Looking through itch io for some more retro game news to write about, and I've found out that one of my all time favorite games, Pitfall. Has been ported over to the Sega Genesis and Sega Mega Drive using the original graphical style and remastered through the use of AI. As in the words of the creator "44 years later, AI made it possible for me to bring that classic to the console I loved the most in my life: the Mega Drive. I was always curious to imagine games that were exclusive to one platform running on another. And here the result is wonderful."
The creator goes on to say that AI was used to generate sprites for a rough pseudo-remaster. While the graphics are admittedly unpolished since he is not an artist, this project highlights the immense, positive potential of a technology that often receives unfair criticism. The entire source code is available on GitHub, making it simple for anyone to design and swap in their own sprites. For those wanting to help out as well, he's even taking requests from the community to help improve the game such as visuals, sound effects and music.
Credits
- David Crane / Activision — original Pitfall! (1982)
- Thomas Jentzsch — the commented 2600 disassembly that made a faithful port possible: Pitfall! Disassembly v0.9 (2001)
- Paulo Manrique — the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive port and the remaster
Two ROMs in the box
- pitfall-2600-0.0.1.bin — the 1:1 port: the original graphics, sound and screen layout, running natively on the Mega Drive
- pitfall-2600-remastered-0.0.1.bin — the remaster: new artwork, same game underneath
What the remaster adds
- A taller world — the Activision strip and the empty sky are gone; that space goes back to the jungle, the pits and the caves
- New 16-bit artwork — a frame-by-frame animated Harry (8-frame run cycle, ladder climb, vine swing), crocodiles that really open their jaws, a crackling campfire, rolling logs that actually roll
- Parallax jungle — the forest behind drifts as Harry runs, not on a timer
- Floating HUD — outlined score and timer over the canopy, with fedoras for lives
- Identical gameplay — collision still uses the original pixel masks, so every jump lands exactly where it did in 1982
This looks interesting.
ReplyDeleteI love Pitfall games, my favorite being Pitfall 2.
I hope it will be ported too.