Pitfall!

Pitfall! is a flip-screen platform game in which the player controls explorer Pitfall Harry during a search for treasure in a dangerous jungle. The world consists of 255 interconnected scenes arranged as a circular maze. Harry can run between screens, jump over obstacles, climb ladders, and catch or release swinging vines. The objective is to collect all 32 treasures before the 20-minute time limit expires or all three lives are lost.

The surface route contains rolling logs, open holes, fires, snakes, crocodiles, tar pits, quicksand, and swamps. Vines can be used to swing across wider hazards, while crocodiles may be crossed by jumping along their heads when their mouths are closed. Touching a fatal creature or hazard costs one life. Falling through an open hole instead drops Harry into the tunnels below and deducts 100 points, while contact with a rolling log trips him and gradually reduces the score.

A network of underground passages runs beneath the jungle. Traveling through one underground screen advances Harry by the equivalent of three surface screens, allowing the tunnels to serve as shortcuts across the large map. They also contain pursuing scorpions and brick walls that create dead ends, so an attempted shortcut may force Harry to return to the surface and find another route. No treasures appear underground.

The treasures consist of eight money bags, eight silver bars, eight gold bars, and eight diamond rings, worth 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, and 5,000 points respectively. Harry begins with 2,000 points, giving a maximum score of 114,000 if every treasure is collected without any deductions from holes or logs. Because the treasures are scattered throughout the circular maze, completing the search within the time limit requires learning the layout and combining the surface and underground routes efficiently.

The Atari 2600 release is the original version. The Windows and Xbox 360 editions distributed through Microsoft’s Game Room reproduce the Atari 2600 version within its virtual-arcade interface. The Windows Phone release was likewise distributed through Game Room.