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                    historia.vg

Challenge 9: Montezuma’s Revenge (1984, Atari 8-bit)

What if we take the open exploratory platform mechanics of 1984 and add the keys, items, and backtracking of Adventure? We’d get some kind of… platform adventure. While Montezuma’s Revenge isn’t the absolute first proto-Metroidvania collectathon, its combination of traditional spelunking platform mechanics with keys, weapons, items, inventory management, and open map make it a particularly sophisticated one for its era.

How to Play

Navigate Panama Joe through Montezuma’s fortress to the treasure room at the end. Once you reach the treasure room you get a few seconds to jump around on chains collecting as many jewels as possible before sliding down a pole to the next difficulty level.

Items to help you include:

Amulet: Temporary invincibility from enemies
Keys: Color coded keys open the matching doors
Sword: Defeat a skull or spider upon contact
Torch: Illuminates dark rooms. It is not used up.

You only get 5 inventory slots and can’t pick up items if you’re full, including jewels which are just points.

There are 9 difficulty levels. The first uses the left half of the map. The second uses the right half of the map. The third and beyond use the full map, with minor changes as it goes on.

Control	Action
Joystick	Move
Button	Jump

Items are used automatically.

Emulator: Altirra
ROM: Montezuma-s-Revenge-Parker-Brothers.zip (atarimania.com)

Press SELECT (F3) to choose between starting on difficulty levels 1-3.

Objectives

Beat the first level (left pyramid)
Beat the second level (right pyramid)
Beat the third level (full pyramid)