The Expansive (and Often Bizarre) History of Indiana Jones Games - Part Two

Stop! Before you read this, you should know that this is part two of “The Expansive (and Often Bizarre) History of Indiana Jones Games”. You may want to check out part one first and then come back to this one.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1993)

NES

 

Did you know that ABC made a TV show—quite a good one, apparently—inspired by the opening sequence of The Last Crusade? You know, the sequence wherein we see young Indy in his Boy Scout days, developing his taste for adventure, fear of snakes and classic “it belongs in a museum” attitude? Well they did make just such a TV show; what’s more, they made a game based on it too! It saw the budding archaeologist helping to rescue civilians and reclaim ancient artefacts during the Mexican Civil War, before turning his attention to battling German soldiers in World War One. It’s an unusual setup, considering it involves what is essentially a child diving headfirst into one of the most brutal conflicts in human history. Sadly, masses of children did actually fight in World War One, but perhaps an NES platformer isn’t the place to remind us of that, even if its take on the war is less “trench warfare” and more “battling evil scientists in secret facilities”.

Anyway, reviews of the time didn’t exactly smile upon the game like they did with its TV show counterpart, citing its difficulty as one of its major downfalls. Still, regardless of its poor reception, its goofy cover art will never fail to put a smile on my face. For that reason, I’m glad The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles exists.

Instruments of Chaos starring Young Indiana Jones (1994)

Sega Mega Drive

Credit: User - MobyGames user POMAH

More young Indy fighting in World War One. This time, though, he’s jumped up a generation to the Sega Mega Drive (AKA: The Sega Genesis). In this 2D platforming adventure, Indiana Jones works as a spy (again, why are they getting kids to do this?!) working to prevent the Germans from getting their hands on powerful tech, weaponry and vehicles. From a Bombay-based ball-bearing bomb to a powerful flamethrower residing in London, Indy must thwart the German war effort at every turn. Jeez, how old could he be during this? 17? 18? They can’t be paying him enough.

Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures (1995)

SNES

The Super Star Wars games on the Super Nintendo have gone down in history as some of the greatest Star Wars titles of their era. This game, Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures, would more accurately be titled “Super Indiana Jones” because that’s essentially what it is, an Indiana Jones take on that Super Star Wars style. It’s a tough, combat-focused 2D side-scroller which recounts the events of the original film trilogy. While it’s not lauded to the same degree as its Super Star Wars cohorts, it did make enough of a splash to join them in the Wii Virtual Console back in 2009. Appropriate, considering that the Virtual Console was kind of a museum for retro games. Indy would be pleased.

Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures (1996)

Windows and Macintosh

Credit: MobyGames user Pseudo_Intellectual

Despite sounding like the sarcastic remark of a younger relative showing Indy how the printer works, Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures was actually a modest isometric RPG-lite aimed at the casual market. It was designed to be played repeatedly, with entire playthroughs clocking in at under an hour. Of course, players weren’t expected to run through exactly the same content over and over. Thanks to the marvel of random generation, it offered “literally billions of possible games”, which is to say, it offered more or less the same game with billions of mostly insignificant variations here and there.

Sometimes Indy would be fighting Nazis on the hunt for an ancient Aztec mirror; others, he’d be facing a shady private collector after a priceless Idol; on some occasions, you might find him helping a native temple keeper recover some valuable Aztec inscriptions. Whatever Indy gets up to, though, you can guarantee that you’ll be bored out of your wits before too long if the game’s poor reviews are anything to go by.

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (1999)

PC, Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color

Having resigned himself to a life of technophobia after his ill-fated “desktop adventures” in the previous entry, Indy has now thrown it out the window, referring to it as his “infernal machine”. Okay, that’s not what the title of this game is referring to at all. I’m just enjoying the little Indiana Jones mini-story that’s brewing in my mind with the names of these last two games.

In reality, Infernal Machine marks the first fully 3D entry in the Indiana Jones gaming franchise. That’s excluding the Game Boy version, which instead captured events from a top-down perspective. It saw the whip-cracking archaeologist fighting Soviet-era Russians and an ancient Babylonian god known as Marduk. Taking several gameplay cues from Tomb Raider (ironically), Infernal Machine stands out as one of Indy’s most outlandish adventures. Throughout the game, Indy will travel through portals, turn invisible and fight monsters. Oh, and he’ll come face-to-face with a god too. Sure makes punching Nazis feel like minor league stuff, huh?

Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb (2003)

PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Mac

After Indy’s 3D debut in 1999, players would have to wait four years for their next chance to try out the iconic bull whip for themselves. This next, noticeably more modern 3D adventure has Indy contending with Nazi’s on the trail of a mind-controlling Chinese pearl known as the “Heart of the Dragon”. In terms of gameplay, this is another Tomb Raider-like, which is no criticism considering that Lara Croft was originally pitched as a female Indy to begin with. On his journey for the Heart of the Dragon, our hero will jump, punch, shoot, climb and swim around a variety of countries and environments, solving puzzles and uncovering hidden treasures as he goes.

The Emperor’s Tomb didn’t do anything groundbreaking, but if every game broke new ground, we’d soon have nothing left to stand on. With this title, developer The Collective Inc. succeeded in making a genuinely good game where other studios only achieved sub-par status. That’s an achievement in my eyes, even if it won’t ever lead to games industry immortality.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Revolution (2007), Special Delivery (2007) and Hunting For Treasure (2008)

PC and Mac

Bundled in with the 2007 and 2008 DVD re-releases of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which was confusingly rebranded to The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones and edited to make a series of feature films, these three educational titles may not fit many peoples’ definition of “videogame”. Still, they’re fairly interesting and worth touching upon, if only briefly.

Each of the three games saw players working through a different one of the Young Indiana Jones stories in a point-and-click style. As well as solving puzzles and answering questions on real-world topics, players would need to manage Indy’s resources through a rudimentary inventory system. The game’s cartoon art style would occasionally be interrupted by live-action clips from the show, a design choice I can only imagine was incredibly jarring.

There’s not much information out there regarding these little-known relics from Indy’s history. It’s almost as if DVD re-releases of 15-year-old (at the time) TV shows don’t garner too much attention. Who knew?

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Mobile

Oh Indy. Where did things go so wrong for you? You were on top of the world, riding high with James Bond, Ellen Ripley and John McClane. Then Kingdom of the Crystal Skull happened, didn’t it? It flopped into cinemas all over the world, tearing down decades of audience goodwill as it went. That film didn’t so much drag the name “Indiana Jones” through the mud as much as it dunked the entire franchise into an industrial-sized vat of the stuff.

What, then, could better accompany a cinematic travesty of such magnitude than a 2D platformer released on mobiles? Oh, and when I say mobiles, I don’t mean smartphones. This game was released alongside the film in 2008, back when “mobile phone” still meant number pads, Nokias and postage stamp-sized screens. Players, or “unfortunates” as I refer to them, take on the role of Indy or Mutt (yeah, remember him?) as they awkwardly navigate a 2D environment, jumping, rolling and using the whip to both attack and reach higher areas.

In all fairness, it’s not an abysmal effort for a 2008 Java-based phone game. Relatively speaking, the game does a better job than the film it’s based off. After all, there weren’t many good mobile games circa 2008, but there were a hell of a lot of outstanding films. With that in mind, it’s hard to look too harshly upon the mobile game adaptation of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Sure, it’s fun to pile onto the bandwagon of hate following that film, but this is just a low-budget mobile game from almost 15 years ago. It’s got enough working against it already; let’s not throw more trouble in its direction.

And that's the end of Part Two of the journey through Indy's gaming history. Stay tuned for Part Three: coming soon!