The adventures of Pitfall Harry are a big part of many a gamer's childhood. His escapades were the closest we got to play (outside of licensed games of varying quality) as Indiana Jones on second generation consoles such as the Atari 2600. However, one particular game in the series was a lot more Kingdom of the Crystal Skull than Raiders of the Lost Ark, if you catch our drift.

We are truly sorry if you happen to have had your childhood traumatized by Super Pitfall, a misguided attempt to bring the franchise to the NES in 1986, itself a conversion of Pitfall II: Lost Caverns. Micronic's game had a ton of design issues like the infamous pits of instant doom that you would only know about after you drop off the ladder, or a pistol weapon that was almost useless in face of rampaging enemies. A combination of these and other factors made the game one of the worst in the entire NES library.

But that was then and this is now! On the 30th anniversary of this "hidden gem", Nesrocks decided to give the original game a fan makeover, extensively changing the visuals, redesigning levels and even including all new music composed on FCandChill.

Not only does the game now look and sound lovely, it is actually now fun to play. This modification has impressed even David Crane, the original Pitfall creator who people mistakenly still believe had something to do with this game.

David reached out to Nesrocks and left the following email reply:

Truly an amazing and impressive effort! And to learn assembly language programming in order to pull it off is equally impressive.

I run into Super Pitfall haters all the time and I am quick to point out I had nothing to do with it. Now I can point them to your improved version.

Congratulations! – DC

If you happen to still have your original cartridge lying around, it's time to stop using it to prop that shaky table leg. Grab the modification from here and give it a try in your RetroN 5 or Retro Freak.

If we may add a quote from a great person, "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad" unless you find some amazingly dedicated people that three decades later pick up your rushed, broken work and polish it into a near masterpiece.

Mind you, no one will ever be able to save Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.