Pitfall! is a platform-style adventure game designed by David Crane and published by Activision for the Atari 2600 in 1982. It is one of the defining titles of the early home console era and a frequent reference point in discussions of how side-scrolling action games developed.
The player controls Pitfall Harry, guiding him through a jungle to collect 32 treasures within a twenty-minute time limit. Harry runs left and right across a series of connected screens, jumping over hazards, swinging across pits on vines, and dodging rolling logs, scorpions, crocodiles, and quicksand. The game spans 255 screens generated from a compact set of data, an impressive feat on the 2600's limited hardware, and it rewards route planning because the clock is always running.
Pitfall! was a major commercial success, selling several million copies and spending time at the top of sales charts, and it earned Activision considerable recognition during the period when the company was establishing third-party development as a viable business. Its influence on later running-and-jumping games is widely acknowledged, and Pitfall Harry became one of Activision's signature characters.
The game was ported to a wide range of systems beyond the Atari 2600, including the Atari 5200, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Commodore 64, MSX, and the TRS-80 Color Computer. It has since been bundled in numerous Activision compilations and is hidden as an unlockable inside its 1994 successor, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure. Original cartridges are among the most common 2600 titles, and the game emulates trivially.
