App Store revisionism made me think this game was an auto runner for years.
Pitfall is a novelty. Pitfall wasn't always a novelty. Pitfall is probably one of the best games on the 2600, even if that doesn't really mean anything. 3D Tic-Tac-Toe is one of the best games on the 2600 if you can convince a friend to play it with you, if you want a measure of how little it means to be "one of the best games on the 2600." But once upon a time, Pitfall was one of the most sprawling video games ever developed, one you had to spend several weeks slowly, methodically mapping out and then several more improving your executional skill to be able to get even remotely close to beating it.
Nowadays, after running around aimlessly for 10 minutes or so, you can just look up a map of the game. If you then decide to follow along, you'll probably get maybe 70% of the way through before time runs out even with heavy use of emulator rewind. Then you'll probably look up the TAS and see that you've got less than 2 minutes of wiggle room from frame perfection if you want to "beat" Pitfall. I did not beat Pitfall.
Pitfall is a novelty. Pitfall wasn't always a novelty. Pitfall is probably one of the best games on the 2600, even if that doesn't really mean anything. 3D Tic-Tac-Toe is one of the best games on the 2600 if you can convince a friend to play it with you, if you want a measure of how little it means to be "one of the best games on the 2600." But once upon a time, Pitfall was one of the most sprawling video games ever developed, one you had to spend several weeks slowly, methodically mapping out and then several more improving your executional skill to be able to get even remotely close to beating it.
Nowadays, after running around aimlessly for 10 minutes or so, you can just look up a map of the game. If you then decide to follow along, you'll probably get maybe 70% of the way through before time runs out even with heavy use of emulator rewind. Then you'll probably look up the TAS and see that you've got less than 2 minutes of wiggle room from frame perfection if you want to "beat" Pitfall. I did not beat Pitfall.