The 40th anniversary version of this gaming classic doesn’t do it justice
Montezuma’s Revenge was a classic game that introduced a lot of players to gaming concepts that only recently have been capitalized on. When I first was aware of it in grade school in the 80s, it seemed like the most difficult game; an expansive temple, with peril at every corner, that required precision jumping and exploration that required a lot of planning and a lot of peril. It was challenging enough to where I mostly stayed away from it, but I sure as heck respected it it.
Which is why I’m so utterly disappointed in this 40th Anniversary Edition.
Montezuma’s Revenge‘s gameplay loop predated the Metroidvanias that arrived in the years since. It had great visual for the era, and surprising nuance. The game featured an environmental boss fight that was incredibly epic for its time. But this? This takes all of that and seems to throw it out of the window.
It’s hard to go anywhere in this review without talking about the terrible 2.5D visuals. The original had bold, purposeful chunky pixels that were there to help us accurately judge our jumps and surroundings, but this eschews that idea for a style choice that doesn’t fit with any aspect of the game. It looks poorly “glossy” and feels like assets that were grabbed from different projects and thrown into one file. Nothing works together. It’s jarring.
That leads into the ungodly physics, where jumping off of a platform almost always leads to death. If the game were scaled to real proportions then it would be like taking the last step off of the bottom of a staircase and immediately dying. It doesn’t help that the game is riddled with bugs. Sometimes jumping onto a platform correctly activates the death sequence. Hitboxes aren’t always accurate either, so even clearing a leap over an enemy doesn’t mean we’ll avoid it. And there are even moments where we need to jump to specific areas but the controls don’t want to cooperate. In one area we need to jump up a series of platforms before they disappear, but just trying to make our playable character jump within the tight space doesn’t register landing on the platform above us.
It’s frustrating.
It’s especially sad because the 40th anniversary package actually contains a Director’s Cut of the original game, which is possibly THE WAY to play the game in the first place. One of the original developers of Montezuma’s Revenge worked closely with the team behind the remake and created his own cut of the classic, and the latter is far and away the better option. Just look at these screens below to understand how much more faithful to the original idea they are:
After not enjoying a second of the remake version, the director’s cut of the original is where I ended up spending far more time. It’s a fairly good, solid version that’s unfortunately bundled with a modernized iteration that is unplayable. I hope it’s released separately, because for right now this is a package that’s impossible to recommend to basically anyone.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. Portions of the video originally appeared on The SideQuest LIVE for February 2, 2025. Images and video courtesy publisher/developer.
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