Pitfall : the Mayan Adventure
Mega Cruel game #5
Type of Game
The perfect little poacher's manual, masked by a display of pretty sprites praising the graphic power of the Mega Drive.
Release date on our machines
December 1994, Without You by Mariah Carey, The Sign by Ace of Base, and Lost in Love by Legend B, yeeeeeeee!
Developer
Activision, Inc. when they were still on the side of good.
Publisher
Activision, Inc. Copy and paste the line above and move on.
Master of Orion II : available on GOG.com (1 + 2), on Steam (1 + 2 too), and on Zoom Platform (guess what, 1 + 2 !).
Between this and Ecco the Tides of Time, I can't decide which one was the last Mega Drive cartridge I owned. I was then lent Mr. Nutz and The Lion King too, but even though I tried to be very discreet, their owners always ended up taking them back. Pitfall adds to the list of action-packed platformers in my game library, but it blew me away with how beautiful it looked. Several times over, in fact, as I kept replaying it to admire its pixels. Before I tried to relive my childhood, I'm not sure I managed to play any older platformers after that. Actually, yes, I did, since I just mentioned Mr. Nutz. Well done. I don't remember why my sister Elena and I were bought this particular game. I'd love to hear our parents' reasoning at the time. The first box they found on the shelves at Auchan? Possibly. And yes, we bought our Mega Drive games at Auchan.
Pré-Coolombian
There was no Virgin Megastore in Le Havre, and Fnac didn't exist until 1999. Yes, we also drank crude oil straight from the tanks built on the harbour, so what? Anyway, I loved that Auchan. I liked going there because while my mother spent at least four hours there, I not only bought my MD cartridges, but also my G.I. Joe toys and Jurassic Park dinosaurs, and that's where the whole of France came to stock up on alcohol. Oh no, just the people of Le Havre? Well... what a drink holding ability. Another possible scenario that led to Pitfall arriving in our home: my father-in-law buying a cartridge for himself, the first in three years, during one of his crazy episodes where he compared himself, almost seriously, to Indiana Jones. Oh dear, how cringe, I get shivers just thinking about it. But good for us! The important thing is that we got to play it with Elena, and we really enjoyed slaughtering all the wildlife in that American jungle, and even more so stealing all the Mayan treasures. Hmm, maybe I should have phrased that differently.
A made-up obstacle?
The fourth instalment in the franchise that began on the original Atari 2600, The Mayan Adventure takes the son of the original protagonist into the Mexican jungle (I imagine), in search of his father (I think). Well, yeah, by snooping around everywhere looking for treasure and valuable stuff, his dad pissed off the wrong people. Now he's been kidnapped by a clawed hand during the intro scene. But hey, we're not going to let him die. Our avatar didn't clash with his father like half the people his age and my generation, so we're going to have to save him, right? It's a change from girls who get kidnapped just because they're girls, mind you. So even if he's made mistakes in his life, even if he's been away for several months of the year and missed nine out of twelve Christmases, let's go and rescue the dad in distress.
Equipping ourselves a little better than him, that is, as he's always been a bit of a slacker, travelling with his hands in his pockets. Here, of course, we can jump and swing on vines like Pitfall Senior, but we can also throw stones with a slingshot, hit things without stones with the slingshot, and detonate grenade-like devices that hurt anyone who dares to appear on screen. I never understood what those grenades really were. I called them coffee beans. I knew coffee doesn't explode, but I almost ended up believing it. I got shot at by cameras in Bomber Raid and ate bathtubs in Rampage, so I wasn't going to get worked up about explosive coffee. A whole arsenal to kill monkeys, snakes, carnivorous plants and jaguars, of course! OK, all these things try to kill us on sight, but hey, we do steal their coffee.
No wonder they're a little on edge. We also collect statuettes and other pyramids made of precious metals along the way, so the other daddy can wait a while while we play ‘archaeologists’. But all that is nothing but coati pee compared to enclosed spaces, in dark mines riddled with traps. In fact, I never finished that game. As far as I can remember, I always ended up stuck in front of an invisible wall in one of those underground levels, unless it was a temple. All because I hadn't collected all the letters P-I-T-F-A-L-L scattered throughout the previous stages. I restarted several times, hoping to open that magic door, but I never knew where to find the required collectibles. I was always missing one or two.
Of course, I didn't bother to read a walkthrough. I never read walkthroughs, unless someone found one for me and put it right in front of my eyes. And yet, I don't see this problem in the various playthrough videos I've watched. The letters are actually only used to unlock the true ending of the game (just a message saying that you've really, really won). No one mentions this in writing either. Yet I remember this problem very clearly, it frustrated me so much! It made me give up on the game, so I can't have been that wrong! If it never existed, I can only think that my mind altered my memory against my will to make me forget that I was just bad at the game. It took me a long time to beat the two jaguars that act as bosses about halfway through the journey, so it's possible that I gave up. In any case, if I lost hope, Myst and Worms were waiting for me on the PC in the next room.
Pitfall : The Mayan Extinction
I'm having trouble pinning down the game's identity. And I'm not talking about the whole phase where you replay the very first Pitfall over and over again, which is a kind of funny but endless cameo. I mean, there's nothing more beautiful than it on MD, not even Aladdin or The Lion King. The animations are awesome, the backgrounds are teeming with detail. But it still seems bland. Something's missing, I'm not sure what exactly. We know we're embarking on an enigmatic and dangerous adventure, but we don't feel it. At least, I don't. The jungle doesn't seem that dangerous, the temples aren't scary, and the mines aren't oppressive enough. Did I say the opposite earlier? Well, forget the whole beginning! I died a lot, though. And I like the overall atmosphere despite everything. BUT I'm still complaining. Maybe we transcend fear because we're just vaporising biodiversity and plundering treasures.
Or maybe I'm just grumbling more than usual. I don't know, I also find it lacking in renewal. We revisit the same areas several times, graphically speaking. And then the final boss doesn't make up for anything, that big, slow golem. Unlike the rest, he's seriously ugly as my old man (an expression that was already outdated in 2013, I know). I never saw him during my own games, but most critics agree on this. That doesn't stop Pitfall from being a very good game, it just prevents it from entering the pantheon of the ultimate killer titles. Subjectivity and all that...
Ancient Music
Yes, but here's the thing! I don't think the music helps you immerse yourself in this Mayan Adventure. A bit like environments that are stripped of all animal life, the tracks never really stand out. Admittedly, it's pretty close to my idea of what the Mayans might have played during obscure rituals, before the conquistadors came along and interfered with their big metal boots. Unless I believe that because my only musical sources from that region of the world at that time come from this very game. In any case, if the soundtrack is true to life, I would have preferred a little more extrapolation. Like in Age of Empires, for example, which easily ranks in my top 10 favourite soundtracks of all time. I can't quite figure out who worked on these percussion-heavy compositions. It seems that a company called Soundelux Media Labs signed them. And Matt Furniss' name appears only as sound design, not music, so? Well, anyway, I'm not going to stalk these people's LinkedIn profiles to tell them they could have done better. I'll leave it to the idiotic fascists who spend hours harassing people on the internet. But there you go; one or two tracks like that, perfect. A dozen is a bit much. Seriously, drop the drums and pick up some synths, guys. Okay, since then you've worked on some amazing licences: Mechwarrior II and sequels, Bayonetta, Resident Evil 4 and 5, Devil May Cry, Monster Hunter... there's too much to list! So, I'm probably wrong, right?
Post-consolem tribute
After doing some more research, I learned that there was a very annoying bug. If you changed the controls in the game options, you would get stuck at the mine train level. Well, well, could that be related to what happened to me? I still find it strange, because firstly, it would mean that I always changed the controls when I played, and secondly, it would appear that this only affects the American cartridge. It seems highly unlikely that I owned this version and not the PAL version. Did the console read the American Pitfall? I'm not sure at all. In any case, it gives me a lead to explore. Let's assume that Pitfall was my last MD game. It doesn't change much in the video game timeline of my life, which is already full of gaps and anachronisms. I'll never be able to recreate it completely anyway. The arrival of my stepfather's Pentium 75 sounded the death knell for my beloved console, even though it technically outlived it, surviving until 2002 or 2003 (the computer underwent numerous updates, improvements and facelifts, too easy). By then, I had been playing only good old Warriors of the Eternal Sun for several years. A great epic that began with Altered Beast and ended with Pitfall.
What a journey I had on the SEGA machine between the two, what crazy memories that have burned my brain forever with the seal of nostalgia, the firebrand of childhood magic, and the red-hot iron of the past that was better before. It's one of my top three things I should have kept from my beloved nineties. Along with Monsters in my Pocket and Dragon Ball Power Level cards. This trio of wonders in my room could help me get over any of my mother's tantrums, any of my stepfather's unhealthy humiliations, and any blow off at school. OK, maybe not any blow off, you very well know, the thirty girls who laughed in my face (and rightly so, I admit). Thank you, my all-time favourite console. You deserve a temple to your glory for all the happy memories you've given me. At the very least, a nice cupboard that smells like rare Mexican wood.
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