NES Challenge - Super Pitfall in

Activision may have released their worst Pitfall game on the NES, but really it isn't as bad as it is made out to be. There are clear programming issues, however, if you farm for some lives to balance those errors, it is a decent exploration game; it just needed about a weeks worth of polish to fix it. Basically you need to find several items to beat the game: Raj Diamond, Key, Medicine, pet lion which you use the key to free, and your girlfriend who you give the medicine too. Not bad, but the spawning makes first timers pull their hair out.

Graphics are varied and frankly very helpful in navigating the "maze" for you to explore. There is sort of a pyramid area, open ground, some water areas, and as you go deeper, a green stone to indicate the horizontal center of the area, and a gray stone to let you know you are at the bottom. These are used in similar warp areas, and a demonic level letting you know you are getting close to the end. On the other hand, there are tons of graphical errors such as hit boxes much larger than they appear, items bugging out, mirror images or better yet graphical artifacts down the hall which disappear as you move that way - water is a great example where you are under a waterfall, pass it, then see another one which just goes away.

Sound was pretty much phoned in. They made a simple quick tune and looped it. Some people get annoyed by it, but it sort of became white noise too me and I would have missed it if it was non existent. There are a few other tunes, but only the demon world is noteworthy as it offers a sense of dread. The effects are at the bottom of the barrel.

Control is pretty decent, I didn't have any issues with inputs eaten though they do seem a bit delayed; nothing game breaking. It's a bit difficult line up for the vines, but that's another issue. The jumping feels spot on for the most part and movement is fluid. The ladder slip is another story but that is addressed next.

Programming - hit, trigger, and collision detection. WTF! The hit boxes of the enemies are friggin huge. I seriously felt I should have easily cleared several enemies by the width of a leg but still died. Fell through a floor once. Triggering the items and collecting them can be a nightmare too. If there are going to be hidden items, the triggers to show them should be much larger and accepting, and when you collect them, you shouldn't need to hit a magic pixel to do it, it should be a hitbox as large as the damn frogs. And what was up with my pet lion? I freed him, but had to pet him a bunch of times to pick him up - that should have been a simple touch and collect. Ugh. Finally, if you get a chance, watch the speedrun of this game as it takes full advantage and abuses the poor detection in this game by walking into walls, jumping, and skipping major obstacles. Shouts out to ApolloSmug for setting the new WR in the speedrun the other day. :)

It's hard to be fair with this game. You are required to pick up objects, and you might do the requirement for those objects to spawn, but the game sometimes just doesn't feel like it. I feel that gun at the beginning needed me to jump specifically at the ladder rather than a 3 or 4 block range which is reasonable. I think there were a few times I knew where an item was but needed to jump several times to spawn it - imagine if I didn't know and just wrote the area off as fully explored and it just never appeared. =-( Fortunately I've played this game enough to get through as well as knowing about the extra lives frog to get a casual playthrough. I think if you make or print out a map, it makes the game much more playable, and it is something you should be doing for an exploration game, but you will need to test the heck out of each of the areas to find the items - though most are at dead ends so that is a good indicator to search.

Overall, I'm going to put this in the middle. While it has a lot of negatives, the design Activision approved Pony to program is well done. If it was programmed better, I'd place it in the Top 200, but as is it goes in the 300-400 for collecting and ranking