Pitfall 2 Speed Run - Atari 2600 - Best 100% time (max score):

Author's comments:

In my opinion the most interesting speedrun of this game would be to play it the way it was supposed to be played -- collecting all treasures, and avoiding losing any points along the way. Welcome to my first successful run at doing that!

Thanks to vdub_bobby for teaching me that Harry can jump over both a hole and a frog next to it if timed right. I didn't do this the first time I came to the first frog, but when I passed him by again I did. Jumping over him at this point is pretty easy because you know what point of his animation he'll be at when you enter the room.

During the big descent fairly early on it would probably be possible to be much more agressive at passing the bats when entering the rooms to the left, but I played it safe (and lost about 5 seconds per bat 3 or 4 times).

The room I enter after my second balloon ride is the most dangerous room in the whole game for me. I get hit there way more than half the time. You'll see how close
I got to getting hit, which would have ended the run. Two balloon rides later I enter the last of those little rooms, and I made a big mistake. I waited for the middle scorpion when it was totally unnecessary, which in turn moved the scorpion farther right and made me have to wait longer for him when I was ready to come back down.

I really don't know whether it is faster to go down 4 floors and collect gold before getting the diamond ring, or get the ring first and then climb up 4 floors. I got the ring first because that way is easier for me.

The final ascent with lots of birds and bats went alright but not spectacularly. Had I manipulated the birds in the second half I would have saved 4 seconds. That final ascent is the area where the most time is gained or lost.

Big thanks to stanski and vdub_bobby for their help. Big thanks to the verifiers, who I have to assume played through this game again just so they could verify my runs.

Big thanks to mikwuyma for all the work he does, nate for encoding my run, DJGrenola for ... well, actually I don't know what work DJGrenola does for SDA but thanks nonetheless, and Radix for continuing to run the web's best game videos site.

My guess is that this game was an evolutionary step that directly helped lead to Super Mario, Castlevania, and Metroid.

Enjoy!

(This was played on Activision Anthology for Game Boy Advance. I have never had an Atari 2600, sorry to say.)