Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Pitfall II did something in 1984 that almost no game dared to do. It had no lives and no game over. Instead of dying, Pitfall Harry just floats back to the last red cross checkpoint and loses some points, then you keep right on going. Unlimited continuous play, which was genuinely ahead of its time and is one of the reasons this game gets pointed to as an ancestor of checkpoint and exploration style design.
This is the Commodore 64 version, and a neat detail, it was written from scratch by a programmer named Tim Shotter, using the finished Atari 2600 game as his blueprint. Activision handed the different ports to different programmers because David Crane, the designer, did not think it was worth his time to rebuild a game he had already made once. Harry is deep in the caverns of the Andes hunting the Raj diamond and trying to rescue his niece Rhonda and their cat Quickclaw. Grab all three and the ring and you win. Get in the way and you have got poison frogs, eels in the underground river, scorpions and bats to deal with.
The thing everyone remembers though is the music. It runs continuously and changes with what you are doing. A heroic theme while you explore, a sad minor key version when you get sent back to a checkpoint, and a completely different tune when you ride a balloon upward. Using music as both a reward and a punishment was a brilliant touch for 1984, and people say the melody still pops into their heads decades later.
One bit of history that makes this even better. The original Atari 2600 Pitfall II pulled off graphics and four channel music that the console had no business doing, because David Crane designed a custom chip and built it right into the cartridge. The C64 did not need that trick, it had its own famous SID sound chip doing the work. Crane was also a co founder of Activision, the very first third party game studio, started by ex Atari programmers who wanted credit for their work, and he is the man behind the original Pitfall too.
Did you play Pitfall II on the Commodore 64, and does that music still live in your head? Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
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Pitfall II did something in 1984 that almost no game dared to do. It had no lives and no game over. Instead of dying, Pitfall Harry just floats back to the last red cross checkpoint and loses some points, then you keep right on going. Unlimited continuous play, which was genuinely ahead of its time and is one of the reasons this game gets pointed to as an ancestor of checkpoint and exploration style design.
This is the Commodore 64 version, and a neat detail, it was written from scratch by a programmer named Tim Shotter, using the finished Atari 2600 game as his blueprint. Activision handed the different ports to different programmers because David Crane, the designer, did not think it was worth his time to rebuild a game he had already made once. Harry is deep in the caverns of the Andes hunting the Raj diamond and trying to rescue his niece Rhonda and their cat Quickclaw. Grab all three and the ring and you win. Get in the way and you have got poison frogs, eels in the underground river, scorpions and bats to deal with.
The thing everyone remembers though is the music. It runs continuously and changes with what you are doing. A heroic theme while you explore, a sad minor key version when you get sent back to a checkpoint, and a completely different tune when you ride a balloon upward. Using music as both a reward and a punishment was a brilliant touch for 1984, and people say the melody still pops into their heads decades later.
One bit of history that makes this even better. The original Atari 2600 Pitfall II pulled off graphics and four channel music that the console had no business doing, because David Crane designed a custom chip and built it right into the cartridge. The C64 did not need that trick, it had its own famous SID sound chip doing the work. Crane was also a co founder of Activision, the very first third party game studio, started by ex Atari programmers who wanted credit for their work, and he is the man behind the original Pitfall too.
Did you play Pitfall II on the Commodore 64, and does that music still live in your head? Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#pitfall2 #pitfall #lostcaverns #commodore64 #c64 #activision #davidcrane #pitfallharry #retrogames #platformer #8bit #80sgaming #gaminghistory #retrogaming #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
