The one option that can end your run
The title screen gives you START, OPTIONS and INFO, and the Options screen lets you rearrange the controls. Leave that part of it alone. On the Genesis/Mega Drive release, a changed control scheme breaks the Runaway Minecar stage: Harry Jr. walks up to the cart, stops beside it and never climbs in. There is no way past that point, and there is nothing to fall back on: the run is simply over. The default layout is the only one that will get you to the Warrior Spirit.
You can still play on keys that suit you. Remap them on this page instead of in the game's own menu: the page sits between your keyboard and the emulator, so the game keeps receiving its original scheme no matter what you bind, and the minecar stage stays beatable.
Three weapons, and when to stop hoarding them
The whip on L does more than hit things. It breaks open the bags lying around the stages and pushes buttons, so anyone who only swings it at monkeys is walking past items the stages leave in plain sight. The special weapons all fire from K, one at a time, with a tap on Enter to change which one is loaded.
Sling stones are the weakest of the three and the one with the most ammunition, refilled from bags scattered through the stages. Hold the fire key and release it for a charged Super Shot. They can be thrown from a crouch or in mid-air, and holding the up direction as you throw angles them upward, which is the answer to anything perched above your head.
The Mayan Boomerang hits harder and can catch an enemy twice, on the way out and on the way back. Catch it and it returns to your inventory; miss the catch and it has to be collected off the ground, which is never convenient in the middle of a fight. It throws from a jump but not from a crouch.
The Exploding Stone of Pascal is the one worth being stingy with. It bursts in the air and destroys most enemies in a single hit, enough to clear a screen of the small ones. Spending them on jungle wildlife is how players reach the late bosses with nothing left to throw.
What Harry Jr. can do that nobody tells you
Hold the down direction and press Space and he lies flat on the ground, which is the only way through the narrow gaps that look like scenery. Holding up climbs vines and ropes, throws switches and walks him into doorways, so a wall that looks like the end of a stage is often just a door you never pressed against.
Two things happen without you. Jump onto the end of a swinging vine and he grabs it on his own; jump over a zipline and he takes hold of it the same way. It is generous right up to the moment a vine you meant to jump past takes hold of him instead.
None of it answers instantly. A jump ends with a moment of animation before the controls reach him again, and turning around costs him the same pause, during which the controls are simply not connected to him. Anything standing next to him gets a free hit. So commit to jumps before the edge rather than at it, and never change direction inside an enemy's reach.
Every boss fight, and how to survive it
Six encounters across the whole game, and the hardest one is not the last. The late ones are decided before they start, by how much ammunition you carried in, which makes the stage in front of a boss matter as much as the boss.
The Jaguar in Ceiba Jungle
Jump over it, throw a stone, dodge the next pass, repeat. It is a rough thing to meet in the first level, and there is no trick to it, only the rhythm.
The mine cars in Tazamul Mines
Not really a boss, just a wall at the end of the stage, and nothing to do with the riding stage further on. Carts come at you and you jump them one at a time instead of rushing the sequence. Once the timing clicks it stops being a threat.
The JaguarTwins in Lost City of Copan
Two of Zakelua's bodyguards at once, in a pit, and the reason to pick up every stone that level hands you. The clean version goes like this: arrive with the Mayan Chili Pepper still running, drop into the pit, jump onto the right-hand ledge and throw stones from there until you are empty. Whatever is left has to be done the slow way, jumping over one cat while hitting the other and holding that pattern. Fighting them with no stones at all is possible and genuinely unpleasant.
The crusher in Copan Temple
Jump over it and run. There is a free life sitting in the room, and it is bait. Leave it.
The Jaguar Man in Tikal Ruins
The later jaguars stand upright and come at you with claws and a staff, and this one is harder than the final boss. Fight him like the first Jaguar, keep 20 stones for him, and stop there. Everything else you own is needed one stage later.
The Warrior Spirit
The final room has nothing in it except a giant stone golem and a single health refill in the corner. Do not take that refill early. With 40 stones saved the fight goes quickly. Without them it turns into a long loop of throwing a stone or a boomerang, running from whatever he answers with, and coming back for one more throw.
Runaway Minecar: watch the lights, not the track
The small carts Harry Jr. rides like a skateboard get a whole stage to themselves here, taken at a speed the rest of the game never asks for. Three tracks run side by side and you can move between them whenever you like. Each one ends in a light. Green means that track goes through. The instant one of them turns red, get off it, because that is not a run you want to ride to the end. That means looking well ahead of the cart instead of at it, which is the whole skill of the stage.
Roughly a fifth of the way in, Vapor Ghosts turn up behind you. They take no health off Harry Jr. at all, which sounds like good news until one touches him: he loses his balance, and a rider who has lost his balance cannot steer. The cart keeps its speed, the lights keep switching, and you are a passenger. This is also the stage the Options bug locks you out of, so it is worth arriving here with your controls untouched and your nerves in order.
No passwords: lives, continues and where to save
The Genesis/Mega Drive version has no password save of any kind. On real hardware that meant finishing a fairly hard game in one sitting, or leaving the console switched on overnight, which at least worked, since nothing in the game runs on a timer.
What the game does give you: Location Idols are checkpoints, and Harry Jr. comes back at the last one he passed rather than at the start of the stage. Golden Idols are extra lives, up to nine. Treasure is what buys continues: a gold coin counts as one piece, a silver bar two, a gold bar five, a ring ten, and every 50 pieces buys another continue. Once you see it that way, a detour for a ring stops being greed and starts being a fifth of another attempt at the final boss.
Playing online removes the one-sitting problem entirely. The Save button writes the emulator's state into your browser and Load puts it back with the time it was taken, so the run can wait until tomorrow. There is a single slot per game, and each save replaces the previous one, so spend it deliberately: save before Runaway Minecar and before the Jaguar Man, not after you have already spent your stones on them.
Cheats and hidden rooms
Every code here is entered on the title screen, before the game starts. Enter one, start a new game, and it is already in effect.
Level select
Twelve inputs on the title screen, in this order:
SpaceKSpaceKK
If it took, and now choose the starting level. This is the only honest way to practice a late stage, and the two worth drilling are Runaway Minecar and the Jaguar Man's room. Shorter versions of this code circulate and do not work; this is the twelve-input one that does.
Atari game
The whole Atari 2600 Pitfall! is in here, and the title screen opens it directly:
, then K 26 times, and finally again.
You can also earn it. In the fourth stage, Lost City of Copan, a scorpion turns up that looks nothing like the rest of the jungle and everything like an Atari sprite. Touch one of those Atari enemies and the warp takes you in. Finding it that way beats typing the code, if only for the moment you recognize the scorpion.
Practice the lever game
Hidden warps in the stages lead to the Loltun Vault, and what waits there is a memory game. Three levers, a sequence of tones to repeat, treasure dropping for Harry Jr. as he gets them right, and the solid rock ceiling coming down the entire time. The sequences get more complex as you go. Win and you usually walk out with an extra life. Lose and the ceiling finishes the argument.
This code drops you straight into it from the title screen, as often as you like:
SpaceKLKSpace
Turn on the "Show SEGA Buttons" option first if you want to see which original button each key stands for while you learn the sequences.
Other cheats
The rest of the title-screen codes. Unlimited continues is the one that matters, because it replaces the save system this version never had. Extra weapons & lives is the longest string here at sixteen inputs, and the kindest way to start if you intend to actually reach Zakelua. Super speed is a curiosity: Harry Jr. already takes a moment to answer the controls, and moving him faster does not make him any more obedient.
- Super speed: SpaceKL
- All weapons: KSpaceLKLK
- 9 lives: KSpaceKSpace
- Extra weapons & lives: KSpaceKSpaceKSpaceLKLK
- Unlimited continues: LLLLK
- View credits: LLL