Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns

Pitfall II for arcades isn't really my cup of tea. The game wants to be about exploring, but it starts you out on a level that is painfully boring and has no exploring. The amount of exploring you can do on later levels is also minimal and is best kept to a minimum, as it is an arcade game and you're better off learning a route through the game. The level design has a couple of neat ideas scattered throughout the game, but overuses many of the same obstacles and pitfalls, which becomes painfully apparent throughout levels 3 and 4, which are quite a chore.
The level design is at its best in level 2, which includes an entertaining walking and ladder climbing section on ice through falling icicles and with bats.
Level 2 also includes other somewhat entertaining elements, such as the balloons, and the parts where you climb your way past bats.
Unfortunately the mine cart riding is confusing at first, and when you know where to go, very boring. The final level is anticlimactic since it offers nothing new and repeats the same obstacles until you get to the final room.
The controls aren't bad per se, but aren't very inspiring, and don't allow you to do any cool things like what you might want to do in a platformer. The game is basic.
As it is an arcade game, the concept of scoring and 1cc is important, but isn't well done in this case. Most of your score comes from collecting a bunch of items, to unlock other items, to finally spawn a clock worth a million points at the end. Yawn. It especially sucks that you have to collect the secret money bags on level 1, which have random spawn points and aren't always feasible to collect (reset and do that boring level all over again)...
Other forms of scoring is for experts that really like this game for some reason, where you intricately plan a route around stage 2, abusing a bug. You can get points from collecting Bats when they are a certain colour, but you can use a bug to prolong this state of the bats, and suicide your lives to get more timers to really milk the stage dry.
Pitfall wasn't for me, and I wouldn't recommend it to others. I do however admit that there are a few positive qualities in it.

THIS is the definitive Pitfall II, a formula brought to perfection. In a shrewd planning move, the treasures you find increase your in-game clock by 30 seconds, and offers a fair level of breathing space and yet a steady pace at which you can proceed to beat the game. Like the original, the game is divided into great "sections", out of which there are four distinct ones in this affectionate remake:

1. The outdoor levels, where you jump over logs and ponds
2. The underground levels where you climb ladders and ride balloons
3. An all-new mine cart level where you need to find correct paths and time your jumps
4. The Aztec underground where you need to dodge poison darts and confront an ancient deity before getting the final treasure.

The level of Indiana Jones-ness is amped up, and it's all in good and wholesome fun, and the docile graphics add a lot to it. This remake does not have the aimlessness of the first Pitfall, or tiring trekking of the second one, as here you have coin continues and the ability to respawn at the screen you've been in last. It is a game with clean stakes, striaght passageways and fair handling. Sega does yet another marvelous job at respecting the source material and completely reinvigorating it, and I can't describe the sheer, unadalturated joy I had as I was beating this game.

Use savestates, and you can beat it in 30 minutes a pop. Arcade version gets a spectacular 4.0.

The SG-1000 port has some glaring issues. While the level layout is generally faithful to the arcade, it throws unexpected diversions and even lots of dead-ends, with some impossible-to-get moneybags which don't even help much since SG-1000 has no time limit. Enemy placement and patterns are also, I think, diabolically placed as they can be insurrmountable at times. It's the kind of game you play and then wonder if anybody has ever playtested it, and is a pale immitation of the arcade perfection it was supposed to be based on. (2.0)