Pitfall: The Lost Expedition

Pitfall: The Lost Expedition is an action-adventure video game for the Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. It was released by Activision on February 18, 2004 in North America and February 20, 2004 in the PAL region. The PC version was released on October 15, 2004 only in North America. The game was also released on September 23, 2008 on the Wii as Pitfall: The Big Adventure.^[1] Pitfall: The Big Adventure was released under the brand Fun4All in Europe.^[2]

Background

It's 1935 and Pitfall Harry, the fearless, rough-and-ready treasure hunter from the Pitfall series returns to help a beautiful archaeologist rescue her father and thwart the evil Jonathan St. Claire from claiming the lost city of El Dorado. As Harry, players encounter various animal enemies, including scorpions, bats, piranhas, alligators and even penguins, as well as human adversaries under the leadership of the sinister St. Claire. Numerous abilities are at the player's disposal as Harry recovers pages of the Heroic Handbook. With his various items, Harry is equipped for almost anything. Harry will also find lost explorers and be rewarded with golden idols for his trouble, which he can then use as currency with the Shaman.

Characters

• Pitfall Harry (Steven Jay Blum) - A brave explorer, who had no intention of getting involved in El Dorado in the first place. He maintains a soft spot for Nicole through the game, although this affection usually went unreturned. Harry's father abandoned him to go exploring, so Harry was fathered by Dr. David Crane (named after the creator of Pitfall). It appears that they lost contact after Harry dropped out of school. In the end-scene, he says to Nicole, "There's a man back home, Dr. David Crane, to whom I owe a long overdue visit". Whether they were reunited is yet to be revealed.

Allies

• Dr. Bernard Bittenbinder (Phil Hayes) - friend to Kevin McCallister and leader of the expedition, he acts as a role model to Harry and gives him the sling and Heroic Handbook.

• Nicole McCallister (Jessica Bogart) - Harry's love interest and eventual girlfriend, Nicole is an attractive bookworm/archaeologist who came to the jungle to look for her father Kevin. She enlists in the help of an evil shaman named Pusca, who helped her find the temple where her father was last seen. Upon finding his lifeless body, Nicole becomes distraught and desperately searches for a loophole that will bring Kevin back. She is comforted by Harry, who sends her back to base camp, where she goes missing. Later, she returns to the Gate of El Dorado, and along with Harry and Micay, she places the artifacts in their slots and opens the gate before stealing them and revealing that she made a deal with the sorcerer Pusca: if she opened the gate, he was going to send her back six months in time to save her father. She is unaware that Pusca has no more use for her now and kills her before taking Micay and the artifacts through the time portal, and Harry goes in after them. After getting the magical powers from one of Micay's butterflies and defeating Pusca, Harry returns to the present, where her body lay. Using the same magic powers, he holds her, kisses her and brings her back to life, and the two are seen kissing at the very end of the game.

• Micay (Cree Summer-Francks) - the local native princess, who according to Harry is "Smokin' hot". In the game, he is required to "rescue" her. She loves butterflies and flirts with Harry on several occasions. She comes from the past and needed Harry to find all the artifacts so that she could save El Dorado and her people from the Spanish invaders. For his pains in rescuing her, he is given his shield.

• Hubert Leech (Michael Beattie) - a young inventor with bad flying skills and a knack for getting stuck in bad places, for example, steep ledges and floating ice bergs. He is often seen using a flying contraption and gives harry the Heroic Handbook page for the "Heroic Dive", providing the dialogue.

• Quickclaw (Rino Romano) - a jaguar, with the power of speech. He doesn't really fit in, and follows Harry around just because he is lonely and doesn't fit in with the other jaguars. Quickclaw first met Harry in the jungle, but follows him all over the Amazon rainforest. He came from the past, like Micay, and used to steal food from the villagers. He was cursed with speech by Micay, so that he wouldn't fit in with mankind or his own kind. At the end of the game, Micay lifts the spell and Quickclaw is last seen walking off with his own kind.

Mobile

Also released at this time were three mobile versions of the game: Pitfall: The Lost Expedition Caves, Pitfall: The Lost Expedition Glacier, and Pitfall: The Lost Expedition Jungle.

Reception

Reception

Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings (Xbox) 74.25%[3] (GC) 73.08%[4] (PS2) 72.27%[5] (GBA) 65.75%[6] (PC) 64.90%[7] (Wii) 56.67%[8] Metacritic (Xbox) 73/100[9] (GC) 73/100[10] (PS2) 70/100[11] (GBA) 66/100[12] (PC) 66/100[13] (Wii) 44/100[14] Review scores Publication Score Edge 6/10[15] EGM 5.67/10[16] Game Informer 6/10[17][18] GamePro [19] Game Revolution C+[20] GameSpot (Xbox) 7.3/10[21] 7.1/10[22][23] (PC) 7/10[24] GameSpy [25] (GBA) [26] GameZone 8/10[27][28][29] (Xbox) 7.1/10[30] (GBA) 6.5/10[31] IGN 7.8/10[32][33] (GBA) 7/10[34] Nintendo Power (GC) 4/5[35] (GBA) 3.7/5[36] OPM (US) [37] OXM 7.8/10[38] PC Gamer (US) 76%[39] Playboy 83%[40]

Pitfall: The Lost Expedition received mixed to positive reviews from critics, while The Big Adventure received mixed to negative reviews. On review aggregrator site Metacritic, it received a score of 66/100 for the PC and Game Boy Advance versions,^[12][13] 70/100 for the PlayStation 2 version,^[11] 73/100 for the Nintendo GameCube and Xbox versions,^[9][10] and 44/100 for the Wii version.^[14] GameRankings also gave it a score of 73.08% for the GameCube version,^[4] 72.27% for the PS2 version,^[5] 74.25% for the Xbox version,^[3] 65.75% for the GBA version,^[6] 64.90% for the PC version,^[7] and 56.67% for the Wii version.^[8]

References

External links

• Pitfall Harry: The Official Website
• Pitfall: The Lost Expedition at MobyGames
• Pitfall: The Lost Expedition (Game Boy Advance) at MobyGames