How to play Montezuma’s Revenge online
- Walk: left and right arrow keys
- Climb ladders and chains: up and down arrow keys; adding left or right makes grabbing them easier
- Jump: Z or X. Standing still, Joe jumps straight up; while walking, he leaps in that direction.
- Choose the difficulty level: 1, 2 or 3 on the keyboard (the keypad digits)
- Start a new game: Enter. Pause: P
Full screen and save states are in the emulator toolbar (move the mouse over the screen).
Gameplay
Panama Joe is trying to reach the treasure chamber at the bottom of Montezuma’s fortress, through chamber after chamber connected by ladders, poles, chains and doors. Each room is a small puzzle: a locked door needs the key of the same colour, a laser gate can only be crossed while it blinks off, a conveyor belt pushes against you, a floor disappears and reappears, and a fire pit swallows anyone who falls in. The lower floors are dark unless Joe carries a torch. Rolling and bouncing skulls, stationary snakes and climbing spiders guard the rooms; you can jump over them, or walk through skulls and spiders while carrying a sword. An amulet makes every creature harmless for a few seconds. The inventory holds five items, and jewels cannot be picked up when it is full.
| Item or action | Points |
|---|---|
| Key or sword | 50 |
| Amulet | 100 |
| Opening a door | 300 |
| Jewel | 1,000 |
| Skull destroyed with the sword | 2,000 |
| Torch, or spider destroyed with the sword | 3,000 |
You begin with six Panama Joes and get another every 10,000 points on levels 1 to 3 and every 20,000 from level 4. Once every chamber has been visited, Joe drops into the dark treasure room and leaps from chain to chain grabbing jewels until a timer runs out, then slides into the next level. You can start on level 1, 2 or 3; higher levels move barriers, add faster creatures and leave more chambers dark. The game ends when the last Joe is lost.
Tips
- Match the key to the door. Red, blue and grey doors each want their own key; do not waste a slot on the wrong one.
- Keep a torch for the bottom floors. It lasts the whole level and is worth 3,000 points.
- Carry a sword into spider country. A spider is worth 3,000 points dead, and it follows you up ladders.
- Draw a map. There are about a hundred rooms, and you will backtrack through many of them with a key in hand.
The story behind Montezuma’s Revenge
Robert Jaeger was 16 when he wrote the game for the Atari 800 at his company Utopia Software. His unfinished version had a hero called Pedro and an invincible King Montezuma waiting at the bottom. Parker Brothers picked it up and, with Base Two handling the conversion, squeezed a 48K disk program into a 16K cartridge so it could run on the 5200. Along the way the boss became a treasure room, the game gained its difficulty levels and Pedro became Panama Joe.
The cartridge came out in 1984 for the 5200, Atari computers, ColecoVision and Commodore 64. The Atari 2600 version is a cut-down game with far fewer rooms. It had sold more than 600,000 copies by 1997. Decades later the 2600 version became famous for a different reason: its sparse rewards made it one of the hardest tests for AI learning systems, which failed at it in 2013 and only made real progress from 2018. A 40th anniversary edition with Jaeger’s involvement followed in January 2025, including a director’s cut in which Montezuma can finally be fought.
