"Dear Activision..."

By Mikey Shake

 

Dear Activision,

I finally did it and I thought you should know.

It’s been a while, I know we’ve both been busy.  Me with growing up, going to school, starting a career, getting married, etc.  You with a huge video game publishing company that weathered an industry crash with years of ups and downs, and what I hear is big success with a popular series with the kids these days.  I’ve been keeping an eye out, and I’m glad to see you’ve been doing well.

The reason I’m writing is that, well, I finally earned my Explorers’ Club patch.  You know, the free patch you’d send to Pitfall! players who did well enough.  It’s been a while, so here’s what it says in the manual:

…and I finally succeeded in beating that score last month.  As you can see, I asked politely on twitter, but got no response.


I realize your customer service department might have their hands full dealing with a certain type of irate Call Of Duty fan, screaming with red face while their veins course with some kind of energy drink.  I completely understand their getting priority.  Those folks scare the bejeezus out of me, too.

I found out recently that Pitfall! and I apparently share a birthday.  We were both released on the very same day — April 20th, 1982.  A birthday that’s coming up, I might add (*ahem*) .

By my estimate, I’ve been working at it off and on for about 30 years — since somewhere between ’84 and ’86.  I didn’t really know my calendar back then, but like every kid, I knew how to jump over pits.  Even estimating conservatively, that’s a good quarter-century.  I figure with that kind of wait, I should account for inflation, so that pic above more than doubles the requirement.  I didn’t wanna waste your time, so I worked hard at it.  Since my family didn’t have an Atari at home, it made it harder to practice.  In the third grade, some pals and I dug a pit under our tire swing to practice… in real life.  Sometimes, my middle school friends were pissed off that I wanted to drag out their old 2600 from the basement to play Pitfall! instead of Mortal Kombat II or Primal Rage.

I kept with it, during the good times (Pitfall II, Quake II) and the bad.  And let’s not pretend there haven’t been some bad times.  That industry crash in the early ‘80s… the console wars… and let’s not discuss your Double Dragon port for the 2600 that I still like even though it’s practically impossible.

I included the console in the picture at the top so that you know I’m not trying to cheat using a tweaked emulator or some other port (like one of those delightful Activision Anthology collections available for download on your mobile device now!).  Some of those re-releases (as you know) lower the requirement for some games’ "patch points".  My valid score comes from an early-‘80s cartridge on a fully-restored Atari VCS.  In short, this is the real deal.

So, I’ve kept my end of the bargain.  I worked at it for more than 25 years (with a few intermittent breaks).  Could you please send a Pitfall Harry’s Explorers’ Club emblem of membership?  I checked the manual and there was no mention of "limited time offer" or "while supplies last".  I know it’s taken me a while, but see, I only recently got my own Atari console, since, you know, they haven’t been manufactured since the early ‘90s.

I definitely don’t want to be greedy or ask for special treatment.  Just the same patch that everybody else got for doing the same thing when I was a kid.  I’d be happy to pay for postage.  Especially since it’s 2015, and I don’t think that my wife’s going to be able to get me that hoverboard I was hoping for in the next week-and-a-half before April 20th.

I know David Crane isn’t sitting embroidering patches in a room at Activision H.Q., and that you might not have a bunch of them laying around anymore.  But I keep hearing my Call Of Duty-playing friends talking about all the medals they were awarded for unlocking achievements.

Aren’t medals way more expensive than patches?

And let’s not be naive.  It would be great publicity!  "Big giant gaming company reaches out to help nice-guy blogger schmo achieve a life-long dream… for his BIRTHDAY, which is the same day as Pitfall’s 33rd anniversary"?  I mean, come on!  You can’t BUY press like that!  You know I’d make sure to tell everyone an Activision story like that.  And you’d better believe that the next time someone’s going on about how the CoD games are just the same thing every year, one little Pitfall! patch could show the gaming community what a swell bunch of cats the fine folks at Activision really are.  Be it in a bar or on a website or gaming forum, that’s the kind of story I know I like to hear!

And you must know how social media and the blogosphere eat up retro nostalgia stuff!  Twenty-somethings with expendable cash to BURN have social media feeds to fill with content about retro-gaming nostalgia and warm fuzzies!  This could be your "E.T. excavation" — both stories have got pits, right?  And that early ‘80s gaming story got a MOVIE!

Anyway, hope you’re doing well.  I’m still working on those Megamania, Kaboom!, and Keystone Kapers patches, but I’ll probably just buy them online once I earn the right to wear ‘em.  Those are great games.  But Pitfall! isn’t just any game.  It’s the king.

Thank you for your time, and thanks for making some really cool games.  And that Double Dragon game, too.

(kinda) Sincerely,

Mike E. ("Mikey") Shake


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