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Most of the time, when a prototype game surfaces,
it's either an unreleased game that no one has seen before, or its of a
released cartridge that was merely a final "test" copy that was sent to
a magazine for review. What we have here, however, is a true rarity
- an early beta of a game almost everyone has owned at one point in their
life.
David Crane's masterpiece, Pitfall!, needs no
introduction. In fact, to this day people continue to play this game,
and recently a perfect game was played - showing that interest in this
game is not going to die down any time soon. This ROM, which I unfortunately
do not know the origins of, is an earlier beta of the released game.
The differences are numerous and quite obvious - and also quite entertaining
if you are a fan of the game.
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The first and most obvious change in the
game is that the rolling logs are not present, so you can run through many
screens completly unhindered. The next thing that is immediately
noticable is the fact that most of the character animation has not been
implimented. The only things that are animated are Pitfall Harry,
the swinging vine, and the opening/closing pits. The scorpion simply
glide across the ground without moving their legs; the snake, fire, and
diamond ring sit stagnantly, and the alligators in the water do not open
or close their mouths. This can cause some serious headaches due
to the fact they can still swallow Harry - aim for the eyes to jump across.
The final item of note is that the timer hasn't been properly implimented
at this point. It seems to randomly display numbers instead of counting
down.
All of the treasures as well as all of the death
spots have been implimented however, so I would have to call this version
about 60% to 70% complete.
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How many hours did I waste on this game in
my youth? I really don't think I want to know the answer to that. It's quite
interesting to see how some of the different features of the
game were implimented - it kind of gives the order of importance if you
think about it a bit.
I am well aware, however, that this ROM could
be a fraud. However, until such time that someone proves that to
me, I will add it to the archive of precious few dumped prototypes.
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