After the insanity that was the Bugs Bunny’s Crazy Castle episode, it’s only fitting we go back to a more traditional Nerd episode, and for this one we take a look at Super Pitfall for the NES!
The episode begins with an incredibly brief overview on the character Pitfall Harry — the guy you’re playing as in Pitfall on the Atari 2600 and other early home consoles and computers. You know, the Pitfall guy.
Anyway, while Pitfall (and its sequel not mentioned here, Pitfall II) were great games, Super Pitfall is, as you can imagine by it being here, not a great game. Like, at all.
First things first, James shows off what is clearly a beginners trap in the form of a very tempting ladder which drops you off to instant death. Yeah, not something done in good game design, train people that doing the key thing they should in the game is a bad idea. Right.
Anyway, the Nerd goes on a nice rant about the level design, the enemies, the strange way the game seems to just barely want to run, and just about everything else you can think of! It’s kind of impressive how much basic stuff there is wrong with the game.
Especially great is the “Easter Island Head” moment. Oh, that one really gives me a laugh, even today.
That’s ignoring the cryptic stuff, like jumping in thin air to get items that you need to complete the game and, in one case, jumping into an enemy to warp! Yeah, it’s crazy.
By the end of it, the nerd does complete the game, giving you a basic overview of the entire title. It’s a short, but nice episode.
Final Rating: 4.0/5
I normally don’t like short episodes that much, but this one just seems right. I think it’s the fact that the Nerd doesn’t spend as much time raging out about things as he normally would, and also focuses on just one game this time, rather than multiple like in a few previous shorter episodes. There’s just a nice balance here, and the focus is more the game itself, rather than the Nerd or visual comedy — you only even see James at the beginning and end, so yeah, it’s quite the classic styled episode. I just all around like it.
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