think third-dimensionally). "How did my switching of levels cause me to arrive at a different place?!"
I never understood it.
The only thing I liked about the caverns were its out-of-place-looking brick walls, which were intended that to restrict further lower-route travel. For whatever reason, I got a kick out of the sound effect and the animations that would trigger whenever I was in the process of repeatedly running into and rebounding off of one of these walls (because that's obviously a good use of one's time).
What fascinated me about these brick walls was not so much their design but what they served to block off. I'd look at the dark, empty spaces located on their opposite sides and wonder about what laid beyond them. And I was determined to find out. That was one of the big reasons why I kept repeatedly running into these walls! I was convinced that if I just kept at it long enough, I'd eventually manage to clip through one of them and reach the other side. Then I'd able to discover the ultimate secret that was surely waiting for me in the space beyond!
Man--I'm glad I dropped that stupid habit!
In reality, Pitfall did have a goal. It challenged you to collect 32 treasures, or as many treasures as you could find, in 20 minutes and thus earn the highest possible score. But because I was completely unaware of this fact, I treated Pitfall as though it was instead a game of attrition. I saw its scoring system not as an indicator of my treasure-finding prowess but instead a measure of my progress; the higher the total, the further along I was. And that total was precious to me; it told me how well my adventure was going.
That's why I'd get upset whenever my score would go down. I'd be in pain whenever I'd make contact with one of those annoying rolling logs and consequently lose points--a punishment that was always made worse by the buzzing, jarring sound effect that would trigger whenever contact was made. It was an awful sound effect, and what was worse was that it would continue to play, on loop, for as long as I was in a contact state!
As the years went on, I gained a better understanding of Pitfall and its systems, yeah, but even then, I continued to play it in the way I always had. To me, Pitfall was and always would be a game about how far you could make it--how long you could last. It was purely about survival.
In that same period, I also got a lot better at Pitfall. My platforming skills improved, and I became more disciplined. I became less timid in my approach to jumping over stationary enemies and objects (I now jumped in rhythm whereas previously I'd inch my way forward and, out of fear of getting too close to an enemy or object, sometimes jump too early and consequently land on its back end), and I learned to be more patient and thus stop (a) rushing to grab onto vines and (b) dropping off of vines too early.
In my earliest sessions, I had a lot of trouble with the screens that contained alligator-trio-populated pools of water because I was certain that you had a limited time to platform across them--that you could only hop onto the alligators in the seconds when their jaws were closed. The timing was just too specific (you had to jump over to the first alligator right as his jaws were closing, and then you had to stay in motion and hastily hop across the other two gators), and I was apt to mistime my jump jumps or movements and get eaten.
This once specific obstacle caused me to think that Pitfall was impenetrable. And I would have continued to struggle mightily with it had my brother, James, not shown me a little trick that you could do: You could safely stand on the gators' eyes even when their jaws were open! Doing so put you out of swallowing range. So now I was able to clear this obstacle with no problem. (This was my first lesson in precision-platforming.)
From then on, my Pitfall experience became a matter of applying and executing all of the tricks I'd learned. And if I performed competently, I'd make it pretty far.
Though, I'd still get more and more nervous the deeper I got into the game. And the more stress I felt, the more apt I was to make mistakes. I can't say for certain what was causing that stress, but I think it had something to do with my sense that I was starting to get in over my head. I felt that someone like me wasn't meant to get that far into this type of game. At some point, I'd figure, it was just gonna get way too hard, and I just wouldn't know how to handle the challenges that were being thrown at me.
Though, such feelings never served to hinder my enjoyment of Pitfall, no. I always had fun with it, and I was always coming up with new ways to have fun with it. Also, my sense of wonderment tended to counter negative feelings. I'd usually be too busy thinking about and marveling at the game's world. I simply loved it. The visuals and the environments and the atmosphere they generated meant as much to me as the wonderfully new genre they helped to define.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the action-adventure games I love the most were directly inspired by Pitfall. They, much like Pitfall, made an indelible impression on me because of the way in which they inspired me to wonder. Because of how they made me feel. Their worlds, too, are as much fun to think about as they are to explore.
And it's all because they followed Pitfall's blueprint.
And thank goodness they did.
It's true that Pitfall is primitive-looking by today's standards and more limited in scope than we used to think, yeah, but back then, in 1982, it was the most lifelike, most-amazingly-deep game in existence. To me, it was game whose world was unfathomably large and filled with endless wonder. It was a game whose impact changed how I thought about the medium. And it was a game that did more than any other to shape who I was as an enthusiast.
And those are the kinds of points that the rolling logs of times can never take away.
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