The History of Indiana Jones Video Games
If you go by last year’s finalists for Best Independent Game at The Game Awards, there are indie games, and there are “indie” games. That is, there are independent games financed and made by individuals or teams free from the influence of a major publisher, and there are “independent” games that are… actually owned by billion-dollar South Korean corporations.
But if you’re not interested in the debate about what can be named an indie game and what can’t, there is a third type of Indy game, and they are named after a dog.
After well over 10 years since his last dedicated digital adventure, Indiana Jones is returning to video games in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which is arriving imminently on PC, Xbox, and Game Pass.
But how did we get here? Well, Indiana Jones games may have otherwise dried up over the past decade-and-change, but before that, the good Doctor Jones’ video game history dates back over 40 years. So kick back as we dust off some antique hardware and whip through the history of Indiana Jones games.
First created by George Lucas back in the early ’70s, Indiana Jones – originally conceived as Indiana Smith – was heavily inspired by the adventure serials of Lucas’ youth, and the character’s trademark look took a heavy dose of inspiration from the likes of Alan Ladd in the 1943 film China, Humphrey Bogart in 1948’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Charlton Heston in Secret of the Incas from 1954.
After a surname shift, Indiana Jones was brought to life by Harrison Ford on the big screen in one of the most magnificent action adventure movies ever made: 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. As you almost certainly already know, Raiders of the Lost Ark was followed by two absolutely outstanding films and two… other films.
What you may not know, however, is where Indiana Jones made his very first appearance on the small screen. The answer is Raiders of the Lost Ark for the Atari 2600. It was created by legendary Atari game designer Howard Scott Warshaw, the man behind Yars’ Revenge – the best-selling first-party game ever on the console. Raiders of the Lost Ark hit the Atari 2600 in late 1982, around a year-and-a-half after the film had arrived.
I only first played my dad’s 2600 later in the ’80s, and about all I remember is instantly bouncing off anything more obtuse than Outlaw, which is a game with a premise that begins and ends at “shoot the cowboy on the other side of the TV.” Despite my unequivocal love of all things Indy, Raiders of the Lost Ark for the Atari was not my type of thing. Looking at it through a modern lens, however, it is certainly a fascinatingly complex and ambitious Atari 2600 game – even if it is confusing and more than a little unfair. Come on, snakes the same colour as the ground?
Despite being a strictly single-player experience, it required the use of both the console’s joystick controllers to operate. The right joystick moves Indy around the limited assortment of screens, and the left stick allows players to navigate their inventory and select the object you want Indy to use. Of course, utilising both controllers came with the benefit of DOUBLING the amount of buttons players had at their disposal. Twice the buttons!
Well, yes, Indy is correct: Atari 2600 controllers only have one button, so yep, it was just the two. However, don’t assume Raiders of the Lost Ark is simple on account of having such a limited spectrum of controls. Rather, it’s anything but. With the benefit of hindsight and the fact that the effective route through this game has long since been charted, Raiders of the Lost Ark’s arcane gameplay seems almost quaint in 2024 – but how exactly contemporaneous audiences were meant to blunder their way upon these ambiguous but awfully specific puzzle solutions is a total mystery.
Interestingly, Raiders of the Lost Ark holds the Guinness World Record as the first-ever video game based on an official movie licence. It would seem it just pipped Alien from Fox Video Games, which also came out in November 1982, although that was literally just a Pac-Man clone.
Well, that, and that other alien movie tie-in for the Atari 2600 from December 1982: E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. Coincidentally, E.T. was actually also designed by Howard Scott Warshaw (at the request of Steven Spielberg himself, no less), though he only had five weeks to make it. Of course, that’s a story for a different documentary.
Indy’s next video game would be his first original one: Indiana Jones in the Lost Kingdom, which was released by Mindscape for the Commodore 64 in late 1984. It features a… pretty nifty arrangement of John Williams’ unforgettable theme music, but very little else worth celebrating, depending on how much mileage you reckon you’d get out of a constipated cowboy turning birds into butterflies with an apparently enchanted walking stick.
The game’s box boasted that “Nobody told Indiana Jones the rules. And no one will tell you.” It wasn’t quite true – there was actually a clue hotline for stumped players to call and be told how to proceed – but either way it feels like Mindscape was putting a lot of stock in the cognitive powers of the youth of the ’80s here. I was there, and I can’t exactly vouch for it, but maybe that was just the palookas I hung around with back then.
Indy’s next official movie tie-in came with August 1985’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom arcade game, which arrived a little over a year after the movie. Also developed by Atari, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was instantly a huge step up over its Atari 2600 predecessor – and not simply because Indiana Jones no longer looked like a tiny UFO floating over a fire hydrant. The Temple of Doom arcade game was a very early example of digitised speech in video games – something that had only just started in Atari’s 1983 Star Wars arcade game.
With his iconic whip, players were required to hustle their way through Mola Ram’s lair, freeing captured children, avoiding spike traps, and defeating cultists and creatures. A mine cart level obviously made an appearance, too.
Versions of Temple of Doom eventually made their way to home devices like the Commodore 64 and the NES but, as was generally the case during the golden age of arcades, the home versions looked and played like vastly inferior knock offs of the real thing.
In 1987, Mindscape returned with yet another original Indiana Jones game that flaunted the series’ naming conventions by switching the “and the” for a much clumsier “in”: Indiana Jones in Revenge of the Ancients. It was a text adventure, so Mindscape wasn’t just going back in time for Indy’s story matter – it was going back in time for its game design, too. Do you want to hear about it?
Well, good, because that brings us to quite a busy little period for Indiana Jones games, kicking off around the 1989 release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which is frankly the most perfect movie ever made and, no, I won’t be taking any questions.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade actually inspired three separate games released between 1989 and the early ’90s. One of those was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game, first published on PCs in 1989 by Lucasfilm Games, which was later renamed LucasArts, and then later still, Lucasfilm Games again. Versions of the game eventually made their way to approximately every other platform on Earth in the early ’90s.
Unfortunately, no version of the game was very good and, considering Indiana Jones is supposed to be a teenager in the scene depicted in the above screenshot, the understanding of the movie some versions displayed was rudimentary at best.
Well, be that as it may, it’s hard to get too misty eyed about The Action Game when it was so thoroughly outclassed by its own stablemate, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure. While Lucasfilm Games had outsourced the development of The Action Game to a long-defunct studio called Tiertex, The Graphic Adventure was developed by Lucasfilm Games itself, and was the third game to run on the studio’s now famous SCUMM engine – after Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. Point-and-click adventure games have always been Lucasfilm Games’ bread and butter, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure remains a fine example of its work.
Led by adventure game legend Ron Gilbert of Monkey Island fame, The Graphic Adventure sticks far more closely to the events of the film, though it still finds room to colour outside the lines of the script with sequences that allow Indy to talk his way around Nazi encounters if you’re canny enough. Or, you can just punch Hitler right in his goddamn face.
There are definitely some quality of life issues present in The Last Crusade that later Lucasfilm point-and-click games would go on to iron out, but there’s no denying the tremendous attention to detail the team managed to squeeze into it.
The third game based on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was a NES-exclusive action game from Taito, which was distinct from “The Action Game”, but did mean there were literally two Last Crusade tie-ins available on NES published out of opposite sides of the planet. For reference, you can recognise the Taito one via Indy’s high-kicking martial arts skills, as it appears Harrison Ford has been replaced with Jean Claude Van Damme. But hey, I guess I love Kickboxer and Bloodsport as much as the next guy.
Well, nothing, I guess, although the topic of recasting Harrison Ford does bring us neatly to 1993’s The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles by Chris Gray Enterprises, Incorporated, and 1994’s Instruments of Chaos starring Young Indiana Jones from the less enterprising but equally incorporated Brian A. Rice, Incorporated. The former was a NES exclusive, and the latter was only available on Sega Genesis, which went by the slightly cooler ‘Sega Mega Drive’ in Japan and Europe, the accidentally mispronounced ‘See-ga Mega Drive’ in Australasia, and the… very different ‘Super Aladdin Boy’ in South Korea. No, that’s not made up.
Anyway, in keeping with the TV show that aired between ’92 and ’93, Harrison Ford was, in fact, replaced with Sean Patrick Flanery – at least for the box art. The platforming action in each, however, was not particularly fun or memorable enough for either of them to be much more than a footnote in Indiana Jones’ gaming history. Certainly not fun or memorable enough to ignore the magnificent game we just skipped: 1992’s legendary Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis finds Indy in a race against time to beat the Nazis to the lost underwater city of Atlantis. Directed by Hal Barwood, the game had initially been intended to be based on a sidelined Indiana Jones script written by Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire director Chris Columbus prior to The Last Crusade. However, Barwood – who himself had earlier co-written Steven Spielberg’s first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express – petitioned to create an original story for it.
Barwood collaborated with The Last Crusade co-designer Noah Falstein, who introduced the concept of having three different routes through the game’s story: The Wits Path, which focuses on a more cerebral challenge, the Fists Path, which is a more action-oriented, Hollywood experience with lighter puzzles, and the Team Path, where Indy remains with his partner Sophia Hapgood to solve puzzles together. These paths would branch away after the first act, though they would converge again towards the end.
Representing LucasArts at around the peak of its point-and-click power, The Fate of Atlantis is not only regarded as one of the studio’s best-ever adventure games – it’s one of the best adventure games of all time. That said, it’s hard to say whether it would have been the same smash hit with the name the suits reportedly wanted to give it, which was simply “Indy’s Next Adventure.”
As with The Last Crusade, LucasArts simultaneously published an entirely redundant second version of the Fate of Atlantis: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game, which was developed by Attention to Detail, slightly before it briefly hit the big time with the futuristic Rollcage racing series. With its isometric view and its finicky and frankly awful controls, Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game was actually a far poorer action game than the platformers that had preceded it.
A CD version of the Graphic Adventure arrived in 1993 with full voice acting, but unfortunately a planned follow-up called Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix was cancelled – although the game’s story was still actually published in a limited Dark Horse comic series from December 1994 to March 1995.
Anyway, while Indiana Jones’ graphic adventures were wrapping up on PC, SNES owners were in for one final taste of Indiana Jones’ greatest adventures in Indiana Jones’… Greatest Adventures. Released in late 1994 in North America and mid-1995 in Japan and PAL territories, Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures is a Super Star Wars-style side scroller that encompasses the events of all three original films.
Developed by Factor 5 – which would go on to develop a string of Star Wars games with LucasArts, including the Rogue Squadron series – Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures features a horde of familiar locations from the movies, some seriously impressive Mode 7 sequences to break up the platforming action, and well balanced combat split between Indy’s whip, pistol, and grenades. Sure, it was harder than a woodpecker’s lips, and sure it took a few detours to accommodate some genre-typical boss battles – particularly since Indiana Jones villains in the films have a habit of literally killing themselves – but Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures is a much-loved segment of the Indiana Jones gaming tapestry.
Less beloved was the peculiar 1996 PC game Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures, which was led by Fate of Atlantis creator Hal Barwood but was an entirely different sort of adventure game. With its budget price and retro RPG aesthetic – even for the mid-’90s – Desktop Adventures was officially designed for a more casual audience to idly play in windowed mode while they were doing other tasks, and its procedurally generated approach promised “literally billions of possible games,” as per an enthusiastic claim on the game’s box art. One mission even had Indy retrieving the head of C-3P0.
Unfortunately, this casual take on Indy-themed adventuring was not exactly welcomed by critics. Thanks in no small part to LucasArts’ existing reputation as the home of genre-leading adventure games, Desktop Adventures’ low-fi and frictionless approach was met with an inauspicious reaction. It also probably didn’t help that 1996 also saw the debut of Tomb Raider, a 3D adventure more cutting edge than Lara Croft’s tank top. Though she was certainly inspired by Indiana Jones, Lara rapidly rose to become a certified cultural icon herself. Indiana Jones had some archaeological competition, and she was more than happy to muscle Indiana out of the equation. Indeed, 1999’s Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation even had an Easter egg of Indiana Jones’ skeleton – complete with a fedora and a whip.
Indiana Jones finally entered the third dimension himself in 1999’s Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine for PC – which, coincidentally enough – is about an ancient Babylonian device that facilitates interdimensional travel. Again directed by Hal Barwood, The Infernal Machine is a third-person action adventure heavily informed by Core’s early Tomb Raider games. Run. Jump. Pull blocks. Push blocks. Lara may have begun life as an Indy imitator, but now Indy was looking at Lara, and copying her every move. Puzzles weren’t particularly taxing, though performing them sometimes was with the somewhat cumbersome controls.
Set in 1947, The Infernal Machine benched the series’ normal Nazi baddies in favour of Soviets instead, who are intent on harnessing the power of the titular Infernal Machine and its interdimensional properties for an edge in the quickly escalating Cold War. It did, however, bring back Sophia Hapgood from The Fate of Atlantis, which was a neat touch.
The Infernal Machine was initially set to receive a PlayStation port, but it was cancelled. An N64 version did make it into the wild in 2000, albeit exclusively in the US, and it was only available to purchase via the LucasArts company store, or purchase or rent from Blockbuster. You know, the stores that used to let you borrow games for a small fee, before that beautiful concept was sacrificed in order to let people stream Is It Cake? directly to their phones.
The N64 version was supposed to make its way to PAL territories but after numerous delays that was eventually cancelled. There was also a top down handheld version of Infernal Machine released in 2001, although it unfortunately arrived on the Game Boy Color just as the Game Boy Advance was arriving to replace the Game Boy Color.
Indy’s next adventure came in 2003, courtesy of The Collective, a team fresh off 2002’s Xbox exclusive Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Taking place in 1935, Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb was actually a prequel to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Arriving first on the original Xbox, then PC, then several months later on PS2, the Emperor’s Tomb remained relatively Tomb Raider adjacent, but it dialled back the brainteasers and block puzzles in favour of lever hunting and light platforming.
The Emperor’s Tomb was also considerably more combat oriented, with a brawling system borrowed directly from Buffy and the ability to use items lying around the world as weapons, including chairs and broken table legs.
The Emperor’s Tomb had all the core ingredients of a robust Indy adventure, including magnificent music, nefarious Nazis, and a typically powerful ancient artefact the Nazis want – in this case, the Heart of the Dragon, a perfect black pearl legend says can control the hearts of men. However, it also packed a few surprises, including an appearance by an enormous dragon and a showdown with a huge kraken.
And here I was thinking the only crackin’ involving Indy was the sound his whip made.
LucasArts began work on a follow-up to The Emperor’s Tomb in 2004, destined for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, both of which were set to arrive in late 2005 and late 2006 respectively.
Fans were treated to a first glimpse of the game in a quirky tech-focused teaser trailer which LucasArts used to illustrate some of the advancements it was promising under the hood. It was actually our first look at the animation middleware Euphoria, the biomechanical AI that would go on to hit the big time in 2008’s Grand Theft Auto IV.
Sadly, work on the much-anticipated project faltered, and the game missed its planned 2007 release. To make matters worse for LucasArts, Naughty Dog had also decided to join them in the archaeological arena with November 2007’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune for PlayStation 3, the first outing for the now iconic PlayStation hero Nathan Drake.
Work on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 Indiana Jones project continued for a time, and in the interim LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures from Traveller’s Tales arrived in June 2008, just after the arrival of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in cinemas.
A whimsical and family-friendly tour of the first three films in the series, LEGO Indiana Jones didn’t stray far from the successful formula Traveller’s Tales established with its brickbusting LEGO Star Wars games, but it didn’t really have to, as evident from the dozen or so licensed LEGO games that have followed over the last decade-and-a-half. With a great sense of imagination and a huge list of playable characters, LEGO Indiana Jones was certainly the most fun way to re-experience the original films in a virtual environment since Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures for SNES back in 1994.
Traveller’s Tales released a quickfire sequel in 2009 dubbed LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues, which included new levels for the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but slightly poorer versions of the original trilogy.
But back over at LucasArts, how were things going with its belated but bold new biomechanically-driven baby?
Unfortunately, in early 2009 it was confirmed that LucasArts had permanently iced its Xbox 360 and PS3 Indiana Jones project, and the reportedly largely-unfinished game would never see the light of day.
LucasArts allowed its third-party partners to continue working on the PS2, PSP, DS, and Wii version of the project, published in mid-2009 as Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, but the reception for an Indy adventure on such superseded hardware was understandably tepid. What did the Staff of Kings get from IGN?
Yeah.
Released right in the heart of the motion control fad, the Staff of Kings was hamstrung by its drastic overuse of waggle. Even the Wii-exclusive co-op mode that paired Indy up with his dad was diabolically unfun.
In fact, the general consensus was that the best thing about the Staff of Kings on Wii was that it came with Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis embedded in it as a bonus. Well, that and the absolutely dead-on Sean Connery impersonation from Scottish actor Lewis MacLeod.
But was this just an isolated misstep in the Indiana Jones gaming saga? One bad date before we returned to the banquet? Unfortunately, no.
Indiana Jones’ next appearance was Indiana Jones Adventure World, a long-defunct Zynga game that was released in 2011 and shut down in 2012. It was on Facebook, presumably wedged somewhere between all the minion memes and misinformation.
Indiana Jones also made an appearance in Fortnite back in 2022 as one of its hundreds and hundreds of skins, designed purely to keep Epic plush and parents poor. Indy was back in the games business after 10 long years. He just wasn’t in a fun one.
Fortunately, for fans of Indy’s traditional single-player adventures, Indiana Jones is finally about to return in a proper game of his own: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a first-person action adventure set between Raiders and The Last Crusade.
In case you’re not aware, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is being developed by MachineGames, the studio behind the modern Wolfenstein series, and frankly I can’t think of a more perfect place for the world’s most prestigious Nazi-punching professor to end up than the current home of Mr. B.J. Blazkowicz.
Hey man, we hear you.
For more deep dives into the histories of long-running licensed video game franchises, check out IGN’s look back at the terrifying (and sometimes terrible) history of Alien games, and our radical history of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.
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