I was going to try and answer the question of if this game has aged poorly, but that's a silly question. Of course it has. Pitfall is a hard-as-shit Atari platformer more about routing than platforming if you're actually trying to beat it. What, do you think that would be good?
What's more interesting to me is more a question about the Atari in general: What differentiates the lovely pieces in the Atari library from the painful garbage best left in the past? I'm thinking there's a few categories of good Atari games: immortally simple sports games, the black voids of space with earfucking explosions, the eerily quiet and lonely directionless whatthefuckdoidos, and of course the arcade games that still exist in some form on practically every platform today.
Pitfall doesn't really meet any of the criteria that make those groups of games simply fun or at least charming. It's a historical piece and nothing more. It looks gross and muddy, is mechanically bland, and doesn't have any of the magic and sheer wonder at THINGS MOVING ON SCREEN that brings you back to Atari.
What's more interesting to me is more a question about the Atari in general: What differentiates the lovely pieces in the Atari library from the painful garbage best left in the past? I'm thinking there's a few categories of good Atari games: immortally simple sports games, the black voids of space with earfucking explosions, the eerily quiet and lonely directionless whatthefuckdoidos, and of course the arcade games that still exist in some form on practically every platform today.
Pitfall doesn't really meet any of the criteria that make those groups of games simply fun or at least charming. It's a historical piece and nothing more. It looks gross and muddy, is mechanically bland, and doesn't have any of the magic and sheer wonder at THINGS MOVING ON SCREEN that brings you back to Atari.