Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure Review - IGN (original) (raw)

A mediocre revival of the Activision classic.

The review of this product is based on a re-released version of the game. Because of this change of medium and the passage of time, it is possible that there are slight factual differences between the original retail product and the version reviewed. The following review should be used as a reference for how well the game stood up over time rather than an evaluation of how it would have scored based on its original release date.

If you want to know what it's like to get lost in the jungle, look no further than this. Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure will have you scratching your head in confusion from its very first stage, as you run into dead ends and roadblocks on your quest through equatorial South America -- befuddled either by its criss-crossed, jumbled-up level design or just the muddied, swamplike color palette that makes each element of the environment seem to bleed visibly into every other. But it can't be all bad, right? It's Pitfall, after all.

That sense of nostalgia and name recognition seem to be what Activision was trying to capitalize on when it revived its classic Atari 2600 platformer from 1982 to produce this 16-bit Genesis sequel in 1994, and it succeeded to a point -- there are several gamers who first experienced this Adventure through its original cartridge release and would still claim it as an excellent platformer design. But, honestly, it's just not. It's really just a mess.

The storyline of The Mayan Adventure finds the original Pitfall Harry mysteriously kidnapped, and his dutiful son Harry Jr. tasked with saving his dad. Junior's abilities are more advanced than his father's old skillset of just running and jumping, though. He can also climb and swing from a variety of ropes, duck to dodge high-flying projectiles, wield an array of his own throwing items and crack a whip to keep crawling creatures at bay.

Zip-lining through the jungle.

It sounds all good and well, but in execution it's mediocre at best. Harry Jr.'s blessed with very fluid animation that looks nice, but like other games from the same early-to-mid-'90s 16-bit era that prioritized visual flow over feel, it damages the gameplay considerably. Junior's control is imprecise and frustrating, as he's always too busy cycling through his extra 20 animation frames to accomplish things like, say, actually landing on a platform.

It makes even the simplest actions hard to complete, like attacking common enemies. Many foes, especially early on, are low-to-the-ground animals like small monkeys, snakes and scorpions. To attack them, you first have to duck. But the ducking animation takes so long to play out, that you're probably going to get hit before Harry's finally in position to be able to crack his whip. Those sort of things make platformers like this feel more like a chore than anything else.

Control troubles aren't all that hold this design back, of course. As mentioned before, it's also frustrating to even try to get through a stage in The Mayan Adventure because the level design is so warped. You can run past some trees, but others are impassable walls. You'll have to double back on your path several times, because you'll end up hitting roadblocks that twist into different planes for Harry to walk on. It's confusing.

And it's hard to even see, half the time. This Virtual Console release uses The Mayan Adventure's Genesis code as its basis, and that's probably one of the worst versions of this game, visually -- the color palette is ugly and limited, making many elements of the environment difficult to properly discern. You'll find yourself squinting at the screen to try to figure out what you're looking at in many stages. Again, not so much fun.

Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure has one saving grace, and that's the fact that you can unlock and play a version of the original Atari 2600 Pitfall game inside of it. It's a good translation, and somewhat novel here on the Wii's Virtual Console since no Atari systems have yet joined the VC line-up, making it currently improbable that the classic Pitfall would be made available in any other form. Having to pay the full 800 Wii Point price and slog through this murky, boring sequel to access it, though, seems a bit too much to ask.

Verdict

Counting Craig's take on the 2001 Game Boy Advance re-release and Levi's recent retro review of the 32X edition from last December, this is the third time that IGN has featured a review of Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure. And though I wanted to like this game more, thanks to my own rose-tinted memories of it in the context of the '90s 16-bit platformer craze, I can't disagree with Craig and Levi's past assessments -- it's bland. Overly animated and plagued by control troubles, with unattractive and confusing level designs. Pass this one by, unless you're just an incredible Pitfall fan. In which case you'd be forgiven for wanting to just get at the unlockable 2600 edition buried inside this release.