www.atarimania.com Posted June 18, 2023 Share Posted June 18, 2023 Another incredible game found! Sent to Atarimania by a Canadian user calling himself Vancouver and completely out of the blue comes... Pit-Fall: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-pit-fall_41566.html Although still pretty rough and VERY difficult, this long lost program by Chris Gray is of historical significance as it is one of the initial concepts that led to the creation of Boulder Dash! 17 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 18, 2023 Share Posted June 18, 2023 9 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said: Although still pretty rough and VERY difficult, this long lost program by Chris Gray is of historical significance as it is one of the initial concepts that led to the creation of Boulder Dash! Peter Liepa talks about this in his interview with Antic Podcast. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 This provides a bit more prehistory than you get from the Peter Liepa interview with Antic Podcast: Boulder Dash - Complete History 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+gnusto Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 That is a great find indeed. To think that one of my favorite 8bit games had a prototype that wasn't unlike the games I was writing at the time 😃 (I almost always wrote character graphics based because it was soooo much faster with my teenage skills). Interesting mild artifacting use for the score line too. Seems like it would have been easier to have a DLI with mode 0 up there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beeblebrox Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 Poss dumb question but running the ATR in Altirra takes you to DOS, where a dir search gives you a pitfall.new file. How do you load it? Loading from DOS gives you a bad file message. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+nasty niff Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 (edited) 6 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said: Poss dumb question but running the ATR in Altirra takes you to DOS, where a dir search gives you a pitfall.new file. How do you load it? Loading from DOS gives you a bad file message. Run"d: Edited June 19, 2023 by mistapaul 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beeblebrox Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 31 minutes ago, mistapaul said: Run"d: No joy. It's booting to Dos 2.0. L option only to load. Not really used Dos 2.0 much. (TBH I hardly use any of the Atari's DOS. Spartados is the only one I really use on occasion.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanny Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 Enter BASIC and type RUN"D:PITFALL.NEW" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beeblebrox Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 7 minutes ago, sanny said: Enter BASIC and type RUN"D:PITFALL.NEW" Ah thanks. I didn't clock you couldn't load from Dos directly. Ok, thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdefabri Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 Very cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ggn Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 Very nice! Also interesting to see that the rock falling algorithm is quite different than Boulderdash. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cjherr Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 Some cool ideas here... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 I'm part way through that BD history video now. I don't think I'd ever seen the arcade game The Pit, which came out around the time of Dig Dug (Atari unsuccessfully sued) Supposedly it is the one to thank for the evolution of BD. Repton (not the shooter) also gets a mention, and it's author claims it was inspired by Boulder Dash but he'd never played it when he wrote it. That text based BD proto - I wonder if that's still around - it would have some historical value. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted June 19, 2023 Author Share Posted June 19, 2023 It seems Pit-Fall is more an exercise in memory as some rocks fall and some don't. The text-based algorithm by Peter Liepa appears to have eliminated any randomness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdefabri Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 2 hours ago, Rybags said: I'm part way through that BD history video now. I don't think I'd ever seen the arcade game The Pit, which came out around the time of Dig Dug (Atari unsuccessfully sued) Supposedly it is the one to thank for the evolution of BD. Repton (not the shooter) also gets a mention, and it's author claims it was inspired by Boulder Dash but he'd never played it when he wrote it. That text based BD proto - I wonder if that's still around - it would have some historical value. Yea never heard of the arcade game The Pit, but Pit-Fall seems very similar to what I've seen online. Very interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdefabri Posted June 19, 2023 Share Posted June 19, 2023 Meant to edit my previous post - there was a BASIC game called "Crystal Crisis" that also somewhat mimicked the arcade game "The Pit". Neither Pit-Fall nor Crystal Crisis can match Boulder Dash, but I have to say I found Crystal Crisis fun. Game is here: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-crystal-crisis_27846.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saberman Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 Nice game! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.