Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Genre:

Arcade

Year:

1989

Developer:

Atari Games

Publisher:

Mindscape

Perspective:

3rd-person, Platform, Side-view

Theme:

Movie

Releases:

MAME 2003 (1985), Amstrad CPC (1987), ZX Spectrum (1987), Commodore 64 (1987), NES (1988), Atari ST (1988), DOS (1989), Amiga (1989), Apple II (1989)

Indiana Jones is clearly the most famous archaeologist in the world. There are number of movies, TV series and video games dedicated to this character. One of the first games featuring Indy is from 1989 and was also named after the second movie of the series: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  However, this scrolling action does little to "reconstruct" the plot of the film and does not deny its arcade origins from coin-operated machines. As Indy you have to complete several Level, following 3 types of environments: mine, the mine cart ride and a temple. Level are becomming more complicated in the mine environment, you have to solve more difficult obstacles and kill more enemies. In the mines, Indy crosses chasms, climbs ladders and eliminates Khali-worshipping thug thugs who are holding the children of local villagers hostage. Another type of level is a wild minecart ride full of pitfalls, and the third environment is the Temple of Doom itself. The sacred stones of Sankara, protected by fanatics from the cult of the goddess Khali, are stored there. The longer you play, the more difficult the repetitive mine and cart levels become, while the temple levels contain the same amount of enemies, traps, and lava. After several "rounds", Indy's duel with the cultist always follows, taking place on the rope bridge. The first ports from slot machines to home computers and consoles of the time date back to 1987, the version for MS DOS was not released until two years later. The NES version is considered the best playable.