Pitfall II

Pitfall II intro screen

Pitfall II intro screen
Pitfall II game screen #1 Pitfall II game screen #2
Pitfall II intro screens

Pitfall II was the first sequel to the smash, cross platform hit Pitfall from Activision (The Coco never had the first one officially; unofficially, Ken Kalish's Trapfall is a very close clone). The biggest difference with Pitfall II is that you are no longer limited to horizontal motion (well, some vertical movement was allowed in the original, but only within the same screen)... there are literally dozens of smooth scrolling, vertical screens to go through, as well as the traditional horizontal screens. Like the original, you are trying to collect treasures, and dodge various dangers. Expanding on the original is underwater areas, and "checkpoints", which allow you to sort of save your position somewhat, without having to go through the whole maze again.

Pitfall II also has a hidden feature originally designed to allow PAL based Coco's (European and Australian) to run the game in color; hold down the <CLEAR> key while it is booting. This has the added bonus of allowing Coco 3 users to use 4 PALETTE commands before loading the game, and getting back your artifact colors, or even setting your own. Just change PALETTE's 4 to 7 (4 is normally black, 7 is normally white, and 5 and 6 are red/blue).

Title: Pitfall II

Author: Steve Bjork (SRB Software) for Activision (original, non-Coco version by David Crane)

Publisher: Tandy/Radio Shack

Released: 1985 (original, non-Coco version released 1983)

Requires: Color Computer 1/2/3, 64K RAM, disk ONLY, joystick.

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