By the end of 1994, Sculptured Software had already created two SNES games based on the Star Wars games, and were hard at work on a third. But of course movie fanatics noticed something - Star Wars already had a lot of representation, but where was everybody's favourite archaeologist? LucasArts must've noticed the same, because they gave Factor 5, most well-known for their Turrican games on SNES and Mega Drive exclusive rights to develop a game based on all three movies in the Indiana Jones trilogy. We don't know what led them to this choice, but it was definitely the right one, as Indy's Greatest Adventures still live up to its name as one of his best action-based games.
As Indy, you'll pretty much go through all events in all three movies in order. First you'll go through twelve stages based on Raiders of the Lost Ark, including the Chachapoyan Temple with its giant boulder, the streets of Cairo and the Well of Souls. Next up are eight stages from Temple of Doom, among which are Shanghai and Mola Ram's temple, and the game finishes with eight more from The Last Crusade, including Brunwald Castle and the temple containing the Holy Grail.
Most of the time the game will be an action platformer - Indy can run and jump around, swinging his whip and shooting his gun, as long as he finds them in one of the many backpacks littered throughout the stages. Also findable are a limited amount of grenades, which take out all weak enemies on the screen in one hit. Use them wisely!
Indy can also punch at all times with a press of the R button, which is useful when you have no weapons or if you need to move around a crate to reach higher platforms. The final attack he possesses is a rolling move, which can be used tactically to quickly dodge enemy attacks, deal a little bit of damage, or get through narrow pathways.
A total of three stages from the latter two movies completely change the game. Instead of being 2D, it becomes 3D with the use of the SNES's famous Mode 7 effect, and the mine cart chase and biplane ride are two examples of this. All 3D stages have rather different objectives, making them quite unique compared to the rest of the game. It's just too bad there's so few of them!
As the game is based on three movies, naturally, the storyline can't be ignored. Between a lot of the stages, you'll get cutscenes with digitized pictures from the films and dialogue in text form. For the enthusiasts (or those who haven't seen the movies, shame on them!) these are pretty nice, but others might want to skip them, as they can go on for quite a while.
As you might expect, the game features plenty of the music that made the movies so great. You'll recognize many tunes, but if you're a hardcore fan you might notice something peculiar - almost all of the tracks are taken from the first movie, with a few from the second and none from the third! Although this won't take away from your enjoyment of the game at all, it is odd all the same. The game also includes a handful of digitized lines, most of them are from Indy himself, which sound pretty good.
The graphics are just as good: everything is instantly recognizable from the movies, from the foreground objects to the backgrounds, and of course all of the characters. The digitized pictures in the cutscenes are also of quite high quality.
As the game is quite long, there is also a password system. A total of ten passwords let you start at pretty much any point of the game, and they're also different for each difficulty, meaning you can't claim you've beaten the game on Hard by simply changing the difficulty and using the final password you got on Easy. Of course, you can just look up the passwords online, but where's the fun in that?
Conclusion
With pretty much every single action scene from the movies accounted for in the game's 28 stages, this is an absolute must-play for Indiana Jones fans. People who haven't seen the original trilogy of movies might want to watch them first, or they can take a gamble and play the game anyway - perhaps you'll want to see the movies because of the game! Forget recent disappointments bearing the Indiana Jones name - this is where it's at!
Comments 32
wow! fast review! Will definitely download this
I've seen the Indy trilogy (yay!), and I thought Raiders was the best. Good review, Drake, this game sounds like it's a winner.
Still have the original SNES game. So I won't buy it when it hit VC in Europe. I really want to play it again, but so many games too play and so little time.
One thing I find awfully peculiar in the trilogy is that Raiders takes place in 1936, while Temple of Doom takes place in 1935. :/ So, wouldn't that mean, uh...never mind.
Punching done from the R shoulder button? How does that work, unless all the ABXY buttons are taken?
Oh my god!!! MEMORIES!!! this games is great!!! not really hard.
But in my mind nothing will ever beat Indiana Jones and the fate of antlantis!!! oh my god LucasArts what happened with you? now we get this all weird Tales from Monkey Island, with such horrendous graphics (its playable and all, but why not just 2D instead of bad 3D?)
Well good thing we still have this things to remember!!!
I might get this with my next points card. Whenever that is
Great review, I need to get this. Excitebike and NyxQuest are getting my next 2000 points, though.
@Sneaker13 I agree with you. We need hours to finish a single game; we cannot have so many at the same time, even if we wish...
I'll probably take this over the Star Wars games.
@Starboy: It's called a prequel.
I'll pick this up eventually, only ever played this around my mates house back in the 16bit era so it'll be interesting/fun to play this again, but to be honest ive a back log of games to play first, too many awesome games being released lately.
Not to sound like a downer, but the Indiana Jones trilogy is not fantastic. It is riddled with bad jokes, mindless action, and predictable storytelling.
As for this game, never played it.
@Cheetah - Temple's the prequel to Raiders? 'splains a lot, especially as for why Willie (and Short Round) make an appearance, and not Marion.
@11. Badknux
The series is widely accepted as fantastic, so nyeh.
Well that's fine for everyone else, but I can't stand those movies. They make my skin crawl, especially the latest one.
Eh, Castlevania's all the Indiana Jones I need.
The review gives a nice taste but little justice to how damn good this game is. I've known of it and owned it since it came out all those years ago, still have it with the book. It is a long game, making up for not having time or the usual lazy Lucas care to give it the 3 game star wars treatment, but you do get more bang for your buck. The game has a great mix of some stuff you commonly see (platforming), less commonly see (mode7 stages - mining car, rubber raft, airplane off the zeppelin, etc), and even lesser seen still movie shots in high color that look fantastic coupled with some recordings of audio from the movies too.
The controls are fluid, the a/v package is great, it can be hard (but does have an easy mode which is like normal if you get my drift), but it's a fair game. If you love a challenging platformer that's fair, or just are an indy nut, you'd be a complete tool to ignore this release.
Badknux, fortunately most rational people who matter don't think like you. The first three movies ranked insanely high, and I know Raiders is listed within the top 20movies of all time, and the other 2 of the earlier era are in the top100 list too from the motion picture board that TCM(Turner Classics Movies) loves to rattle off every year or so. You may not like the style, but facts are facts, Indiana Jones movies are some of the most highly rated movies of all time. Perhaps it's not the majority who have bad taste in this case? Oh and as for the last one, it's just as good as the other three. Sadly a lot of people don't get what they're doing with Indy movies, but if you know what they're after it fits in quite snug with the rest. They spoof a decade in the films and the old trio play off the 1930s with film noir, canned nazi stupidity and mocking the enemy, old adventure pocket novels, and the rest. The newest movie plays off the joke crap of the 50s...greasers, biker boys, drag racing frat kids, the red scare, commies, and b-rated sci-fi films, oh and 'the bomb' and if you keep it in perspective the movie is fantastic.
I don't really think it's a very good idea to argue about Indy movies, with someone who is fanatical about Indy movies. And from what I can tell, your whole argument is that Indy films are good because everyone else thinks they are.
And I'm going to ignore that little insult against me, I'm sure it was an accident.
You're right, not a good to argue as I'm as big as it gets into them. That wasn't my argument at all either. My point was that many people can't be wrong, not that so many people like it therefore they're good.
...Right.
This is a fun action game. I had it on my SNES. For those who haven't played it yet, it's worth to invest some Wii points in it. Nice SNES graphics action =)
I finaly get to try this game on Friday.
Cheers @Drake , a brilliant review and it is equally great to see this appear on Virtual Console, your review has encouraged me to download it this Friday.
It is always good to dabble in another Factor 5 16-bit action platformer, because of the JVC/ LucaArts links I did not realise that they developed it... you learn something new every day! Their Super Turrican games are heaps of SNES VC fun, too.
Sometimes hindsight is actually more objective that the actual reviews "back in the day". Issue 30 of 'Super Play' slaughtered it with a 29% drilling in April, 1995. They filled an entire comments box with faults and their only positive point stated, "Now, here's a list of all the good things about Indiana Jones the game. It's got Indiana Jones in it". I must admit that I am pretty much sold by the cracking movie license, "Whip-tah!".
Perhaps they were just tired of the Super Star Wars style game formula, I can't get enough of it to be honest. Factor 5 must have been busy, Super Turrican 2 was reviewed in the very next issue and fared better with a 84% 'Super Play' score.
I thought Super Turrican 2 was a good, albeit hard game, and imo was better than the SNES version of the original Super Turrican. I did like the creative stage design in ST1 and the music in ST2, though. Fun games, both of them. I really should try this someday, though.
But I still need a Wii Points card, or at least, some Wii Points.
I'll bet Harrison Ford (best action actor ever) will be fun to control!
It really is a fantastic game and for that place that gave it the 29% it doesn't outright surprise me, but does annoy. I remember various things in the day rip on the game and admittedly write out in reviews that they scored it notably lower because it was just the Super Star Wars trilogy in size jammed into just one cart so it was a wash-rinse-repeat with Indy. I'd say that's almost entirely unfair, but they do share the engine, but the game elements are night and day at the same time. Someone who hates Star Wars could say those 3 games looked and sounded like crap, lots of technical issues, and due to all that entirely overly challenging and grating...and a Star Wars fan would say they were godly works of challenging platforming in the day. To each their own really, but Indy honestly has no bugs and no faults that mire the game at all, but the system is love it or hate it through any of the four lucasarts SNES platformers using that engine.
@ J.K.
Indy might not have any bugs, but what you consider faults and what a potential detractor consider faults, are two entirely different things. For me, the film series itself is one big fault, so I won't even give this game a chance. It might sound immature, but that's how I operate, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
You, however, love the series, so it's hard to believe you'd even point out any issues present in the game. I consider Sonic '06 a masterpiece, which I'm sure shocks a lot of people. As a result, I can't really find much to complain about, though I'm sure you could (assuming you've played it, of course).
That's why I try not to make purchases based off of other people's opinions, because they're all biased. Every once in a while though, I'lll buy into the hype. Sometimes it pays off, and most of the time, it doesn't.
Well it's a faith issue, but I'm actually this decade overly critical of video games no matter who the star is due to old jobs I once had. I used to work in gaming at Midway, then ended up doing the media thing for a couple years online. I've gotten overly touchy about crappy balancing, horrid/lagged controls, bad gameplay, bugs, and other stupidity so I was being fair in saying the game doesn't have obvious bugs and gameplay problems.
I'm not sure what Sonic '06 is you're talking about but I'm guessing it was that early HD game that got crapped on in the press? I never touched it, gave up on 3D sonic games on the whole as they just got worse and more buggy with Adventure2, and the GBA and DS titles were ugh as well. I was a huge fan of the games from Adventure back yet I knew they had issues. I guess what I'm saying is due to the old job I have a bit of a work ethic I've held onto where I take the moral high ground when I refer a game to someone having to suffer through a ton of awful turds and hoping to either get them fixed, or having to burn them at the cross in a game review to steer others clear.
Um, yeah.
@Badknux-Wow, so basically you dislike the Indiana Jone movies, but you love Sonic 06. That is shocking. I guess to each his own, but I thought Sonic 06 was horrible.
As for Indiana Jones, I watched all four movies months ago, and I thought the movies were great. The game looks pretty solid and fun, and if and when I ever get another Wii Points Card, I will deftinely pruchase this or Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Great review!
Yeah, most people thought Sonic '06 was a disaster.
I am an Indiana Jones fan personally, but I'm not crazy about this game. (The reason for doing so is unkown...)
might get
This game is mediocre at best. Some of the reviews on here are terrible. Pure nostalgia bait
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