Montezuma's Revenge featuring Panama Joe (1984)

Preliminary: Hmmm I'm nervous here, it seems like another game I will get hooked to, it's credited as an early Metroidvania game, and it seems the Sega Master System version has walkthroughs on GameFaqs in the style that I love to read and use (one of the main reasons I like gaming... can't wait to get to the online written walkthrough era of gaming, i.e. late 90s and on). But I have to play the Commodore 64 version, or one of the other early versions. I first came upon Panama Joe, but that's actually a Speccy port that came after the many systems this was "originally" released on. Hard to tell what it was originally programmed for considering its release across platforms from Atari 2600 to IBM PC to Apple II... (Oh neverminded, it is indeed originally written for Atari 800, so I will play that version. Crazy to think it was originally gonna require 48k of memory and was cut down to 16k... huge cut). But yay! There's a set ending, so here we go on to the Atari 8-bit version

Look: 7/10 Elaborate well-done sprites that all fit the mood and feel and pre-Zelda/pre-Metroidvania feel that makes it all come together... even as I was frustrated I couldn't save my game, not even savestate, I knew I would return to this. And in true gaming fashion, I would know the level designs and mechanics well enough to hopefully go faster through the parts I had gotten through, and truly embrace this game as I enter the SNES/PS1 era where I didn't need savestates or abusing exploits to be able to enjoy the games (I almost included NES there, but then I remembered I will need savestates for sure for the action-adventure games lol).

Sound: 8/10 So many of the sounds remind me of Super Mario Bros. So this set both Mario and a Metroidvania precedents!

Play: 7/10 A lot of the usual tacky features: drop from any platform (even reasonable ones) you die, so expect to climb a lot of unnecessary seeming ladders, etc. I like the jump mechanic compared to most early platformers and I love love love the truly Metroidvania feel to it. I really wish there were a way to save, I felt motivated to push through but will have to start over tomorrow cuz ran out of time in the night. And I wish it technically wasn't so repetitive (tho the changes they make along the way make it feel fresh and expansive, in reality it's quite repetitive). It felt both forgiving and brutal--I died a lot and had to restart the game from the beginning not only because of no saves, but also because of losing all my lives--but it also had a relatively forgiving jump mechanic and collision masks, it had a logical trial and error process rather than the usual ridiculousness of these early platformers, it felt like Abe's Odyssey to an extent cuz you get to restart at the screen you're on rather than frustratingly way back, and relatedly, it had a huge amount of lives for an early platformer that almost made me think it was Abe's Odyssey esque in that you have infinite lives but hard gameplay (a mindset I love and appreciate, mixed with reasonable checkpoints) but instead just that they understood learning the game should be embraced and allow many lives so you can slowly chip away at getting to know the game. (rather than how a lot of early platformers just hated you and wanted you to already know the game lol).

Feel: 8/10 I can't deny how Zelda, Castlevania, Mario etc Feels this was. Like wow. The collecting items, the adventure feel, mixed with platforming--it's all been done before in my backlog, but... I dunno, it just truly felt like those upcoming "modern games" of the era I so love. Most the complaints I had that made it feel "behind"/pre-modern were all centered on gameplay mechanics, like the usual drop-platform-and-die mechanic even tho it was a choice and not technology limitation for 1984... and the usual lack of fighting back (tho I suppose you can just lose a Sword when you have one)... and the too-rare-for-'84 feature of jumping and latching right onto a ladder (so nice when early platformers allow for that mechanic... feels so advanced... I'll keep in mind the creator had to minimize this from a 48k game to a 16k game heh...)

Attachment: 7/10 Upon "replaying" this all in one sitting so that I wouldn't have to worry about saves, some of the collision masks frustrated me especially with the gems (also why can't you collect a gem/treasure when your inventory is full, even tho it doesn't go in your inventory it goes to your score? odd). But the fact I returned to it, the fact I pushed through, the fact it felt so special and ahead-of-its-time with the adventure aspects very reminiscent of Zelda, Castlevania etc.... a special game for sure. Not perfect, but memorable and precedent-setting. The way the keys weren't just for a maze-like situation for progression, but also a "after you've overcome those difficulties you will have gotten enough keys and swords to progress to the next area with higher difficulty" etc. Classic Metroidvania vibes that makes me excited to replay Tomba too heh (I'm currently replaying Crash Warped and holy crap, I got through the first 3 worlds in just an hour and a half on stream lol).

Oh wow, the seemingly "secret" (it's not, it's just the ending of each "level"/difficulty) world full of treasures and ropes that you just fall down is both super cute and advanced (reminds me of secret worlds in Super Mario games), annnnd kinda tacky considering all the work I went through to get treasures/gems along the way. But just glad I finished it, and I stopped using the video guide halfway through and just winged it. As much as it was advanced in its adventure game-ness, it really was still an action game first and foremost: push through and survive and you'll likely get all the keys you need.

Completion: Main Story at Difficulty 1, Score 38400 Playtime: ~2 hours