These Belong In A Museum: The Best Indiana Jones Games

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• These Belong In A Museum: The Best Indiana Jones Games

Catch that whip, dust off your hat: there's a new Indiana Jones game in development at Bethesda. Led by Wolfenstein developer MachineGames, with Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard set to serve as executive producer on the project, little is known about Indy's upcoming gaming adventure, though it shouldn't be related to the upcoming movie. from Indiana Jones 5, currently in development. With this game several years away from hitting our consoles, we thought we'd do our own game archeology and take a look at the history of Indiana Jones games. Like the lovable treasure hunter, it's a catalog that's far from perfect, giving Bethesda and MachineGames a great opportunity to truly impress fans of Steven Spielberg's films. But like a golden idol in a decrepit ruin, there are some gems to be found in Indy's catalog of games, not to mention a host of great games that his big-screen adventures have clearly inspired.

(Image credit: YouTube)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death (arcade)

The Temple of Doom game, noted for being the first interactive version of the whipbreaker, was developed by Atari and, as its arcade suggests, is a fast-paced, action-oriented version of the franchise. . You will have to save the mining children of the Thugee Guards, escape in a mine cart and even participate in the escape scene from the bridge. It's basic by today's standards, but it was kind of a technical showcase in the audio department at least back then - it's one of the first games to use digitized voice clips for sound. Atari console port.

(Image credit: JVC)

The Greatest Adventures of Indiana Jones

Ready for a challenge? You'll want a sip of the holy grail before embarking on Indiana Jones' greatest adventures on the SNES - it's a brutally challenging platformer from the team behind the equally challenging Super Star Wars trilogy. Still, not to be missed: it faithfully takes the player through all three of the original Indiana Jones films, from the Chachapoyán Temple and its chase up the rocks, to the Canyon of the Crescent Moon and the encounter with the Grail. . There are excellent 16-bit recreations of iconic scenes from the movie, as well as beautiful music inspired by the themes of the movies, but this side scrolling is not for the faint of heart.

(Image credit: Steam)

Indiana Jones and the Hell Machine

The first of what we'll call the modern era of Indy games, this one is heavily inspired by the Tomb Raider games. It's a fairly straightforward 3D platformer and the logical answer to Lara Croft's rise in popularity, putting Indy in the driver's seat. It has a large Easter egg shaped back to the Chachapoyán temple and a fun macguffin on the Tower of Babel. It suffers from those punishing platforming stunts of the time though, requiring you to perfectly line up a jump before committing to it, with Indy controlling like a tank. There was also a well-meaning, if not entirely funny, Game Boy Color version.

(Image credit: LucasArts)

Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb

A personal favourite, this one, and the latest attempt at a "realistic" Indiana Jones game. Released in 2003 for Windows, PS2 and Xbox, it sees Jones traveling from Ceylon to Prague and even further... a supernatural place, in search of a Black Pearl, "The Heart of the Dragon" buried with the first Emperor of China. Unsurprisingly, some good and bad people are looking for him too, for nefarious purposes. While telling an original story, it cleverly imitates some of the best scenes from the movies and was, for the time being, an ambitious 3D game. His best moments come during his rambling fights, which didn't improve before Uncharted 3's cinematic punches. Indy can grab and pummel enemies with melee attacks, but it's all intentionally a bit difficult, like a bar fight instead of a one. superhero punch. As such, Indy would send enemies flying across tables, smashing the landscape and knocking them unconscious, while he realistically waved destructible objects around. The rest of the game is solid, predictable, Tomb Raider-esque, but those punches are still incredibly fun. It's now backwards compatible on Xbox One and Xbox Series X, if you'd like to check it out.

(Image credit: TT Games)

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

If you've played another adaptation of the Lego movie, you'll know what to expect here: a fun journey through the best pieces of Indiana's adventures, all built from Lego. As a home version of the movies, you need some fun liberties with the source material - no head to melt here! But there's a lot of fun - it's the only cooperative Indy game on this list, you can explore the Indy University office, take part in scenes from all three movies, and even take control of the game. Everyone's favorite minor card trick, Court Ronde, one of the game's 80 playable characters. A sequel followed, based on the disappointing fourth Indiana Jones film, and as such it didn't really land like that first.

(Image credit: LucasArts)

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

If any Indiana Jones game can be considered a classic on this list, it's 1992's Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis. With a story of Nazi fighting good enough to be worthy of the movies (actually, a twist), followed by the comic. ), is the Lucasarts point-and-click team at the height of their powers. Here, Indy is on the hunt for the titular lost city of Atlantis, via New York, Monte Carlo, Algiers, and a Nazi submarine. In addition to the usual item browser and dialogue trees that characterized Lucasfilm's SCUMM games, Fate of Atlantis introduced a three-way system to play: a system focused on Indy's mind, a system focused on sound. teaming up with his partner Sophia Hapgood, and another that focused on Jones' fighting skills, adding light combat to the point-and-click mix. Two sequels were designed but never fully developed: Indiana Jones and Iron Phoenix, and Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny. Iron Phoenix was reasonably far from development before being canned (as this great feature from MixnMojo.com reveals), but the two live on as Dark Horse comic book adaptations. For a while, Fate of Atlantis was hard to track (existing on newer machines only as a supplement to Indiana Jones and the Wii's Staff of Kings), but now it's easily obtainable from GOG and Steam. . Its predecessor, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, is similar in size (if less polished) and is also available on modern digital stores. Hoping Indy's new game captures his globe-trotting, mystery-solving charm.

BONUS: The best Indiana Jones games that aren't actually Indiana Jones games

Indy may have started the pop culture obsession with hunting down long-lost antiques, but to be honest, it hasn't always translated so well into computer games. Tomb Raider 2 is arguably the best early example of a 3D Jones (Lara Croft is basically a Lady Jones, anyway), capturing the map's travels, spooky ancient sites, and the romance of archeology that Jones offers. The Uncharted series takes that idea and takes it a step further: Nathan Drake is an equally lovable thug with a penchant for hunting down the old and the precious, though his death toll is slightly higher than Indy's.

(Image credit: Core) There are less obvious, but equally Jones-esque adventures to be had elsewhere. The Witness has some great brain-worthy puzzles and mysteries for Indy to solve. Or take The Elder Scrolls series, and Skyrim in particular: it's all about looting long-lost tombs and retrieving the trapped goodies hidden inside.

(Image credit: Sony) And then there's the endless mobile game, Temple Run. If this rock hadn't stepped up to Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark, there would be a whole subgenre of mobile games that wouldn't exist. Finally, don't forget the classic 'indie-ana', Spelunky, the 2D classic of cave diving and treasure hunting, with whips, snakes and ancient traps galore. There are many ways to fix it, so wait for this Bethesda Indiana Jones game.