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Interview With Pitfall! Creator, David Crane
Bill Kendrick writes "Good Deal Games recently interviewed David Crane, creator of 1982's Game of the Year, 'Pitfall!' (as well as many other titles for the Atari 2600 and other systems). Topics include the 1000s of fan letters Activision received every week, the firing of Bill Gates, and how tennis helped bring Activision together."
Sweet! Wasn't Elevator Action also on that platform? Oh, well, it's too bad they don't still have those in stores.
At least these should still work:
http://www.zophar.net/unix/atari2600.html
Calm down, it's *only* ones and zeroes.
shockwave version of pitfall
http://www.langleycreations.com/pitfall/
If that one guy at Activision had just kept Bill Gates, Windows might never have existed?
Wow, that's messed up!
To recall the greatest feat (if indeed you can associate great feats with video games :) involving this game.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/12/19/235023 4&mode=thread&tid=127
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
Although David Crane is most famous for his Pitfall! creation, I personally prefer David Crane's A Boy and His Blob, which ran on the 8-bit NES system. The story line of a the boy's blob, and his jellybean consumption is unique. I'd recommend every reader check out the review at SA...I usually don't link to them but in this case I'll make an exception.
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
Evidently not. He probably would have quit, however, he was an insidious genious. He knew stalling the Atari project for a year would help his future plans: World Domination of course.
A.) Pitfall was awesome. B.) I used to mess around with the AC input to my Atari, and when I did this when the Pitfall cart was in the console, Pitfall Harry was able to fly. Why did this happen?? C.) Was there an end to Pitfall? I heard rumors that there was, and when I was able to make Harry fly, I thought for sure I would reach the end (since a flying Harry never had to worry about alligators or scorpions)...but I never did.
I like the last question, it has a good point!
- MT> You been quoted as stating, "man will always use his most advanced technology to amuse himself." Care to elaborate?
Most advanced tech used for amusement... yeah, that fits. Just off-the-cuff I can think of a bunch of examples:DC> Quotes are a funny thing - there are as many attributed to me that I didn't say as there are things I said many times that are easily forgotten. The best line I didn't say was, "It's a jungle in there!" referring to Pitfall! But the quote you mention has been referred to as "Crane's Law", and I firmly believe it.
(Snip the part about electric model airplanes)
- Gamers driving the high-end PC market
- Doom 3
- $400 GeForce/Radeon/Parhelia graphics cards
- Any sports car from Ferarri/Porsche/Mercedes/BMW/Audi/Acura/Lexus/you
r favoritebrandhere
- Insanely huge home theater installations
- Should I even point out that the porn industry was the first to release material using the advanced features of DVD? Or that they drove the adoption of videocassettes?
I'm sure other people can come up with even more examples.(For that matter, look at street racers putting Acura VTEC engines in their Honda Civics!)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Pitfall was my favourite game when I was a kid. I'd say it's a tie between Pitfall! and Super Mario Bros. as to which game really invented the platform game genre.
Pitfall! is what originally got me programming. I remember doing a simplistic platform game in GWBasic using ascii characters. That lead to learning Pascal and C and eventually my career as a Programmer/Analyst.
Activision also deserves kudo's for keeping those programmers/designers from being forgotten. Of course, that lead to the whole rock star image conscious industry that spawned the likes of John Romero.
Whatever happened to that guy anyway?
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
I wonder what he thinks of the recent South Park episode that features Pitfall! when the priest goes into the catacombs.
Pitfall ruined my brother's childhood. After watching me play Pitfall he was deathly afraid of the water (and tar pits for that matter) and never learned to swim. Of course, scaring the crap out of your little brother is every big brother's responsibility. Thank you, David Crane.
One thing that always inspired me to try to play a perfect game of Pitfall was the music. Nice and cheery and adventurous, until you died. Then it got depressing and never got cheery again.
He helped start a company that took work-for-hire, no-credit-getting designers and gave them the credit they deserved...
And he later formed a company where he basically does games for corporations in a work-for-hire type situation. His name isn't even mentioned in the "about us" section of his company website.
Not that I lose any respect for him - I'm no elitist, anti-corporate type. Just figured his name would be on the website...
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Pitfall! was! the! first! game! that! caused! me! to! write! with! lots! of! exclamation! marks!
Hooray! for! Pitfall!
Burma?
Anyhow, if you've never seen it, check out this music video inspired by various Atari games (including Pitfall!).
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
3dfx (you still remember them right?) had a series of ads along these lines a few years ago. They were patterned after those pharmaceutical company ads about how their technology is bettering the planet. Transcript from one:
[file footage of children running through grassy fields, etc.]
What could we do with a chip that performs a hundred billion operations per second? Why, we could bolster the world's food supply. We could use our chip to genetically engineer juicier fruits. Hardy, mineral-rich vegetables. Tastier greens. And tender, all-white-meat chickens. We could use our technology to feed the world.
But then we thought -- hey, we could use it for games!
[All the food disappears from people's plates, and the camera pans to screenshots of games]
3dfx PC accelerators -- so powerful, it's kinda ricidulous.
And from another:
[File footage of doctors and old people and such]
We have in our possession a chip -- a chip that could revolutionize medicine as we know it. By performing a hundred billion operations a second, this chip could help us heal across continents. We could touch more lives, help people live longer than ever, and give us all more time to cherish the journey's truest rewards.
But then we thought -- hey, let's use it for games!
[The life-support equipment stops working and everyone dies, pan to screenshots of games]
3dfx PC accelerators -- so powerful, it's kinda ridiculous.
[Doctor from the earlier file footage shots says "you know, that game's a little violent for my tastes"]
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Pitfall! was defiantely a classic, howver I think it was Pitfall II for the atari 2600 that was truely groundbreaking and possibly the best game ever made for that system. It definately foreshadowed the side scrolling adventure games of the NES and Sega master system. If I'm not mistaken, it actually had a slightly different chipset than the standard 2600 game. Definately worth checking out on an emulator if you didn't catch it the first time around.
We know its you John Romero!
the firing of Bill Gates
/. withdrawl)
I was disappointed... he was fired from an Atari project, not fired from Microsoft (Thought I missed something good over my weekend of
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
This month's Retrogaming Radio has an interview with David Crane. As much as Shane R. Monroe tries to push Mr. Crane into complaining about the "whoring out" of Pitfall (in recent PSX versions of the game). He responds by basically saying that it's ok for other developers who now own the rights to the Pitfall name, do as they please with their investment. This month's episode also has a review of that new act labs light gun.
just what linux ALWAYS needed but NEVER had... a port of pitfall.
http://www.fsckin.com/
So how many of you still have your Pitfall Explorer's Club patch?
Then, the poor sod had no choice but to open his own business? One can imagine how the world would be if one single little stupid decision wasn't taken...
The Atari 2600 is a classic, and will never die. Neither will the Amiga. Just try it, they're indestructible, they will outlive us all.
Hey I wonder what he thinks of the South Park episode in which the priest has to go to the vatican and go through the catacombs which look like Pitfall to get to the sacred document!
Kaboom! was one of those games that you could always play again.
A friend of mine had bought Pitfall and Megamania when they came out. I remember getting to 114,000 on Pitfall after weeks of effort, taking a picture of the screen and sending it in to Activision to get some kind of badge. Naively I was hoping to get at least something special, but I just got the normal badge, no special mention or anything like that. Hey, I even made my mother find two of my friends in the street, so they could see that I really did it.
I think the memory of reaching 114,000 and playing Megamania until the game froze at a score of all 9's are some of my best memories of the Atari 2600. Thanks David Crane and Activision!
What was the text of the plate then? The obvious "PITFALL", or something else? And yes, I've done the obligitory searched with Google, and no reference appears to spell it out, so to speak.
Not a huge deal - but an opportunity for the Karma-hungry.
Ryan Fenton
Wasn't it DR's (Digital Research) work which he licensed or bought?
Imagine the world today if IBM had sewn up the hardware IP and refused Gates the right to sell copies of DOS under his own company's name. Yeah. Mac's all over the place... or something Open would have come along. Entertaining thought for late on a Monday night.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yes it is and the reason why gaming companies don't promote developers anymore is really simple, you don't want to be dependent on the reputation of one developer for the sale of game, otherwise they will have all the cards come renegotiation time.
I never owned an Atari. My experience with Pitfall was on the Intellevision. Lord, that game confused the heck out of me. But still, as a young kid, it drove my imagination wild. I'd have dreams that I was Pitfall Harry, swinging over gators and leaping scorpions in search of treasure.
I remember the TV I would use had the absolute worst red settings. When you'ld play and made Harry run left, it looked as if he had long, red hair that flew in the breeze behind him. Of course, turning around to the right would slap the "hair" into his face. My friends and I would amuse ourselves with that little TV glitch for hours on end.
After the demise of my InTV, Pitfall faded from my scene. Then Super Pitfall came along, and it just had to have the original game hidden in there. Nothing but good memories of a great game came flooding right back. And they say games rot your brain. Horse Hockey! Glad I was alive when this game rolled out. Kids today are too spoiled with their Quake 3 engines and their MMORPGs. Of course, they wouldn't even give it the time of day, given it's outdated graphics and all.
Those kids gotta learn that you can never know where you (or your games) are going if you don't know where you (or your games) came from. Big thanks to David Crane for giving a young me such a fun memory.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Never really got into Pitfall, for me it was all about Jumpman on the 64.
I was hoping they would mention Super Pitfall, the abomination that forever ruined the Pitfall experience in my mind. For those who aren't familiar with the title, Seanbaby sums up the experience pretty accurately.
Anyway, I wonder if David had any involvement in Super Pitfall. I highly doubt it.. but even if he did, who would fess up to that?
Somebody mod this thing up...
db
Cig:
ôô
Reminded me alot of pitfall when I played it... So I'm not suprised.
God spoke to me
Even if it wasn't him, great game. Gotta find an emulator for that one.
Wow, that is amazing!
(For those of you who doubt it, ping the two sites, thesource.ofallevil.com and www.microsoft.com. Enough tries and you'll get the same ip address for either!)
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Harry ran through the hot, sticky jungle. His shirt was drenched with sweat and sticking to his body.
"Dear God, not another pit. And alligators. Why does it always have to be alligators?"
Luckily, this pit had a vine swinging over it, so Harry wouldn't have to hop on the alligators' heads like the last pit. He eyeballed the jump, trying to time when to make the leap to grab the vine.
He jumped... and missed, falling into the pit. The alligators were on him in a minute, teeth bared. Harry pulled out his knife and stabbed the first one in the eye.
"That'll show you, you bastard!"
To Harry's amazement, he was getting excited. The blood and adrenaline had made him hard.
"Alright, who's next? I'm gonna shove something up your butt if you're not careful!"
The next alligator was a big one, 16 feet long. Harry eyed the monster with glee. The alligator lunged, Harry sidestepped and grabbed the alligator from behind. He flipped it over.
"Aye, that's some sweet alligator bum!"
Harry threw away his knife and pulled out his turgid cock. It throbbed with anticipation. Harry rammed his thumb into the alligator's browneye to open it up, then plunged his member deep. The alligator screamed.
The other alligators, apparently stunned by this development, became aroused. One alligator mounted another. The third and last had no partner, so with it's engorged penis it mounted Harry. Harry, feverishly thrusting into the first alligator, nearly came when the alligator entered him.
The inter-species coupling pumped for five minutes and culminated when all three came. Alligator spunk filled Harry's now-bleeding anus and spilled out, spreading down his legs.
Harry tiredly climbed out of the pit. He noticed in the distance a hole in the ground with a ladder going down.
"Y'know, I could really tap some scorpion ass right about now..."
Don't tempt me !!!
I never did send in screen shots for any of Activision's patches. I always meant to get around to it (I earned the ones for Pitfall!, Chopper Command, and Starmaster, at least, and possibly others) but never did. Pathetic as it may be, I've been regretting it ever since (yes, that's correct - I have no life ;).
Actually, I always liked that game. Maybe spiff it up a bit, 3rd person OpenGL view, might be kind of fun!
Clickety Click
What I want to know is... how did he get past all the water lizards?
Retro Gaming Radio has part one of a great interview with David crane, recorded at CGE last month. Very funny, very insightful. It goes into various aspects of the industry, and how its no longer about games, its all about the money.. It's nice to listen to interviews like this with golden age gaming developers and see exactly where all the ideas came from, and how pitfall was created, how to play laserblast, ghostbusters, pitfall2 ports for the c64 and atari800.. anyways don't take my word for it, listen to the show!
It makes me wonder why music industry is the only industry where the product creators are made celebrities. I mean I bet Quake has sold more copies than Madonna's latest album but I don't see John Carmack's face in the news papers or not even in the Quake retail box.
consider yourself tempted :-p
Commodore 64, Loading up the dance floor!
Wasn't it DR's (Digital Research) work which he licensed or bought?
No, it was QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) which he bought up from some guy in Seattle who by now must feel like the Pete Best of the computer world.
Isn't the story that IBM approached Garry Kildall of DR, but he wasn't available at the time so IBM copped a hump at the idea of someone not wanting to see them and went to young Bill instead.
I still think that if not for Microsoft, computers would still be a very much just for geeks thing. This would have been BAD, and don't you forget it.
"Information wants to be paid"
There are a few fans out there writing homebrew stuff for it still!
A real masochists' machine though, printing "HELLO" on the screen is an accomplishment :-)
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Activision also deserves kudo's for keeping those programmers/designers from being forgotten.
Wasn't that why activision was founded? :-) because atari hid their designers away?
I note that Carol Shaw, the River Raid programmer, doesn't seem to want to mention that on her web site.
Someone actually completed this game flawlessly.
My favorite part was jumping across the aligator's backs! That game was so addictive.
What were his royalties for having Pitfall! spoofed on South Park (the molesting priests episode)
?
It's funny..yesterday I decided to whip out my Commodore 64 emulator (x64 on linux) and I played all the old games I liked. I never liked the shoot em ups, but I DID love Pools of Radiance and Legacy of the ancients....LOVED those games..the ONLY thing I couldnt do yesterday was play them! You need the damn translation wheel to start the game..did anyone really KEEP theirs? So I could't play them :( So, I decided to boot up Alter Ego (my next fav game) and played that for 5 hours straight..I made it to Adult w/o a hitch! (Although I got kidnapped and raped at 8..thank God for the save game feature ;))
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Help me out here...
I vaguely recall playing Pitfall for hours in an attempt to achieve a certain score, in order to join the Pitfall! club or something.
There was information on the box, or in the packaging, and when you achieved a certain score (assuming you took a photo of your TV) -you could join the elite club. I think it was like 10,000 or 20,000.
I've not played this game in ages, but perhaps someone can help me out with this vague memory.
--
Um..
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
Pitfall! must! have! been! the! inspiration! for! Yahoo!
--
I romp with joy in the bookish dark
It was one of the best Atari 2600 games that Activision made! I think it had its own sound chip.
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