Video Game #1: Pitfall

Hello! And welcome to the brand new August Challenge! Tork decided that since he sort of almost succeeded in watching a video for each day of July, I should have to face a challenge, too. Tork doesn't know any music videos other than the ones I show him, though, so the challenge he's giving me is different. He's got me playing a new video game every day for the month of August. Let's see how it goes.

Tork is a complete and utter Atari Whore and he's always expecting me to see the light and love Atari, too. I don't see that happening, but he just keeps trying. That's why it's no surprise to me at all that my first game is an Atari game. Time to play some Pitfall.

Sigh.

Here's the terms Tork gave me: Play at least 20 minutes and try to get a screenshot of your top score. You're allowed to look up gamefaqs or some online instruction manual if you need to.

20 minutes? Gee whiz. And GameFAQs? Yeah, I'm not looking up a FAQ for Pitfall. I'm making that part of the challenge right now. I know where the direction buttons are and my jump button and that's all I need.

I've got 20 minutes on my timer. Let's do this.

Pitfall seems to star a dude in green pants who I think I heard was named Pitfall Harry. I don't know what his backstory is, but I'm sure as hell not googling it to find out. He dresses like some environmentalists I know and he spends a lot of times in the woods, so I'm going to say that the poin of Pitfall Harry is to save his friend, Pitfall Barry, from some evil anti-rainforest corporate weasils who want to cut down the forest that Harry holds so dear. Why do they want to cut down the forest? It's fun to be an asshole, I guess.

You don't ever see these guys in the game because they're corporate weasils and they stay in their offices, but their influence is there. Who do you think is responsible for all those logs that roll across the screen? Those trees are crying out for revenge! Go get 'em Harry!



This was the trickiest part of the game for me. Of the 20 minutes I spent playing this game it took a good 10 of them to get past this part. Those crocodiles are brutal! Harry doesn't care, though. He understands that all creatures must eat and the crocs aren't being evil, they're just trying to survive. If they could comprehend that Harry is their friend, they'd leave him alone, but they don't speak hippy.

See that scorpion at the bottom there? He's pretty cool. Don't just write him off as a cute decoration for the bottom of the screen; he's there to teach us all a very important environmental lesson. Scorpions look scary, but they're no biggie. They stay down there and you stay up here and nobody has a problem. I liked this scorpion. I named him Shirley and he became Harry's best friend in the game.



The rattlesnake is also an important lesson. When I saw how I was about to make Harry swing right into him I got scared that he'd jump up and bite! But, like a real snake, that snake doesn't want to bite Harry. He knows Harry is too big to swallow. He's just chillin'.


The corporate weasils tried to suck Harry into their greedy vortex of greed and materialism and capitalism by leaving gold out for Harry. He knew better, but I forced him to try to pick it up. Think of how many anti-industrialist pamphlets can be printed up at Kinkos for a huge block of gold like that! Harry paid for my greed with his life when a hole that the capitalists left as a trap opened up right in front of him and swallowed him whole. It was a sad day for us all. I realized that perhaps there are things more important than wealth.

(I made him grab the gold anyway the next time through, though.)



This is the final challenge of the game (for me, anyway) and my screenshot of my high score. Fire. It can be so kind yet so cruel. I didn't know what to do with it. I was tempted to try to grab it on the grounds that it's the same color as the gold and the gold raised my score and also fire is one of mankinds most useful tools...but on the other hand it burns. I remembered the folly of being greedy from before and made Harry jump over the fire.

Nothing interesting happened after that. (Or before it.)