Category: 1984

  • Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

    Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

    In the enigmatic realm of 1984, Activision bestowed upon the gaming cosmos the mesmerizing platform video game – Pitfall II: Lost Caverns. This sequel, born from the ingenious minds of the renowned jungle explorer, Pitfall Harry, and the visionary David Crane, emerged as the evolutionary offspring of its predecessor, Pitfall (1982). Brace yourself, for a journey into the depths of complexity and innovation awaits.

    PublishersActivision, Inc.
    DevelopersActivision, Inc.
    Release date1984
    GenreAction

    The Unfolding Tapestry: Features Beyond the Abyss

    Embark on an odyssey within Pitfall II, where the familiar Atari 2600 becomes a canvas for technological wizardry. The jungle expanse widens, stretching beyond the confines of its predecessor. Vertical scrolling transforms the gaming landscape, revealing swimmable rivers teeming with lethal eels. The symphony of the jungle is accompanied by music, an auditory tapestry that weaves itself into the gaming experience. Balloons, ethereal vessels of escape, grant the power to float between areas, transcending the ordinary boundaries of platform gaming.

    Witness the birth of Pitfall II amid the ashes of the 1983 Lost Caverns crash, a phoenix rising when interest in the Atari 2600 seemed to wane. David Crane, a virtuoso of the digital realm, conjured a “Display Processor Chip” for the cartridge, a technological artifact transcending the system’s customary limits. Enhanced visuals dance before your eyes, while four-channel audio replaces the conventional two, orchestrating an auditory spectacle that echoes through the annals of gaming history.

    We might have the Pitfall II Lost Caverns Download available for more than one platform. Pitfall 2 Lost Caverns is currently available on these platforms:

    Atari 2600 (1984)

    The Grand Migration: Pitfall II Across Platforms

    Behold the migration of Pitfall II across the digital expanse. The Atari 5200, ColecoVision, TRS-80 Color Computer, Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, MSX, Commodore 64, and IBM PCjr, each bearing witness to the alluring glow of Pitfall II’s radiance. Crane’s masterpiece, encapsulated in a cartridge, transcends the boundaries of systems, whispering tales of exploration and peril.

    In the arcade realm, Sega, the digital sorcerer, wove a new visual aesthetic and gameplay, a seamless fusion of Pitfalls I and II. Japan’s SG-1000 console, too, embraced the allure of Pitfall II, a distant echo of jungle exploration echoing through its circuits.

    The Famicom Echo: Super Pitfall’s Ode to Origins

    As the digital winds swept through the Famicom/NES landscape, Super Pitfall emerged, a creation partially indebted to the primal plot of the original Pitfall 2: Lost Caverns. A metamorphosis of narratives, a homage to the roots that gave rise to a legend.

    In the cacophony of pixels and melodies, Pitfall II: Lost Caverns transcends the constraints of time, its legacy echoing through the corridors of gaming evolution. An odyssey that defied the 1983 abyss, a testament to innovation, complexity, and the enduring spirit of exploration in the digital jungle.

    [title] Screenshots

    Atari 2600

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  • Rogue

    Rogue

    Game Description

    Rogue is a dungeon crawling video game created by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman, with later contributions from Ken Arnold. Rogue was created in the early 1980s as a freely distributable executable for Unix-based mainframe systems. It was later incorporated into the Berkeley Software Distribution 4.2 operating system (4.2BSD). Toy, Wichman, and Jon Lane created commercial ports of the Original Rogue-like game for a variety of personal computers under the company A.I. Design, which was financially supported by Epyx software publishers. Other parties have since made additional ports to modern systems using the game’s now-open source code.

    In Rogue, players control a character as they explore several levels of a dungeon in search of the Amulet of Yendor, which is located on the lowest level. The player-character must defend himself against a slew of monsters that prowl the dungeons. Players can collect treasures along the way that will help them offensively or defensively, such as weapons, armor, potions, scrolls, and other magical items. A rogue-like game is a turn-based game that takes place on a square grid represented in ASCII or another fixed character set, giving players enough time to figure out the best way to survive. The original Rogue like game uses permadeath as a design choice to make each action by the player meaningful — if a player-character loses all of his health through combat or other means, that player-character is simply dead. Because the dead character cannot respawn or be brought back by reloading from a saved state, the player must restart with a new character. Furthermore, no game is the same as any other because the dungeon levels, monster encounters, and treasures are generated procedurally for each playthrough.

    Rogue 1980 was inspired by text-based computer games like the 1971 Star Trek game and the 1976 Colossal Cave Adventure, as well as the high fantasy setting from Dungeons & Dragons. Toy and Wichman, both students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, collaborated to create their own text-based game, but they wanted to incorporate procedural generation elements to create a unique experience each time the user played Rogue 1980. Toy later worked at the University of California, Berkeley, where he met Arnold, the lead developer of the curses programming library, on which Rogue video game relied to simulate a graphical display. Arnold assisted Toy in optimizing the code and adding new features to the Rogue video game. When Toy met Lane while working for the Olivetti company, he was inspired to create commercial ports, and he enlisted the help of Wichman once more to help with designing graphics and various ports.

    Original Rogue video game gained popularity among college students and other computer-savvy users in the 1980s, thanks in part to its inclusion in 4.2BSD. It inspired programmers to create a number of similar titles, including Hack (1982) and Moria (1983), though because Toy, Wichman, and Arnold had not released the source code at the time, these new games introduced new variations on top of Rogue water. These titles spawned a long line of games. While roger Craig smith games were not the first dungeon-crawling game with procedural generation features, it was the first to introduce the subgenre of roguelike RPG procedurally generated dungeon crawlers with Dungeons-and-Dragons-like items (armor, weapons, potions, and magic scrolls) that also had permadeath (permanent death) and an overhead graphical view — albeit via ASCII drawings, rather than text descriptions in natural language

    PublishersEpyx
    DevelopersA.I. Design
    Release date1980
    GenreRole-playing

    Download [title]

    We might have Rogue game available for more than one platform. Rogue game is currently available on these platforms:

    DOS (1984)

    Text instructions (how to play on Windows)

    1. Download the DOS emulator, DOSBox, and put a shortcut for DOSBox onto your desktop.
    2. Download and extract Rogue_DOS_RIP_EN.zip
    3. Open the extracted Rogue folder and then open the “Game Files” folder.
    4. Drag the file called “ROGUE.EXE” on top of the DOSBox icon and Rogue should now launch in DOSBox.
    5. Enjoy Rogue game!

    [title] Screenshots

    DOS

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