Pitfall is so unappreciated when it comes to gaming history, especially in regards to platformers. It doesn't help Activision actively buried it after they sniffed the cocaine money from Call of Duty.
That's the story of a lot of those super old Activision games.
I think the problem with Pitfall is they tried to treat it with maybe too much reverence? In the sense that they poured all this money into certain aspects of production value that didn't need it.
Like if I remember right, Bruce Campbell voices Pitfall Harry in this. But then the gameplay is obsessed with referring back to the old Atari game.
At some point you have to recognize that Atari game was so old that as long as your new Pitfall game contains an adventurer jumping around in the jungle, it's probably good enough. In an alternate universe you could imagine something like this.
But Activision is too focused on profit to ever let something like that flourish, you know? If it's Pitfall, it's gotta be for kids, it's gotta be silly, it's gotta be this focus tested maximized demographic celebrity endorsed goop. Money first, concept last.
If Activision itself treated Pitfall with more reverence and care maybe the rest of the industry would, too. But I don't think people in the mainstream even know what Pitfall is anymore or where it came from or what it established. If anyone knows anything about Pitfall today it probably just gets filed under "that weird old game."
