"How Pitfall! Builds its World"

[EdS]

David Crane’s Pitfall! for Atari has a surprisingly large world of 255 rooms. How was it done? And done in such a way it could move you left or right by 1 or 3 rooms?

Here’s a write-up, by Jack Evoniuk:

• How Pitfall Builds its World

I’m surprised that, as far as I can tell, I’m the first to detail how exactly Pitfall! rendered its world, but I’m also kind of disappointed. If you haven’t seen this GDC talk about preserving the history of games you absolutely should

Here’s a full map and solution:

And here’s David Crane’s talk on Pitfall!

Pitfall Classic Postmortem With David Crane Panel at GDC 2011 (Atari 2600)

Edit: while we’re here, there’s a recent work-in-progress version for the Beeb:
Pitfall (stardot thread)