Montezuma's Revenge
Montezuma's Revenge is a video game for Atari home computers, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Apple II, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Sega Master System, and ZX Spectrum (as Panama Joe). It was created by Robert Jaeger and published in 1984 by Parker Brothers. The game's title references a colloquial American English expression for diarrhea contracted while visiting Mexico. Montezuma's Revenge was one of the first platform games: an action game combining treasure hunting, multiple rooms, and puzzle solving.
The player controls a character called Panama Joe (a.k.a. Pedro), moving him from room to room in the labyrinthine underground of the 16th century Aztec temple of emperor Montezuma II, filled with enemies, obstacles, traps, and dangers. The objective is to score points by gathering jewels and killing enemies along the way. Panama Joe must find keys to open doors, collect and use equipment such as torches, swords, amulets, etc., and avoid or defeat the challenges in his path. Obstacles are laser gates, conveyor belts, disappearing floors and fire pits.
Movement is achieved by jumping, running, sliding down poles, and climbing chains and ladders. Enemies are skulls, snakes, and spiders. A further complication arises in the bottommost floors of each pyramid, which must be played in total darkness unless a torch is found.
The pyramid is nine floors deep, not counting the topmost entry room that the player drops into at the start of each level, and has 99 rooms to explore. The goal is to reach the Treasure Chamber, whose entrance is in the center room of the lowest level. After jumping in here, the player has a short time to jump from one chain to another and pick up as many jewels as possible. However, jumping onto a fireman's pole will immediately take the player to the next level; when time runs out, the player is automatically thrown onto the pole.
There are nine difficulty levels in all. Though the basic layout of the pyramid remains the same from one level to the next, small changes in details force the player to re-think strategy. These changes include:
The player controls a character called Panama Joe (a.k.a. Pedro), moving him from room to room in the labyrinthine underground of the 16th century Aztec temple of emperor Montezuma II, filled with enemies, obstacles, traps, and dangers. The objective is to score points by gathering jewels and killing enemies along the way. Panama Joe must find keys to open doors, collect and use equipment such as torches, swords, amulets, etc., and avoid or defeat the challenges in his path. Obstacles are laser gates, conveyor belts, disappearing floors and fire pits.
Movement is achieved by jumping, running, sliding down poles, and climbing chains and ladders. Enemies are skulls, snakes, and spiders. A further complication arises in the bottommost floors of each pyramid, which must be played in total darkness unless a torch is found.
The pyramid is nine floors deep, not counting the topmost entry room that the player drops into at the start of each level, and has 99 rooms to explore. The goal is to reach the Treasure Chamber, whose entrance is in the center room of the lowest level. After jumping in here, the player has a short time to jump from one chain to another and pick up as many jewels as possible. However, jumping onto a fireman's pole will immediately take the player to the next level; when time runs out, the player is automatically thrown onto the pole.
There are nine difficulty levels in all. Though the basic layout of the pyramid remains the same from one level to the next, small changes in details force the player to re-think strategy. These changes include:
- Blocking or opening up certain paths (by adding/removing walls or ladders)
- Adding enemies and obstacles
- Rearrangement of items
- More dark rooms and fewer torches (in level 9, the entire pyramid is dark and there are no torches)
- Enemies that do not disappear after they kill Panama Joe
Montezuma's Revenge
Technical
CPU
- maincpu M6502 (@ 1 Mhz)
- pokey POKEY (@ 1 Mhz)
Chipset
- POKEY (@ 1 Mhz)
Display
- Orientation Yoko
- Resolution 255 x 225
- Frequency 59.923329 Hz
Controlers
- Number of players 4
- Number of buttons 2
- Kind of controler
- stick
- stick
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Montezuma's Revenge Screenshots
History
Montezuma's Revenge was conceived in 1983, when Robert Jaeger's friend Mark Sunshine suggested Jaeger make a game with a Meso-American theme and call it Montezuma's Revenge.
Jaeger, who was only 16 at the time, exhibited the still-unfinished game with his father at a consumer electronics convention. Parker Brothers officials expressed interest and quickly convinced Jaeger to sign the rights over to them.
Jaeger, who was only 16 at the time, exhibited the still-unfinished game with his father at a consumer electronics convention. Parker Brothers officials expressed interest and quickly convinced Jaeger to sign the rights over to them.
Leaked prototype
The original game that Jaeger developed for the Atari 800 utilized the entire 48k of memory in the computer. Parker Brothers however wanted to release it in cartridge format, which dictated trimming it down to fit in 16k of ROM. The original disk version contains many features omitted from the smaller cartridge versions, including an animated title and character introduction, replacement and bonus life animations, a high-score entry screen, and a bat obstacle. The played character also features a different hat and is named "Pedro" rather than Panama Joe. Furthermore, this version contains an unfinished boss screen featuring a gigantic King Montezuma who can stomp the player character to death. This screen is unfinished, and therefore this version of the game cannot be completed.Parker Brothers released console versions for the Colecovision, Atari 2600, and Atari 5200, plus computer versions (all disk) for the Apple II, Commodore 64, IBM PC, and Atari 8-bit family. A cassette tape version was developed separately in the UK for the Sinclair Spectrum. The Atari 2600 port is only 8k and has half the levels of the other versions. In 1988, another port was made for the Sega Master System, which retains the basic gameplay and level structure, but with significantly improved graphics, sound, and other added features.
Sequels
In 1998 a 3D game for modern game systems has been developed by Utopia Technologies called Montezuma's Return. A 2D version of that game for the Game Boy Color was developed by a third party.
