Montezuma’s Revenge (SMS)

Montezuma’s Revenge Box Art

Montezuma’s Revenge

System: SMS

Release Date: June 1989

Developer: Venture Technologies

Publisher: Parker Brothers

Genre: Platformer

Montezuma’s Revenge. A fitting title for the game. Playing it makes you sick to your stomach. Sega must have been really desperate to allow this crappy port of a 1984 PC game to come out on the under served Master System. You are Panama Joe and you’ve stumbled across an Aztec pyramid. It’s ripe for the plundering, so you dive in to 100 rooms of traps, items, and enemies.

Button 1 makes Panama Joe jump. It’s not timing or pressure sensitive, every jump has the same height and the same distance if you’re moving. Button 2 uses the amulet, if Joe has one in his inventory. This freezes enemies for a moment and allows you to pass them without damage. Otherwise, touching an enemy equals your death. Falling from a ledge equals your death. Touching a trap equals your death. Falling into fire equals your death. Missing a jump equals your death. Let’s be honest, you’re going to die a lot.

You need to collect colored keys in order to open similarly colored doors. You can collect a sword which allows you to kill an enemy that you run into. There are a ton of timing puzzles in the game that are far too unforgiving for my tastes. You can play eleven levels of difficulty, but only get the first six to begin with. You have to unlock the rest by beating the temples. At the bottom of the temple is a Treasure Chamber. I was unable to reach it before I became frustrated and quit.

Graphics: 0.5

The graphics give me a slightly more colorful Atari 2600 feeling.

Sound: 0.0

Bleep… bloop. La cucaracha!

Gameplay: 0.5

The controls are terrible.

Difficulty: 1.0

The rooms should all be able to be completed, but you’ll want to quit far before you get to the end.

Fun Factor: 0.0

This is a very unfun game.

Overall Grade: 0.4

Montezuma’s Revenge earns an E! And we have a tie for worst Sega Master System game up until this point! Maybe the computer versions were better.

Montezuma’s Revenge Video Review on YouTube