MYSTERY ADVENTURE START..
Atlantis no Nazo (Mystery of Atlantis) is a Platform Game released in Japan in 1986; it was the first game created by Sunsoft for the Nintendo Family Computer that was not based on an old Sun Electronics Arcade Game.
The game's adventure takes place on a mysterious island in the South Pacific, where a novice adventurer named Wynn is seeking to find his master. Wynn is equipped with bombs, which help defend him against enemies and uncover some of the doors that connect approximately 100 zones together.
This game provides examples of the following tropes:
- Blackout Basement: Several zones are pitch dark, and a powerup is needed to make the surroundings even briefly visible.
- Bottomless Pits: A nearly ubiquitous hazard.
- The Cameo: The old master whom you rescue at the end is the hero from Sunsoft's earlier game Ikki.
- Dead-End Room: The 42nd Zone ("BLACK HOLE!"), reached through a door in Zone 29 and through several other doors in the game if you try to backtrack through. It repeatedly kills you via Bottomless Pit until you Game Over. The "Super Pitfall II" prototype instead leaves you with a single life and warps you back to Zone 29.
- Death Throws: When you die, Wynn turns greyscale and drops off the screen. If you get yourself caught in a bomb blast, you're similarly flung off the screen. Your "corpse" is still able to enter doors, some of which are completely invisible and embedded into terrain in such a way that only intentionally killing yourself can reach them. Some of these secret doors are enough to skip roughly half the game and by using two of them back to back, you can immediately jump to the endgame through only having to traverse three zones prior.
- Endless Game: The game doesn't actually stop once you beat it and allows you to go back from the last level and get extra points if one so desires.
- Goroawase Number: The phrase "Nagoya"note is used as part of a puzzle on Zone 20. Your bonus for decoding it is 4,000,000 points.
- Guide Dang It!: Several of the hidden areas are well hidden and require either spamming bombs or consulting a guide.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Chests are everywhere, and they contain nothing but points.
- Invincibility Powerup: The star protects against all enemies and their attacks. It doesn't let you defeat them by walking into them, but it stays with you until you die.
- Magical Mystery Doors: All the game's Zones are linked together through these. Some are invisible and require a stick of dynamite to reveal their location, while others will teleport Wynn the instant he touches one.
- Make Me Wanna Shout: The microphone powerup lets the player stun all enemies on the screen by shouting into the second Famicom controller.
- Mummy: The toughest type of enemy in the game.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Every enemy (and your own thrown bombs) one-shots Wynn.
- Smart Bomb: A powerup turns every bomb you toss into this.
- Solid Clouds: Clouds can be walked on with special boots.
- Spikes of Doom: Subverted. Several of the cave zones have dangerous-looking spikes in the background that do nothing.
- Timed Mission: The game has a time limit on every level. Getting the clock powerup slows the timer down, and the timer will always reset every time you enter a door, even if you return to the Zone you were just in.
- Tyop on the Cover: The zone numbers are rendered as ordinals. However, all zones above #20 contain a "th" suffix (e.g., "21th Zone").
- Warp Zone: Quite a lot of doors will jump you ahead numerous Zones if you know where to look:
- Zone 11 contains a door that jumps you all the way to Zone 52, accessed by intentionally bombing yourself and letting your sprite go into the door as it drops offscreen. Repeating the same trick in that zone to reach another hidden door brings you to Zone 91.
- Zone 1 has a warp to Zone 33. You don't have to bomb yourself to reach it, but you have to hug the right side of the Bottomless Pit directly to the left of where you start the game.
- Zone 41 contains a hidden door that leads to Zone 94, although the warp's destination will force the player to Zone 60 if they don't possess the boot item.
- Subverted with Zone 19. It contains a secret door that leads all the way to Zone 88, the biggest jump in the game, but it isn't connected to any other Zone and only has some chests, a power, and a door back to Zone 19.
- A Winner Is You: After playing through the Final Zone and getting the crystal, the enemies stop firing, Wynn's master who you had to rescue comes to life and starts laughing, and the word "CONGRATULATION" is splayed over the middle of the screen. The game doesn't actually end, though. The prototype Dolled-Up Installment localization, Super Pitfall II, did pluralize the word.
