Contents:
The Intro
Title: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game
Release year: 1989
Developed by: Tiertex Design Studios
Genre: 2D platformer
Platform replayed on: PC, Amiga emulator
Welcome to the next instalment here on Present Perfect Gaming. Make sure to check out the first instalment, We are the Champions (of Krynn), if you haven’t already.
This time we’re joining Indiana Jones (a name that hopefully needs no introduction) in a video game adaptation of the third film in the famous film franchise. This game is known as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game. Slightly confusingly, a game named Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure was released in the same year.
The “Action Game” is a 2D platformer, where the “Graphic Adventure” is a point-and-click adventure game. I’ve played both, and apart from the main character, there are very few similarities. I’ll return to the “Graphic Adventure” in a future blog post (it is a true classic, in my view). But for now, let’s get to the action.
The reason I chose to replay this game is that it is one of the first two games I can remember owning (you can see Old Beginnings to see the other game). I still have the box somewhere. I remember having the 3½ inch and 5¼ inch disks. A few other memories I have of this game are:
- Punishing difficulty
- I did finish it—once
- My dad breaking the keyboard while playing this
Now let me explain that last one: my dad didn’t break the keyboard out of rage (though this game is certainly rage-inducing). He broke it by frantically tapping on the arrow keys a little too hard. From that point on, I remember the keyboard would tilt down on the right side whenever you used keys on that side. The computer in question was the IBM PC Convertible, shown below. This was also my first experience with laptop computing. That thing weighed a tonne! (Or more accurately, 13 pounds/5.9 kilograms.)
The Game
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game is a 2D platformer, where the player takes on the role of Indiana Jones (no surprise there). There are four levels in total, loosely following the plot of the movie. Fans of the movie will have no trouble recognising the scenes the levels are taken from.
- “The Cross of Coronado” sees Indy attempting to find the cross in a cave in Utah, while escaping from Fedora’s Gang. Circus train included!
- “The Ascent of Castle Brunwald” finds Indy in the Venetian catacombs searching for Sir Richard’s Shield, and ends with the ascent of the Castle.
- “On Board the Zeppelin” has Indy running around the zeppelin searching for Grail Diary pieces, before escaping on the biplane.
- Finally, “The Holy Grail” is a mad dash through the Temple of the Sun to get to the Holy Grail. This level changes up the side-scrolling, to become pseudo 3D.
Indy can pick up his trusty whip at certain points, allowing him to take out bad guys from a distance. Though as I soon found out, his punch certainly has quite the reach (on the DOS version at least), making the whip mostly cosmetic. Mostly, as it does have another function when you reach Castle Brunwald, that has nothing to do with fighting.
Each level mostly sees Indy needing to navigate each level to pick up the key item, and then find the exit. Indy can jump, climb, and punch. What could be simpler??
As the player, you have five lives before it’s game over. Indy’s energy bar will also deplete if he takes damage from someone, is hit by something falling on him (fire, in one level), or by falling. You’re on the clock too, as each level has a timer built in. In the first level, for example, Indy’s torch gets smaller and smaller (see image above) the longer you take; take too long without finding another torch, and you lose a life.
So, what’s not to like? You get to be Indiana Jones! Well, let’s take a look at how my time revisiting Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game went…
The Replay
I first played the DOS version, and like with Champions of Krynn, the first thing that struck me was the intro music. It’s the theme song from the movie series, so it’s immediately familiar, but it was also the little bit that plays just as you start the game from the menu screen that brought me right back. Unlike Champions of Krynn, I hadn’t revisited this game since the early 1990s when I first played it.
This game had/has controller support, but I didn’t bother trying with that. I went with the trusty arrow keys on the keyboard, just like back in the day.
After minutes of playing this, I remembered just how frustrating this game can be. The first level is long, and very random. You only have five lives before it’s game over and you have to start again from the beginning. I did like that there are checkpoints in the level (and levels two and three) though. Getting through the first level means you have unlimited continues in levels two and three (level four is similar to level one). But getting through level one is challenging. The randomness comes from the behaviours of the enemies; you never know when that bullet is going to be fired or that knife thrown at you.
I’m not an expert on platformers, but have played various Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog games over the years. To me, there is something to be said for the predictability of platforming levels, as you can master the timings of certain moves. I figure that’s the only way speed runs are possible. Throw randomness into the mix, and to me that equals frustration.
Enter level one of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game, and queue the frustration. One section sees you needing to navigate Indy across four hanging ropes; the problem being there is an enemy on each of the ropes. You have to time jumping from rope to rope in between the enemies climbing up and down (at different speeds!).
So I fought my way through the first level after way too many attempts, escaping with the Cross of Coronado on the circus train.
And then I quit. There is no save game option in this game. So I faced a bit of a dilemma, in that I wanted to play each level enough to be able to write properly about my experience, but I didn’t want to have to play through level one each time just to get to the unlimited continues. To be fair, my best level one run took little over four minutes of game time. But there were many failed attempts before then.
So I turned to emulation. I finished this game using an Amiga emulator, which I could use to select the level I wanted to play from the start. Enter levels two and three, finally!
First, the game looked so much better on the Amiga!
Second, levels two and three felt very short in comparison to level one. The randomness seemed to disappear, as you mostly had to manage the timing of your movements to either avoid enemies, avoid falling, or avoid things falling on you.
I found nowhere near the frustration in levels two and three as I did in level one, and fairly easily navigated them.
There were a couple of interesting features in level two and level three. In level two, you have to be aware of the thunder and lightning as you’re ascending Castle Brunwald. Every now and again, the thunder claps and the lightning flashes, and it can remove ledges you can stand on.
In level three, the zeppelin actually moves up and down the whole time. Slightly nausea inducing, but I get what the developers were going for. Also, if the alarm sounds, the enemies move around a lot faster.
That brings me to the final level: The Holy Grail. As mentioned above, this level adds the third dimension, so Indy can move up and down the platforms.
This change-up brought an added level of unexpected frustration though, as you quickly had to master how to handle Indy in a new way. It’s also very very short.
If you fail in this level, you start back at the beginning of the level. There are a couple of challenging sections, so this was frustrating to get wrong. Thankfully, the level takes less than a minute to complete.
Thanks to the beauty of Amiga emulation, I was now done with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game.
The Verdict
As you can tell, I didn’t really enjoy my time revisiting this game. My intention in these blogs is to reminisce. You might wonder why there wasn’t much reminiscing going on. The short answer? There wasn’t much worth remembering, so there’s not a lot I can recall now. Again, I did manage to finish this legitimately one time, and I can live with that.
Thinking back though, I didn’t have the library of games (that wasn’t even a term I remember using, if it was a term at all back then) to play or to compare this with that I do today. Home computing was in its infancy, and this game I’m sure would have captivated me at the time. It has a special place because it’s one of the first games I ever owned. But it doesn’t stand up as anything groundbreaking, as Super Mario Bros. had demonstrated what platform gaming could be back in 1985.
Now what I do find interesting is comparing this with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, mentioned in The Intro. That game has gone down as one of the most highly regarded point-and-click adventure games of all time. I can’t wait to revisit that one!
But for the “Action Game”, I have a feeling this will be my last crusade with this game.
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