Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure wasn't alone...

[Edmond Dantes]

.... Okay, so I was looking thru the inserts that came with my Lost Treasures of Infocom sets (published by Activision) and it had a catalogue that mentioned three upcoming SNES titles... one of which was an early working title obviously: Pitfall Harry - The Mayan Adventure.

What amazed me was that it wasn't the only Atari VCS-era game to get a proposed relaunch. The same page also advertised a SNES rebirth of Kaboom (called Kaboom: the Mad Doctor's Revenge) and a new River Raid game.

Have prototypes for these ever surfaced? Or better yet, were these actually finished, and maybe just released under different titles? I would like to know. Especially about River Raid.

(this same catalogue also mentions Mechwarrior 2 under its original working subtitle: Mechwarrior 2 The Clans, btw).

I should really scan this page.

[Gameguy]

Have prototypes for these ever surfaced?
Prototypes have been found for both games, but I don't believe they've ever been made public.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/4996-kaboom-snes-and-river-raid-3-snes-found/


Both games were cancelled, they're not available in other regions or with alternate titles.

http://www.unseen64.net/2010/03/31/river-raid-snes-cancelled/
http://www.unseen64.net/2009/11/21/kaboom-the-mad-bomber-returns-snes-cancelled/

[Edmond Dantes]

That sucks. I would like to play the River Raid remake.

According to that topic, they were cancelled because Activision "didn't feel they pushed the SNES to its limits." .... In that case, its odd that they let Pitfall: the Mayan Adventure slide, since it felt like every other Virgin platformer to me (seriously, if you compare it to Sega Aladdin or the Lion King game the playstyle is very similar. At least, if I remember right)

[2600gamebygame]

I thought the 2600 version that was hidden in the game (SPOILERS) looked and sounded terrible, compared to the 2600 version. At the time I had no knowledge of NOAC or any of that business, I'm guessing that's what they did here?

[Jorpho]

At the time I had no knowledge of NOAC or any of that business, I'm guessing that's what they did here?That would have been costly and impractical – and probably would have produced a more accurate experience. I suspect that version was probably produced through some combination of emulation and re-coding from scratch.

[SparTonberry]

The 2600 and the SNES at least used related CPUs, so they could PROBABLY have reused some of the code. But I can see how that might be hard to recreate the video and sound accurately.
I hear programming graphics on 2600 was EXTREMELY dependent on CPU instruction timing.

[Leo_A]

Pitfall is a recreation, not a port of the original (The SuperNes wouldn't of been able to emulate it full-speed, most likely). Someone years ago, perhaps right here at DP, compared the code of the SuperNes game and the 2600 rom and there wasn't any remnants of the 2600 code in the Mayan Adventure. It didn't seem off to me, but I was never a fanatic about the original where as some know it like the back of their hand and have spent many hours perfecting their runs.

I wish Klove had leaked out the River Raid and Kaboom prototypes when he parted ways with Activision (Rather unhappily, it would seem, if I recall his last few posts correctly at AtariAge). I don't know if they're playable, but I'd love to at least gotten an idea of what they were planning.

River Raid for the 2600 is what I consider my favorite game.