Previous Next

Pitfall II from Activision is a follow-on from their original Pitfall game. And what a follow-on it is - a levels-and-ladders game with extra surprises.

The first surprise came in the form of an instruction booklet in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch. Not a mention of English - but from my skimpy knowledge of French I managed to establish that you move Harry around (a sort of Micro Indiana Jones), searching a huge underground cavern for his niece, Rhonda.

You must also find his pet cat, Quickclaw, a Raj diamond and a stone rat.

Collecting gold bars on the way to boost your points score seems to be the least of your worries.

The quest starts on a red cross at the edge of a forest and as you progress to the cave you start to meet the enemy - the most vicious bunch of creatures that you could ever hope to set eyes on.

They take the form of frogs, ducks, bats and scorpions to name but a few, and they're all out to make life extremely unpleasant for you. On the first level the frogs do their utmost to prevent you going down ladders to the next platform.

The bats and ducks are out to stop you in your tracks by flying across the screen with your head as the prime target, while the scorpions are continuously attracted to your nether regions for the same reason.

This is certainly not a game for the faint-hearted.

At the bottom of the cave there is an underground river full of different nasties, but to collect all the gold bars you must take your chance with these sooner or later.

You can in fact end up taking an unexpected ducking by misjudging some of your earlier leaps. There's no harm done, though, as our hero is an excellent swimmer with a mega lung capacity.

I'd keep an eye open for the eels though - they've a few shocks in store.

In another part of the cave a waterfall cleverly conceals one of the gold bars and you can only get at it by hitching a lift on a passing balloon. A quick grab for the rope and it's up, up and away. And it's here that those infernal bats turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

If you can manoeuvre the balloon into the path of one of them, the balloon bursts and you drop off on the ledge below. Your ultimate target, a gold ring, can only be accessed by a well-judged death-defying leap from one of these ledges to a small platform halfway down the cave.

Success automatically transports you to level two, which is a larger cave with more meanies and, I suspect, more gold bars and other treasures.

I say suspect because, as yet, I haven't been able to get any further. It's got something to do with the piranhas and giant ants - different hazards to contend with on this level.

Contact with any of these, as well as the earlier nasties, results in your return to the last red cross you walked over, and you lose some of your points.

One thing you don't lose, though, is your life, and this means the game can last as long as you want it to.

A catchy tune plays throughout - quite entertaining in its own right. However, I was a little disappointed with the graphics, as I don't think they use the Atari's capabilities to the full.

And the game only supports joysticks, which is a shame and obviously rules out a lot of Atari-owners who can only access the keyboard.

Minor gripes apart, the game is extremely addictive, great fun to play, and the number of levels to come will remain a mystery to me until I get some more practice.