Originating on Atari 8-bit home computers in 1983, this ColecoVision port of the pioneering platform game, Montezuma’s Revenge, was developed and published by Parker Brothers in 1984.

The game’s title references a colloquial expression for “diarrhoea contracted while visiting Mexico“, but thankfully there’s no squitting in this game… What there is, however, is a solid challenge as you take “Panama Joe” on an exploration adventure inside an Aztec temple in order to retrieve as much treasure as possible.

There are snakes, spiders, rolling skulls, laser gates (!), and fire pits to avoid. There are disappearing and re-appearing floors to time your runs over; pitch black rooms to feel your way through; poles to slide down; conveyor belts to ride, and unimaginable leaps-of-faith onto hanging chains in order to reach seemingly out-of-reach areas.

Panama Joe can carry five items at a time and can pick up coloured keys (that are used to open the appropriately-coloured doors), swords (each one allows you to kill one hostile creature before disappearing), and magical amulets that allow you to pass unharmed through creatures for a short period of time.

As mentioned earlier, there are pitch black rooms lower down in the temple. The manual says there are torches that can be found to illuminate these rooms, but I have to admit that I never found a single one of these torches while playing the game and had to rely solely on experimentation and skill to make my way through them.

While I don’t know exactly how many screens there are in this version of Montezuma’s Revenge, it does seem likely that the ColecoVision cartridge version is larger than the original Atari 8-bit cartridge version, which was notoriously cut-down in size to fit onto a 16K ROM.

Overall, I’d say that the ColecoVision version of Montezuma’s Revenge is arguably one of the best of the early ports of this game and is still fun to play now. In fact, while playing the game to get screenshots for this review I managed to complete the game for the first time, much to my surprise! The game’s manual says that “a leap of faith” is required to gain access to Montezuma’s Treasure Room, so I jumped into what looked like a hole in a fire pit in one of the lower darkened rooms, and lo and behold I found myself hanging from a chain in a room filled with gems! I didn’t manage to collect many gems before losing my grip and falling downward, and from there I landed on – and slid down – a pole, and made my way to the next difficulty level with my one remaining life.

More: Montezuma’s Revenge on Wikipedia