Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

Overview

Lost Caverns is the sequel to David Crane's Pitfall. Both games were originally released for the Atari 2600 and later ported to multiple platforms. Pitfall II maintains much of the look and feel of the first game, but it opens the world up into a free-roaming adventure, rather than progressing on a linear path. Pitfall Harry's quest in Pitfall II is to collect a diamond, find his niece Rhonda, and his cowardly lion companion, Quickclaw. Upon collecting all three, the quest ends. In most versions of the game, this is also the end of the game.

On the Atari 8-bit versions of the game, Pitfall II contained a "second quest" with more difficult enemies, a more challenging level layout, and new items to collect. Sega's arcade version runs on its System 1 architecture and it keeps some of the trimmings and basic concepts of the original game, but turns it into a game with limited lives, naturally.

Significance

Pitfall II is advanced for its time, and especially for the 2600 version of the game relative to the other games for that system. It features checkpoints, which allow you to continue again from the last cross symbol you stepped over. When you die, sad music will play and your character will physically return to the save point while your score is deducted relative to the distance traveled back to the cross.

The heroic music that runs through the game is fairly catchy, even by today's chip tune standards. Not exactly an objective statement, but give it a listen. The music also changes to a slightly more downbeat version should you spend too much time not grabbing shiny loot.

Among the game play modes there are the requisite running and jumping found in the original Pitfall, along with swimming and ascending a chasm using a hot air balloon. The enemies have also been increased to include bats (which also pop your balloons), poisonous frogs, and electric eels for the swimming portions.