The History of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom the arcade game - documentary

[Music] happy little games this video was a special request by matt at rage reviews hope you enjoy it the matinee cereals of the 40s and 50s my dad would tell me that five cents would get you a double feature a cartoon and a big bag of popcorn on a saturday afternoon the exciting action would come to life told over 12 to 15 chapters with each one around 20 minutes in length these always ended with a cliffhanger making sure you were there the following week to see how your hero got out of that diabolical predicament kids of the day had a wide choice when it came to these movies with such classic characters as flash gordon dick tracy the lone ranger superman and batman the main character in the arcade game we are talking about today took inspiration from these saturday afternoon adventures armed with a whip and a hat this character would become an icon and every time i would see someone brandishing it i would get the warm fuzzies and a great big nostalgic rush no i'm not talking about my ex-girlfriend i'm talking about indiana jones and more specifically indiana jones and the temple of doom the arcade game by atari the game would go on to be another successful title for atari in their long line of coin-op hits so grab that whip and whip it good but don't call him junior junior because this is the history of indiana jones and the temple of doom the arcade game the year is 1982 and raiders of the lost ark is proving to be a huge seller on the atari 2600 programmed by howard scott warshaw yes the same warshaw who brought us the ever lovely et video game the game was one of the earliest adventure titles ever released and did a fairly good job of representing the adventure aspect from the movie george lucas created the character of indiana jones which was inspired by the 1940 serials of his youth he was also inspired by the movies casablanca and the treasure of the sierra madre acharya had wanted to see if lightning would strike twice and pursued the license for the temple of doom they secured an all-encompassing license which means everything from the movie could be featured in the game including actor likenesses and sound clips this was something that would change years later as certain indiana jones games were not able to feature the likeness of harrison ford rather than do a home game they decided to go with an arcade title which featured more powerful hardware the atari system one board was used which already played host to a number of classic games such as marble madness road runner and later on road blasters this would be the first game for the hardware to feature digitized voices and it took full advantage with clips from indiana jones and also molo ram the john williams rendition was fantastic and doesn't sound too bad today indiana jones in the temple of doom was released in the arcades in 1985. the game follows the third act of the movie pretty closely in which you assume the role of indiana jones as you take on the cult of the thuggies who are nestled deep inside the temple of doom and attempt to rescue all of the children your primary weapon is your quite naturally the whip as you lay the smackdown repeatedly on those buggy thuggies among other nasty creatures the game uses an eight-way joystick with one button for the whip the game was designed for both left-handed and right-handed players because there is a button on each side of the joystick the first thing you notice when the game starts up is that you are given the choice of difficulty which was quite rare at the time you can also insert an extra coin upon startup to give you extra lives the game takes place across three primary levels with the fourth and last level appearing only after you repeated the first three levels three times this was quite similar to me trying to make it past the fourth grade needless to say back in the day i never saw the fourth level the first level sees you having to rescue the captive children while taking down all of the thuggies who were guarding them this level is not too difficult provided you are quick with the whip the second level takes place in the mine shaft where you're in a minecart going downhill avoiding broken tracks and whipping the various bad guys [Music] the third level sees you reach the altar of the temple where you have to grab the sankara stone while avoiding the lava and the thuggies if you complete this successfully the game will take you back to the first level for you to repeat only with new obstacles [Music] not only do you have to contend with the various thuggies but also bats and cobras your whip is used to not only stun and kill enemies but also to swing across various gaps just like in the movie after the third cycle through the game the altar level is replaced with the rope bridge with you having to make it all the way across while avoiding mola ram's attack there is a hidden animation which you can access by repeatedly pressing the whip button after you sever the rope bridge indy will climb up and wrap his whip around willy while short round tells them to knock it off [Music] oh andy knock it off complete this you are taken to a series of bonus stages to collect as many points as possible from what i've seen the bonus stages repeat infinitely until you die with a hot property like indiana jones which was based on an arcade game of course there were going to be a lot of conversions us gold were in charge of the home computer ports and a few years later tengen did the nes port the first version we are looking at is the amstrad port the first thing you notice upon boot up is the horrendous title screen which for some odd reason indiana jones looks to be trying out for the blue man group once the game actually starts you'll notice that your indiana jones character appears to be plucked from the civil war because he is dressed all in blue the graphics are detailed although the colors are a bit muted we have both music and sound effects and to be honest they sound pretty good the speed to the game is pretty consistent with the arcade game and the scrolling is fairly smooth especially on the minecart level gameplay wise the controls are nice and tight and feel pretty good coming out of this 8-bit machine there are only three levels with the rope level missing but we do get the bonus stages [Music] [Music] i've said it before and i'll say it again the apple ii version is up next and i really wish it wasn't now granted the hardware was getting long in the tooth and i do applaud the developers for at least trying but there are sometimes conversions just shouldn't be attempted the character sprites are large and fairly detailed but what really lets this down among other things is the choppy scrolling no joke it looks to be about three frames per second now let's talk about the um sound i've got one thing to ask each and every one of you what you gonna do when queef a mania runs wild on you when the game first boots up you get a horrible rendition of the indiana jones theme and the sound effects are full of bloops and bleeps the controls are terrible as well which to be honest i cannot believe this game got released in this state let's kick it up to the 16 bits for a moment and talk about the atari st version graphically it looks similar to the arcade game although it runs with a giant border on the right side the sprites while not as large as the arcade game are fairly detailed and at least this time india is wearing brown as soon as it starts to move though everything falls apart just like my grandma trying to eat corn while not as herky-jerky as the apple version the scrolling is still not very smooth and definitely affects the gameplay there is music while we play although to be honest it doesn't sound very good [Music] the good old commodore 64 version is up next and graphically it looks very similar to the apple ii thankfully though the frame rate is in the double digits this time around this game apparently takes place before labor day because india is decked out all in white the character sprites are large and reminiscent of the arcade original with not as much detail this conversion has the smoothest scrolling out of all the ones i've seen except possibly the nes one so kudos for that the animation is straight up choppy choppy which doesn't hinder the gameplay too much once you get used to it there is music while you play but unfortunately it doesn't put the sid chip to good use it's only average at best the controls feel good though with nice responsive gameplay a couple of years after this minescape released a version in the us it looked very similar to this version with the title screen having only slight [Music] differences [Music] hmm just when you thought it couldn't get any worse the msx version bobs its head like a three plunge sally from my toilet i don't even know what i'm looking at the sprites are all one color and indy looks if he has been sucking on a nuclear rod from the springfield power plant surprisingly the speed of the game feels on point with the arcade original and even the scrolling is fairly smooth there is music while you play and while i didn't want to cut my ears off or anything i still wouldn't recommend it the gameplay is nice and responsive and reminiscent of the arcade original [Music] the spectrum version is up next and despite its lack of color this conversion is not too bad the character sprites are detailed with fairly good animation rather than use the standard scrolling found in the arcade game this uses a sort of half screen flick scroll which doesn't hinder the gameplay too bad and is fairly smooth the speed of the game is consistent with the arcade original and the controls are nice and responsive you can't have everything though was the only sound in the game are typical bloops and bleeps but you can always mute it overall though much better than i was expecting the one most people are familiar with is the nes version released by tengen a couple of years after the other conversions were released this one is a nightmare this is not a straight-up adaptation of the coin-op but takes the basic premise and expands upon it for example indy has a sword and a gun that he can use in addition to his whip the gun makes the game entirely too easy because just by firing it kills any enemy on the screen without even aiming at them the graphics are downright red headed step child ugly with horrendous animation to boot using the whip on the thuggies doesn't kill them with only one shot but it does stun them you have to do your best impression of a dominatrix whipping them four or five times until they fall off the edge into the lava below speaking of falling off the edge the ai is really bad and a lot of times the enemies will just throw themselves into the lava for no reason the sound effects in music are adequate and the controls are at least responsive the scrolling is also fairly smooth so i will give them extra credit for that [Music] the amiga version is up next and looks very similar to the atari st version but with faster gameplay and smoother scrolling however the character's prides and backgrounds are not quite as detailed as found on the atari st music has also been upgraded significantly and sounds really good control wise it's right on par with the atari st version which felt pretty good despite its flaws this is probably the best home conversion of the arcade game and finally let's take a look at the ms-dos version this is clearly based on the atari st except the sound is full-blown pc speaker which means plenty of hearts and queefs for everybody the scrolling is not as smooth as the amiga version but the speed is fast and the controls feel good indiana jones and the temple of doom was another excellent game in atari's long line of arcade hits to be honest it hasn't really aged that well and can be a bit frustrating trying to make it to the rope bridge but overall it's still fun to play although it can get pretty repetitive pretty quick if you've ever wanted to die on that virtual fedora and whip some crazy thuggies be sure and give this game a shot you'll be glad you did if you enjoyed this video be sure to like share comment and subscribe also if you would like to support me on patreon please check the link below thank you everybody for watching you

Channel: PatmanQC - History of arcade game documentaries

Views: 37,402

Keywords: NES, arcade, SNES, amputee, Xbox, PlayStation, Sony, Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, retro, video, gamesAtari, Colecovision, Intellivision, Jaguar, entertainment, system, Game, Boy, Genesis, Mega, drive, CD, X68000, Amstrad, spectrum, MSX, 2600, 5200, 7800, 400, 800, 1200, PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, 360, one, switch, GameCube, wii, wii-u, Raiders of the lost Ark, the last Crusade, Harrison Ford, Indy, road blasters, marble madness, road runner, Batman, Crystal skull, short round, Willie, George Lucas, Howard Scott Warshaw, Junior

Id: fcdP9twjswM

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021