Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

Pitfall II: Lost Caverns is a platform video game set in Machu Pichu, Peru. The player controls Pitfall Harry, whose goal is to find and rescue Quickclaw the cat as well as Harry's niece Rhonda, and to recover the Raj diamond.

Pitfall Harry moves left and right and can jump over and onto objects, climb up and down ladders, ascend via balloons and swim to seek treasure and achieve the game objectives. The player can additionally collect gold bars scattered throughout the playfield for more points.

David Crane's previous game Pitfall! (1982) was a major success for Activision and became the company's best selling release at the time. It led to large amounts of merchandising including board games, jigsaw puzzles, and the cartoon show Saturday Supercade, episodes of which featured Pitfall Harry and new characters such as Harry's niece Rhonda and the cowardly mountain lion Quickclaw. These characters introduced on the television series would later appear in the sequel Pitfall II: Lost Caverns.

Crane stated he made the sequel to Pitfall! "at a time when the Atari 2600 should have been replaced by a new gaming system." He had training as an electronics engineer and felt that the Atari 2600 "needed a boost" and designed a custom computer chip called the Display Processor Chip that was unique to Pitfall II: Lost Caverns. The chip allowed for additional graphic capabilities for the Atari 2600 and a music circuit.

Pitfall II: Lost Caverns received positive reviews upon its original release. , which Hudson and Kunkel felt grew repetitive with repeat play sessions. The graphics received praise, with Kunkel stating that it was "the kind of videogame that would be impressive if presented on a 48K computer. On the [Atari 2600], it's simply beyond belief."

The reviewers also wrote about the gameplay, with Hudson describing it as "immensely improved action formula", while The Video Game Update enjoyed that the player could not die in the game, giving them more opportunity to explore the world. Kunkel concluded that the game "offers the most remarkable breadth of any 2600 video game yet produced." while The Video Game Update stated that "We have the opportunity to play and review hundreds of games every year, and there are very few that we feel must become part of your personal collection. Pitfall II is one of those."

Following the release of Pitfall II: Lost Caverns, the Atari 2600 reached the end of its lifecycle as a system, and no other games for it were developed using Crane's Display Processor Chip. Crane was often asked if he would develop a third Pitfall game, he responded that "after one sequel, I was happy to move on to other ideas." Following work on Pitfall II, Crane began work developing games for the Commodore 64, starting with Ghostbusters (1984). Crane stayed with Activision until 1987.

Sega developed an arcade game titled Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns (1985) which featured gameplay elements from both of Crane's Pitfall games. The Japanese company Micronics developed Super Pitfall for the Nintendo Entertainment System, which was described by Stuart Hunt of Retro Gamer as a "loose port" of Crane's Pitfall II. Super Pitfall featured a similar storyline to Pitfall II involving Pitfall Harry exploring caves to seek the Raj diamond and rescue his niece Rhonda and Quickclaw the lion who have become trapped in the cave depths. In 2012, Crane stated he had seen all of the later Pitfall! games and had played a few of them, but he felt they were not "Pitfall sequels as much as other games with the name Pitfall placed on them."