There's a cool hack... 30th anniversary edition or something. It fixes the vast majority of the issues with this game and makes it genuinely decent in my experience. Playing the vanilla game is not a great idea at this point, by any stretch.
Gaming community: Micronics, your games have enraged us and left irreparable harm on our hearts, do you have anything to say? Micronics: Our games shipped on time.
The Smart-Casual Gamer. Micronics is the worst game developer ever come out in the NES era. Micronics made arcade ports of “1942” and “Ghosts ’n Goblins” both from Capcom, “Elevator Action” from Taito, “Athena”, “Ikari Warriors” and “Ikari Warriors 2: Victory Road” all from SNK.
Thank you so much, seriously 😀 I love playing these improvement romhacks that don't drastically alter the games, just perfect them. Like Metroid Mother is a better experience than playing the original Metroid. It's still all the exact same level design, it just throws in features like a map, and improves the graphics a bit
@@duffman18 Agreed. Improvment hacks are my favorite form of romhacking. I personally prefer Zero Mission on GBA but I can still admire the effort went into the NES hack. Also fun fact: title of the romhack is a referance to Other M (it is spelled Metroid mOTHER)!
@@jasoncromer6196 I played this game back when it first came out. I was in the first grade, and whenever I sucked at a video game, I thought it was just me, and I would get better over time. Super Pitfall was the first time I realized "no, the game actually sucks" on top of my being bad at it.
This show is sincerely such a delight. My day brightens every morning you upload. Its great to hear you be brutal every once in a while, and I always hear Super Pitfall desrves it! Keep it up hon!
BakedBread hehe...I was like “that kid looks vaguely familiar” This role talking up Pitfall was his step in the door to land his role in Jumanji apparently
As a kid who didn't fully understand the goal of Pitfall!, I just wandered around the world. When I played this, I also didn't understand the goal(s), and found it similarly interesting to just kind of meander around the first area on a rental, as though it were some kind of proto-sandbox. I've made the conscious decision to keep that nostalgia to itself, as I'm almost positive that revisiting the game now would leave me finding it... well, as everyone else does.
I feel pretty much the same. I have more positive nostalgia for this game despite its visible flaws, like I just took it for what it was as I did with all games as a kid (AFAIK). It wasn't until my exposure to the internet that I started to judge games under specific standards. But yeah, there's something for me to appreciate from my kid-mind's innocent perspective of taking and appreciating this game for what it was.
That's literally the exact same way I felt about Legacy of the Wizard...and Deadly Towers. Can't figure out WHAT the heck to do but WEEEE! exploring is fun!
I have similar feelings about Ikari Warriors 2 (NES Version). Rented it quite a few times as a child. Something about it just kept pulling me back in. As an adult I don't know what the heck I was thinking. While it had some neat concepts and art style for the time that game is awful.
One of my strongest gaming memories of playing with my dad is him getting excited at a Pitfall sequel and then being so bummed out when he rented this game.
Thanks for reminding me just how great the dynamic music in “PItfall II” was. I remember feeling like I could run through a wall each time Harry picked up another treasure and it shifted from dirge to peppy.
Not gonna lie… this game was one of my favorite NES games growing up. I loved the open world exploration. Despite its problems, the thrill of the open world adventuring made up for it for me. I did have to call the Nintendo game counselors for help beating it… but I eventually did complete the game. Another favorite of mine that is very underrated is Legacy of the Wizard. Fantastic puzzle solving and exploration in that one. Both of these games were some of the early open world games on NES that paved the way for much greater things.
I am just dropping this message to tell you how much I appreciate you doing this, and how glad I am when a new video turns up! You do this better than I could, and I am loathe to admit that!
When I saw the "next epsiode" preview, I got very excited (though a bit confused) being that Soldier Blade is one of my all time favorites. Then I immediately understood what you meant by the "planting the seeds" comment and know what's coming next.
This game reminded me a lot of games like Legacy of The Wizard, and A Boy And His Blob both on the NES. No idea of what to do, or where to go back then, without the internet or Nintendo Power.
By the way, I'm not sure if this was mentioned in the earlier Pitfall II review, but the characters Quickclaw and Rhonda, plus part of the soundtrack, was taken from the Pitfall segment of Saturday Supercade. If you were wondering who the heck they were, well, that's your answer!
That's funny that you subtly mentioned Angry Video Game Nerd because I definitely thought back to his episode on this game as soon as this one started. Looking back, I need to play this game again because I had a friend who had it and I don't remember it being THAT bad, but I was also a child at the time.
There are a few Micronics games with credits (most of them hidden behind secret codes), and they indicate that Micronics games were usually made by a team of 4 people. The "one Micronics guy in his bedroom" rumour is most likely just a rumour
when I was like 4 or 5 back in the days, I had a blast with this game. I was a huge (Atari's) Pitfall fan, and when I got it for the NES, I was blown away... I can see the flaws and stuff, but I also have fond memories playing this awful game when I was a little kid. and it might trigger even more people -- but I also enjoyed the Predator game back when it was released as well... two awful games that I hold dear to this day...
I was 7 or 8 when this came out and a terrible video game player. Not sure I’ve ever beaten a game. Anyway, this game was a blast to just endlessly explore if you didn’t mind never, ever, getting anywhere. Since I was under no illusion of beating the game, I’d aimlessly roam for hours. Thanks for the review. Now I know it wasn’t me that was broken.
I clicked on this video again after not having seen it for a while, and was greeted immediately where I left off. The line "An epic disaster on every conceivable level". If that's not indictive of Super Pitfall, I don't know what is.
On the title screen, the player select icon is a sprite of Pitfall Harry pointing the gun at himself. Tells you all you need to know about the rest of the game...
By the way...the birds that takesyou to Quick Claw and the otherf that takes you to a bonus stage can't be killed by your bullets, that is the way I found those places, yet, a leap of faith given the lack of continues.
I borrowed and beat this game long ago. No guides. It was… ehhhhh. I recall there were patterns to exploration. But, the godawful music, the jerky scrolling, the “slipping” on ladders that the instruction book described like a feature, and the vine chain to escape the dark world. I felt really good when I beat it. Then it presented a second quest. As much as I wanted to see if anything different happened when you beat the second quest, I was not about to torture myself that way.
Happy to see the footage and discussion of the PC88 version here -- I've played it and it is, in essence, the NES game but playable. It's not a great game by any stretch, but it's reasonably designed and plays well enough. Playing them side-by-side is a fascinating experience in "oh, so *that's* what that was supposed to be for!"
As a kid, when this came out, I was endlessly fascinated with this game. All the secrets, hidden knowledge, and difficulty in playing it, somehow put it on a level, where the hardships in playing it frustrated me more than anything else in the world. I just wanted to figure it out, and without the internet, and guides, there was just no satisfaction to be had. I think someone ought to rework this game, and release it for emulators.
I kinda liked this game when I was a kid. As for the bird you jump into: the way we found that out was because you couldn't kill the bird. Your bullets would go right through it. I haven't played it in 30 years, but I also thought it was a one chance thing... if the bird flew off the screen, he didn't come back like other enemies. Might be mis-remembering; maybe it came back if you died.
Have you played 30th Anniversary hack yet? I have beaten it many times. I dont' normally play games again after beaten them now that I'm an adult have have tons of roms...but this one takes such a terrible game that I have such nostalgia for and fixes everything and makes it one of my favorite games on NES.
I traded this game for the promise of a game that I never recieved. I didn't really mind getting nothing in return. While the game was really frustrating and not fun, I have fond memories of laughing at this with my brothers and cousins. It might be a "so bad it's good" game. It's great for comedy.
Pony Canyon did not develop the MSX version. It was a port of the Colecovision version distributed on tape by Activision themselves in other parts of the world. Pony Canyon released it on cartridge in Japan. Sega did a different (inferior) version on SG 1000 (basically very similar hardware to a Colecovision / MSX)
I was waiting for this! There was a hack intended to overhaul the game, but despite improved graphics, the stench of the design still seeps through. Steven King was right... you just can't polish a turd.
Ok. I bought it when it first came out. I liked the addition of the gun and I did enjoy the sprawling world it showcased. While it was a fun suprise to discover warp zones in the vultures ( there are more than one) it was odd using them as the way to do so. I have the ROM hack of the 30th anniversary edition of it, which did fix a lot of the dum dums put in the original. Hey, I did find it fun back then, as there were not many exploratory NES games back then, but it did have issues. I love the Sega Pitfall II arcade game out of the Pitfall games ever released. It was very well done. :)
It takes a special king of incompetence to have an error on the title screen. That shows that, not only did they never playtest it, they never even turned the game on at any point during development, even once.
Pitfall! for C64 it was one of the first games I had, however I never wanted to buy the NES Super Pitfall but I would like to have it as part of the franchise collection 😧
At least your video is pleasant to watch! Also, I totally agree with the "unnecessarily hyperbolic" comment. Even as a child I doubt I would have found that "humor" funny but hey apparently we are the only two. 😉
Awesome video as usual. I played this game a few years back after watching AVGN and it is awful, but like you mentioned in the video, there is something about it that does grab you to a certain degree. It certainly isn't enough to keep you coming back of course, but the feeling is still there. I feel like this game would've been a solid adventure game if the many many flaws were ironed out.
As a kid, I had Super Pitfall on the Tandy, but I did not yet have an NES to get Mario. My dad had gotten the Tandy from an uncle who liked to own a lot of novel things. Their Tandy had Super Pitfall, Rad Warrior, Dungeons of Daggorath, Color Baseball, and Math Bingo. The latter two not really bring memorable games. I had completed Rad Warrior as a kid, but I never solved Super Pitfall. The Tandy versions doesn't have you jumping into vultures, there are brick cave arches you jump into it. I came back as an adult and solved Super Pitfall on the NES and Dungeons of Daggorath as free abandoned ware. Super Pitfall obviously was flawed but because it was one of my first video games and a substitute for Mario, which I didn't have access to until the end of 1991, I liked Super Pitfall.
I got to 8:34 and said aloud "what the hell?" and sincerely felt like I was experiencing something out of a modern-day kaizo-esque troll game. What the hell, Super Pitfall? Why?
10:30 not random, not same birds. These fly differently, and it's not the altitude, they fly in a full wavy motion, while the regular vultures fly in a straight line and do dives sometimes. In a game that's all about jumping in thin air to find items, this is enough of a hint that you should jump into it.
Every enemy in the game kills you on contact. The fact that one enemy has a different animation from the others that look like it is absolutely not enough to lead any reasonable player to think, "I bet if I jump into this one enemy, it won't kill me the way every single other enemy in the game does."
@@JeremyParish In the context of the game it did work though (as a 10 year old child I figured it out pretty quickly on my own). But why did I and so many others? Perhaps it's a different perspective that cannot easily be reobtained and is related to the fact that these games were made to be replayed hundreds of times. Experimentation was part of the game and part of the fun. It required pro-active thinking. I'm not saying it's a brilliant game design choice. It's not even good. But I don't think it's horrible or even bad. It is what it is and it was okay for a game at the time. I mean, games sometimes are VERY unintuitive and abstract and they require experimentation. Why is it that hitting your head under a block makes a mushroom appear (but only sometimes), and touching the mushroom (that looks like an enemy) makes you grow? And that being big protects you from you from one enemy hit. When said like this it sounds like the game designers were on crack. But when you play it, experiment and learn, and talk to friends, it becomes its own thing. The game is designed that way. Super Mario Bros is obviously way better designed than SP. I'm just making the parallel that it is unfair to say that the vulture is cryptic when anyone playing the game as intended would see that it is not. There are serious problems with SP, namely the bugs, terrible engine and nearly unplayable controls, but the vulture? It's perfectly fine.
@@JeremyParish And please don't get me wrong, I love your videos and I've been on a watching spree recently, they are all really awesome, bringing to spotlight often forgotten games. I just think that in this particular moment (the vulture) it seemed like a meme got in the way.
@@JeremyParish I think he means in the same way that everybody started parroting AVGN after his Castlevania 2 episode that it was THE WORST GAME EVER is kind of a meme.
it's a shame they couldn't have just adapted the rights to the Pitfall 2 arcade game, or gotten a European game like Rick Dangerous to slap the license on.
I own and enjoy a lot of questionable quality Micronics-developed NES games, but even I won't poison my NES collection with this game. I say this as somebody that poisoned their collection with Athena and Victory Road willingly.
I gotta say, I enjoy this video series. While I would content that, somewhere in this spectrum of NES games, there MUST be s "worst" game somewhere... that will remain largely up for debate. Usually the crown is awarded to unliscensed illegal works like those of Wisdom Tree / Color Dreams, or the infamous Action 52, which is not content with being the worst NES game ever, but in fact, a whopping half-hundred collection of the worst unplayable messy garbage ever to torture the NES's poor beleaguered Ricoh 2A03 Processor. This game in particular though, with it's greased ladders and vines (what other explanation could there be) and invisible keys with no context to provide any meaningful input that such things even exist? Baffling. A good exploratory game gives clues to how it's secrets are found. EG like Zelda hides it's first weapon in plain sight, where the first thing you see besides yourself is a cave to obtain it, leading you to want to enter every available black squarish cave you see in hopes of more loot. Even encouraging you to discover new ones. Metroid stonewalls your right-scrolling progress with, well.. a stone wall too low to walk under. Only by turning around and going left do you discover the item that lets you tuck and roll beneath it, and that same item comes in handy when peeking into item rooms, which contain a conveniently shaped tube beneath the item statue, which begs to be rolled through, the wall within bombed open to reveal new chambers. The first Mega Man game, a game not noted for it's exploration, has a hidden vital item in the Elec Man stage, guarded by three unassuming blocks which can only be lifted away with the Super Arm, or shattered with the Thunder Beam. Without this item, it's virtually impossible (save for a glitch or two) to scale the vertically zig-zagging first of the 4 Wily Castle stages, but savvy players will notice the item in plain sight on the screen layout behind the three bricks which are impassable by default, but coming back with new weapons opens the way.
That's the second Seanbaby reference you've made (that I've seen). Is this your new Tower of Duraga? Where you realize that 90% of internet culture originated from seanbaby.com - because you wouldn't be entirely wrong.
I have never played it, but I have known of it's infamy. It's amazing how many technical problems with it, I'd rather be playing Spelunker. That's a cruel game, but if you take it, it's can be rewarding.
Man I rented this game all super excited, I loved Pitfall 2 on the C64 and the screenshots on the back if the box looked really good.... Ugh it was soooo bad
This game was a mess. I was "lucky" is have it as it kid, picked up as a random birthday or Christmas present. It was a complete cypher, never had any idea what to do. Think I made it to the second world once or twice.
I feel like the guy who designed this game should apologize to us. I wasted so many weekends on this turd. There was a charm to it, mainly because of the happy go lucky version . And I loved Pitfall 2 so figured maybe I was just missing something. Nope. Many years later the internet would confirm that we all hate it.
I could never beat Super Pitfall as a Kid. But Super Pitfall 30th Anniversary Hack I have beaten many times. I don't normally rebeat games...but 30th Anniversary is just so so good. It takes such a terrible design game with genuine potential...and makes it one of my favorite games on NES. Now thats a great hack.
I played a lot of NES duds as a kid, but somehow I think I managed to avoid this one (or else I've blocked it from my memory). I can only assume that means my local rental places didn't have it, because I swear I must have rented everything they had at least once.
I remember this game, and it was garbage. Activision published this NES game after they took over from the Atari 2600 era. During the Atari era, Activision made a ton of excellent games like “Pitfall”, “Ice Hockey”, “Kaboom”, “Boxing”, “Baseball”, “Freeway”, “Dolphin”, “Starmaster”, and tons more. Activision games were great during the Atari 2600 era, but when the company moved into published games for the NES, it was downright terrible. Look at what other NES games that Activision made including “Ghostbusters”, “Ghostbusters 2”, and “The Three Stooges”. Those were complete garbage. I should stick to the Atari 2600 games from Activision which were great.
Nope, Micronics never worked for LJN. LJN contracted most of their games to Atlus or Rare (neither of whom were exactly beacons of quality in those days)
@@djsquarewave On top of that, there's some doubt as to whether Atlus actually did their LJN games. It's known that they subcontracted at least one out (Jaws, to a developer called Westone) and so some suspect Atlus may have done the same with more of their titles. But that is somewhat speculative. (That said, I'm comfortable with the idea of Atlus having made Friday the 13th. I honestly think it's underrated, and it has a lot of good ideas even if the execution suffers at times. If it wasn't published by LJN, I think it would be recognized as an early, flawed ancestor of the survival horror genre.)
@@jasonblalock4429 Yep, a bunch of them were subcontracted (some to unknown companies) but it's pretty well established that most of their first wave of NES releases at least went *through* Atlus. Rare also subcontracted some of their games (Zippo Games did a whole bunch for them).
There's a cool hack... 30th anniversary edition or something. It fixes the vast majority of the issues with this game and makes it genuinely decent in my experience. Playing the vanilla game is not a great idea at this point, by any stretch.
here it is: www.romhacking.net/hacks/3060/
Gaming community: Micronics, your games have enraged us and left irreparable harm on our hearts, do you have anything to say?
Micronics: Our games shipped on time.
Mike Ronics strikes again. That guy was just the worst.
Dominic Tarason He married Beth Esda but she kept her last name
I'm now considering that the name of the one guy who worked at Micronics.
The Smart-Casual Gamer. Micronics is the worst game developer ever come out in the NES era. Micronics made arcade ports of “1942” and “Ghosts ’n Goblins” both from Capcom, “Elevator Action” from Taito, “Athena”, “Ikari Warriors” and “Ikari Warriors 2: Victory Road” all from SNK.
even Mike Rotch could make better games
What about Fred Fuchs?
11:33 What you're looking for is Super Pitfall 30th Anniersary Edition. It's a romhack of Super Pitfall that makes the game actually fun to play!
Seconded. It's a pretty good game with the improvements they made and its really nice looking. Worth playing.
Thank you so much, seriously 😀 I love playing these improvement romhacks that don't drastically alter the games, just perfect them. Like Metroid Mother is a better experience than playing the original Metroid. It's still all the exact same level design, it just throws in features like a map, and improves the graphics a bit
I have only played the hacked Super Pitfall. This video makes me realize that the original was even worse than I had thought
@@duffman18 Agreed. Improvment hacks are my favorite form of romhacking. I personally prefer Zero Mission on GBA but I can still admire the effort went into the NES hack. Also fun fact: title of the romhack is a referance to Other M (it is spelled Metroid mOTHER)!
@@jasoncromer6196 I played this game back when it first came out. I was in the first grade, and whenever I sucked at a video game, I thought it was just me, and I would get better over time. Super Pitfall was the first time I realized "no, the game actually sucks" on top of my being bad at it.
This show is sincerely such a delight. My day brightens every morning you upload. Its great to hear you be brutal every once in a while, and I always hear Super Pitfall desrves it! Keep it up hon!
Oh geez. OF COURSE it was Micronics!
I had no idea, but it makes so much sense now.
1:14 Introducing: Jack Black
No for real, this is sincerely and legitimately Jack Black.
BakedBread hehe...I was like “that kid looks vaguely familiar” This role talking up Pitfall was his step in the door to land his role in Jumanji apparently
I knew i wasnt crazy
As a kid who didn't fully understand the goal of Pitfall!, I just wandered around the world. When I played this, I also didn't understand the goal(s), and found it similarly interesting to just kind of meander around the first area on a rental, as though it were some kind of proto-sandbox.
I've made the conscious decision to keep that nostalgia to itself, as I'm almost positive that revisiting the game now would leave me finding it... well, as everyone else does.
I feel pretty much the same. I have more positive nostalgia for this game despite its visible flaws, like I just took it for what it was as I did with all games as a kid (AFAIK). It wasn't until my exposure to the internet that I started to judge games under specific standards.
But yeah, there's something for me to appreciate from my kid-mind's innocent perspective of taking and appreciating this game for what it was.
That's literally the exact same way I felt about Legacy of the Wizard...and Deadly Towers. Can't figure out WHAT the heck to do but WEEEE! exploring is fun!
I have similar feelings about Ikari Warriors 2 (NES Version). Rented it quite a few times as a child. Something about it just kept pulling me back in. As an adult I don't know what the heck I was thinking. While it had some neat concepts and art style for the time that game is awful.
One of my strongest gaming memories of playing with my dad is him getting excited at a Pitfall sequel and then being so bummed out when he rented this game.
Thanks for reminding me just how great the dynamic music in “PItfall II” was. I remember feeling like I could run through a wall each time Harry picked up another treasure and it shifted from dirge to peppy.
Around 5:03 I was thinking "ah nuts, my internet connection is lagging" until I realized that it was just the game's frame rate.
Sega's Pitfall is so fun. I can't remember when was the last time I had good times with an early 80s game like that.
That Mega Man episode feels like a distant tower on the hill.
Not gonna lie… this game was one of my favorite NES games growing up. I loved the open world exploration. Despite its problems, the thrill of the open world adventuring made up for it for me. I did have to call the Nintendo game counselors for help beating it… but I eventually did complete the game. Another favorite of mine that is very underrated is Legacy of the Wizard. Fantastic puzzle solving and exploration in that one. Both of these games were some of the early open world games on NES that paved the way for much greater things.
I am just dropping this message to tell you how much I appreciate you doing this, and how glad I am when a new video turns up! You do this better than I could, and I am loathe to admit that!
Also: DARK WORLD! [dark world! dark world!]
Thanks, John! That means a lot coming from you!
When I saw the "next epsiode" preview, I got very excited (though a bit confused) being that Soldier Blade is one of my all time favorites. Then I immediately understood what you meant by the "planting the seeds" comment and know what's coming next.
Saying you'd prefer to play Atlantis no Nazo specifically is one of the harsher condemnations of this game. It's a deserved one, though.
Hyperbolic. Everyone knows Atlantis isn't actually playable at all...lol
I always loved how the giant tarantulas were designed in such a way that they look like they're crawling backwards, abdomen-first.
This game reminded me a lot of games like Legacy of The Wizard, and A Boy And His Blob both on the NES. No idea of what to do, or where to go back then, without the internet or Nintendo Power.
(Yes, that was a young Jack Black in that Pitfall commercial at 1:12.)
By the way, I'm not sure if this was mentioned in the earlier Pitfall II review, but the characters Quickclaw and Rhonda, plus part of the soundtrack, was taken from the Pitfall segment of Saturday Supercade. If you were wondering who the heck they were, well, that's your answer!
You know a game is bad when it makes someone acknowledge Spelunker for its mercy
That's funny that you subtly mentioned Angry Video Game Nerd because I definitely thought back to his episode on this game as soon as this one started. Looking back, I need to play this game again because I had a friend who had it and I don't remember it being THAT bad, but I was also a child at the time.
There are a few Micronics games with credits (most of them hidden behind secret codes), and they indicate that Micronics games were usually made by a team of 4 people. The "one Micronics guy in his bedroom" rumour is most likely just a rumour
Without sources you are just adding another rumor to the pile. ;)
@@nekononiaow I mean, they mention they're behind codes. They're probably on TCRF.
when I was like 4 or 5 back in the days, I had a blast with this game. I was a huge (Atari's) Pitfall fan, and when I got it for the NES, I was blown away... I can see the flaws and stuff, but I also have fond memories playing this awful game when I was a little kid. and it might trigger even more people -- but I also enjoyed the Predator game back when it was released as well... two awful games that I hold dear to this day...
I was 7 or 8 when this came out and a terrible video game player. Not sure I’ve ever beaten a game. Anyway, this game was a blast to just endlessly explore if you didn’t mind never, ever, getting anywhere. Since I was under no illusion of beating the game, I’d aimlessly roam for hours. Thanks for the review. Now I know it wasn’t me that was broken.
I clicked on this video again after not having seen it for a while, and was greeted immediately where I left off. The line "An epic disaster on every conceivable level". If that's not indictive of Super Pitfall, I don't know what is.
On the title screen, the player select icon is a sprite of Pitfall Harry pointing the gun at himself. Tells you all you need to know about the rest of the game...
By the way...the birds that takesyou to Quick Claw and the otherf that takes you to a bonus stage can't be killed by your bullets, that is the way I found those places, yet, a leap of faith given the lack of continues.
That 1 second clip of that other game at 5:20 was perfect.
I borrowed and beat this game long ago. No guides. It was… ehhhhh. I recall there were patterns to exploration. But, the godawful music, the jerky scrolling, the “slipping” on ladders that the instruction book described like a feature, and the vine chain to escape the dark world.
I felt really good when I beat it. Then it presented a second quest. As much as I wanted to see if anything different happened when you beat the second quest, I was not about to torture myself that way.
A second quest? My god. I had no idea.
Happy to see the footage and discussion of the PC88 version here -- I've played it and it is, in essence, the NES game but playable. It's not a great game by any stretch, but it's reasonably designed and plays well enough. Playing them side-by-side is a fascinating experience in "oh, so *that's* what that was supposed to be for!"
As a kid, when this came out, I was endlessly fascinated with this game. All the secrets, hidden knowledge, and difficulty in playing it, somehow put it on a level, where the hardships in playing it frustrated me more than anything else in the world. I just wanted to figure it out, and without the internet, and guides, there was just no satisfaction to be had.
I think someone ought to rework this game, and release it for emulators.
Uhh done.
I kinda liked this game when I was a kid. As for the bird you jump into: the way we found that out was because you couldn't kill the bird. Your bullets would go right through it. I haven't played it in 30 years, but I also thought it was a one chance thing... if the bird flew off the screen, he didn't come back like other enemies. Might be mis-remembering; maybe it came back if you died.
Haha Super Pitiful sums this mess up perfectly.
Just that this game is related to Pitfall in any way hurts my soul.
Kid: Can we have Pitfall?
Mom: We have Pitfall at home.
Pitfall at home:
Stolen RUclips comment begging for likes at home:
Great video. Justified brutality in your summary of this game. I love that the Castlevania footage you showed was from loop 2.
I was more excited to finally experience Atlantis no Nazo than any other addition in the most recent NES/Famicom Switch app update, tbh
What do you think about the super pitfall 30th anniversary rom hack? I haven't played it myself but from what I've seen it looks really really good.
Vice Project Doom is a platform game in 1991 by Sammy (Japan and America) and in Unknown by Activision (Europe only).
Have you played 30th Anniversary hack yet? I have beaten it many times. I dont' normally play games again after beaten them now that I'm an adult have have tons of roms...but this one takes such a terrible game that I have such nostalgia for and fixes everything and makes it one of my favorite games on NES.
I traded this game for the promise of a game that I never recieved. I didn't really mind getting nothing in return.
While the game was really frustrating and not fun, I have fond memories of laughing at this with my brothers and cousins. It might be a "so bad it's good" game. It's great for comedy.
Total missed opportunity at 11:52 to say Good Nintentions
Please refer to page 117, paragraph three of the Video Works Style Guide for more information on the avoidance of deprecated branding
Loved the 8-Bit rendition of the Evangelion "next episode" theme at the end. Also, your channel is awesome. Love the videos
I always appreciate seeing Eva get some love.
I think this is the only time I've ever seen someone wish we got Atlantis No Nazo over another game
Wonder if all the invisible items are inspired by Tower of Druaga...
Pony Canyon did not develop the MSX version. It was a port of the Colecovision version distributed on tape by Activision themselves in other parts of the world. Pony Canyon released it on cartridge in Japan. Sega did a different (inferior) version on SG 1000 (basically very similar hardware to a Colecovision / MSX)
I love how the guy spazzes out when he runs into an enemy
Whatever that game was at the end looks fucking amazing
"Sigh. Micronics."
I was waiting for this! There was a hack intended to overhaul the game, but despite improved graphics, the stench of the design still seeps through. Steven King was right... you just can't polish a turd.
Ok. I bought it when it first came out. I liked the addition of the gun and I did enjoy the sprawling world it showcased.
While it was a fun suprise to discover warp zones in the vultures ( there are more than one) it was odd using them as the way to do so.
I have the ROM hack of the 30th anniversary edition of it, which did fix a lot of the dum dums put in the original.
Hey, I did find it fun back then, as there were not many exploratory NES games back then, but it did have issues.
I love the Sega Pitfall II arcade game out of the Pitfall games ever released. It was very well done. :)
Atlantis no Nazo would have been an improvement.
It takes a special king of incompetence to have an error on the title screen. That shows that, not only did they never playtest it, they never even turned the game on at any point during development, even once.
The developers must have been SOOO STUUUUPIDDDDD...
Pitfall! for C64 it was one of the first games I had, however I never wanted to buy the NES Super Pitfall but I would like to have it as part of the franchise collection 😧
1:14 Jack Black 🤔
I can't not watch NES Works... Too enjoyable
At least your video is pleasant to watch!
Also, I totally agree with the "unnecessarily hyperbolic" comment. Even as a child I doubt I would have found that "humor" funny but hey apparently we are the only two. 😉
I never knew about Micronics...but I always hated their games...they all have that same chunky choppy style...it all makes sense now!
The DARK WORLD sections are hilarious!
Awesome video as usual. I played this game a few years back after watching AVGN and it is awful, but like you mentioned in the video, there is something about it that does grab you to a certain degree. It certainly isn't enough to keep you coming back of course, but the feeling is still there. I feel like this game would've been a solid adventure game if the many many flaws were ironed out.
As a kid, I had Super Pitfall on the Tandy, but I did not yet have an NES to get Mario. My dad had gotten the Tandy from an uncle who liked to own a lot of novel things. Their Tandy had Super Pitfall, Rad Warrior, Dungeons of Daggorath, Color Baseball, and Math Bingo. The latter two not really bring memorable games. I had completed Rad Warrior as a kid, but I never solved Super Pitfall. The Tandy versions doesn't have you jumping into vultures, there are brick cave arches you jump into it. I came back as an adult and solved Super Pitfall on the NES and Dungeons of Daggorath as free abandoned ware. Super Pitfall obviously was flawed but because it was one of my first video games and a substitute for Mario, which I didn't have access to until the end of 1991, I liked Super Pitfall.
Even Sunsofts worst with Atlantis No Nazo is still charming
I got to 8:34 and said aloud "what the hell?" and sincerely felt like I was experiencing something out of a modern-day kaizo-esque troll game. What the hell, Super Pitfall? Why?
we actually got a good version of this game in the states. on the trs 80 color computer, of all things.
10:30 not random, not same birds. These fly differently, and it's not the altitude, they fly in a full wavy motion, while the regular vultures fly in a straight line and do dives sometimes. In a game that's all about jumping in thin air to find items, this is enough of a hint that you should jump into it.
Every enemy in the game kills you on contact. The fact that one enemy has a different animation from the others that look like it is absolutely not enough to lead any reasonable player to think, "I bet if I jump into this one enemy, it won't kill me the way every single other enemy in the game does."
@@JeremyParish In the context of the game it did work though (as a 10 year old child I figured it out pretty quickly on my own). But why did I and so many others? Perhaps it's a different perspective that cannot easily be reobtained and is related to the fact that these games were made to be replayed hundreds of times. Experimentation was part of the game and part of the fun. It required pro-active thinking. I'm not saying it's a brilliant game design choice. It's not even good. But I don't think it's horrible or even bad. It is what it is and it was okay for a game at the time.
I mean, games sometimes are VERY unintuitive and abstract and they require experimentation. Why is it that hitting your head under a block makes a mushroom appear (but only sometimes), and touching the mushroom (that looks like an enemy) makes you grow? And that being big protects you from you from one enemy hit. When said like this it sounds like the game designers were on crack. But when you play it, experiment and learn, and talk to friends, it becomes its own thing. The game is designed that way.
Super Mario Bros is obviously way better designed than SP. I'm just making the parallel that it is unfair to say that the vulture is cryptic when anyone playing the game as intended would see that it is not.
There are serious problems with SP, namely the bugs, terrible engine and nearly unplayable controls, but the vulture? It's perfectly fine.
@@JeremyParish And please don't get me wrong, I love your videos and I've been on a watching spree recently, they are all really awesome, bringing to spotlight often forgotten games. I just think that in this particular moment (the vulture) it seemed like a meme got in the way.
I don't know what meme you're talking about.
@@JeremyParish I think he means in the same way that everybody started parroting AVGN after his Castlevania 2 episode that it was THE WORST GAME EVER is kind of a meme.
I absolutely love all your videos.
it's a shame they couldn't have just adapted the rights to the Pitfall 2 arcade game, or gotten a European game like Rick Dangerous to slap the license on.
The main sprite looks like it is based on Jack Black on the old ad, so that counts as an Easter egg of sorts.
I guess.....
I own and enjoy a lot of questionable quality Micronics-developed NES games, but even I won't poison my NES collection with this game. I say this as somebody that poisoned their collection with Athena and Victory Road willingly.
The death sound effect sounds straight out of Action 52
SPROINK, SPROINK! It's the calling card of a truly terrible NES game.
But a delightful Pokémon
I gotta say, I enjoy this video series. While I would content that, somewhere in this spectrum of NES games, there MUST be s "worst" game somewhere... that will remain largely up for debate. Usually the crown is awarded to unliscensed illegal works like those of Wisdom Tree / Color Dreams, or the infamous Action 52, which is not content with being the worst NES game ever, but in fact, a whopping half-hundred collection of the worst unplayable messy garbage ever to torture the NES's poor beleaguered Ricoh 2A03 Processor.
This game in particular though, with it's greased ladders and vines (what other explanation could there be) and invisible keys with no context to provide any meaningful input that such things even exist? Baffling. A good exploratory game gives clues to how it's secrets are found. EG like Zelda hides it's first weapon in plain sight, where the first thing you see besides yourself is a cave to obtain it, leading you to want to enter every available black squarish cave you see in hopes of more loot. Even encouraging you to discover new ones. Metroid stonewalls your right-scrolling progress with, well.. a stone wall too low to walk under. Only by turning around and going left do you discover the item that lets you tuck and roll beneath it, and that same item comes in handy when peeking into item rooms, which contain a conveniently shaped tube beneath the item statue, which begs to be rolled through, the wall within bombed open to reveal new chambers. The first Mega Man game, a game not noted for it's exploration, has a hidden vital item in the Elec Man stage, guarded by three unassuming blocks which can only be lifted away with the Super Arm, or shattered with the Thunder Beam. Without this item, it's virtually impossible (save for a glitch or two) to scale the vertically zig-zagging first of the 4 Wily Castle stages, but savvy players will notice the item in plain sight on the screen layout behind the three bricks which are impassable by default, but coming back with new weapons opens the way.
Cool, Soldier Blade! Are Turbografx-16 games next after the NES series is done?
Nah
Ah, okay. I thought that footage looked a little too good for an nes game...
@@JeremyParish I didn't think so, the Nes catalog is tough enough I imagine.
Haha the echo with dark world
Just 10 seconds in and I'm already angry. All it takes is 13 notes.
The steady climb to 50K 👍🏽
Super pitfall is one of my favorite NES games
That's the second Seanbaby reference you've made (that I've seen). Is this your new Tower of Duraga? Where you realize that 90% of internet culture originated from seanbaby.com - because you wouldn't be entirely wrong.
Episode S-I-X-T-Y F-O-U-R! OOOOOOH my God! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!
This was a good video. I still prefer the AVGN video since it's very entertaining.
This is one of the first NES games I ever rented. It wasn't good. Lol
This game looks like it would be amazing/nightmarish as a speedrun game.
There's a GDQ run by Klaige, and it more than earns its spot in the Awful Games block. It is every bit as ridiculous as you would expect, if not more.
I have never played it, but I have known of it's infamy. It's amazing how many technical problems with it, I'd rather be playing Spelunker. That's a cruel game, but if you take it, it's can be rewarding.
Man I rented this game all super excited, I loved Pitfall 2 on the C64 and the screenshots on the back if the box looked really good.... Ugh it was soooo bad
This game was a mess. I was "lucky" is have it as it kid, picked up as a random birthday or Christmas present. It was a complete cypher, never had any idea what to do. Think I made it to the second world once or twice.
It kind of makes sense - this game looks like Mario's box art. Looks like they were intentionally copying an art style.
Even as a child, Jack Black could hype anything.
I'm sure that I'm in the minority, but I love this game. I did beat it on the Tandy color computer 3.
RUclips's compression really doesn't like the PC88.
Hyperbolic sounds very fun to us Brits.
I feel like the guy who designed this game should apologize to us. I wasted so many weekends on this turd. There was a charm to it, mainly because of the happy go lucky version . And I loved Pitfall 2 so figured maybe I was just missing something. Nope. Many years later the internet would confirm that we all hate it.
The fact that the hero is such an obvious Mario redraw is the saddest part of this game.
Sure this game is really hard, but it's not really that bad imo because it's my favorite game as well!
I could never beat Super Pitfall as a Kid. But Super Pitfall 30th Anniversary Hack I have beaten many times. I don't normally rebeat games...but 30th Anniversary is just so so good. It takes such a terrible design game with genuine potential...and makes it one of my favorite games on NES. Now thats a great hack.
I played a lot of NES duds as a kid, but somehow I think I managed to avoid this one (or else I've blocked it from my memory). I can only assume that means my local rental places didn't have it, because I swear I must have rented everything they had at least once.
I owned this game as a kid, and Jeremy is not exaggerating its terribl-ocity. 😅
Are these out on a book format?
The 1985 and ’86 content is: www.fangamer.com/products/nes-works-volume-i-1985
1987 is inbound next year.
Just...
That music.
No.
I remember this game, and it was garbage. Activision published this NES game after they took over from the Atari 2600 era. During the Atari era, Activision made a ton of excellent games like “Pitfall”, “Ice Hockey”, “Kaboom”, “Boxing”, “Baseball”, “Freeway”, “Dolphin”, “Starmaster”, and tons more. Activision games were great during the Atari 2600 era, but when the company moved into published games for the NES, it was downright terrible. Look at what other NES games that Activision made including “Ghostbusters”, “Ghostbusters 2”, and “The Three Stooges”. Those were complete garbage. I should stick to the Atari 2600 games from Activision which were great.
I still have fond memories of this game even if it is just horrible. The music is just catchy and exploring is neat. Except it's a nightmare.
What is LJN compared to Micronics? Is there any LJN published game made by Micronics?
Nope, Micronics never worked for LJN. LJN contracted most of their games to Atlus or Rare (neither of whom were exactly beacons of quality in those days)
@@djsquarewave On top of that, there's some doubt as to whether Atlus actually did their LJN games. It's known that they subcontracted at least one out (Jaws, to a developer called Westone) and so some suspect Atlus may have done the same with more of their titles. But that is somewhat speculative.
(That said, I'm comfortable with the idea of Atlus having made Friday the 13th. I honestly think it's underrated, and it has a lot of good ideas even if the execution suffers at times. If it wasn't published by LJN, I think it would be recognized as an early, flawed ancestor of the survival horror genre.)
Jason Blalock Westone, as in the “Wonder Boy/Adventure Island” Westone?
@@RonnieBarzel The same.
@@jasonblalock4429 Yep, a bunch of them were subcontracted (some to unknown companies) but it's pretty well established that most of their first wave of NES releases at least went *through* Atlus. Rare also subcontracted some of their games (Zippo Games did a whole bunch for them).
There also was a version on the Tandy Color computer 3 and it actually ran better.