Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures

"Solid platforming fun!"

Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures, a 2D platformer for the Super Nintendo, is a decent attempt at converting three of the best action/adventure movies of all time into one game. While by no means perfect, it's certainly an enjoyable romp through the famous locales that any Indiana Jones fan would instantly be familiar with.

Clearly inspired by the success of the Super Star Wars series of games, Lucas Arts greenlit a game based on George Lucas's other well known series, Indiana Jones. Unlike the Super Star Wars series it was decided to compress all three movies into one game, which means that there is little padding here – almost all the levels in this game are based off memorable scenes from the movie. Whether it's avoiding a run-away boulder through a South American temple, a thrilling mine-cart chase through the Temple of Doom, or on-top of a tank heading straight for a cliff in a fist-fight with a Nazi Commander through a middle-eastern desert, all these scenes and more are brought to life in this action-packed game.

As you probably could have guessed the story for this game closely follows the three stories from the Indiana Jones movies. The story is presented quite well with a compressed image from the movie giving a visual indication of what scene is being played out while text appears at the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately, if you are unaware of the story from the Indy movies you will struggle to work out what is going on as the story has been cut back beyond the barebones and makes little sense without viewing the movies first.

Greatest Adventures is neither an overly long or overly difficult game however it certainly has its fair share of challenging gameplay that ensures that beating the game is a rewarding experience. Indiana Jones starts off with four lives and is able to gain more; either from collecting 100 gems or from picking up one of the rare one-up tokens that are scattered throughout the game. A health-bar is located in the top left-hand corner giving you six hits before you lose one of your lives. More often though, you will find yourself dying instantaneously from falling into a pit (which are frequent) or any other instant death method the individual level has in store for you.

Greatest Adventures, uses a password based system to ‘save' your progress as you advance through the game. While it would have been nice if the game included save-slots, the password system isn't to intrusive as it's merely a matter of writing down four symbols rather than, say, a 20 digit code that other password-based games may have used in the past. A new password is given out every time Indy journeys to an entirely new location (typically every 3-4 levels or so). This adds a degree of difficulty because if Indiana runs out of lives, when you continue you will find yourself right back at the level you received the new password on. This can be quite frustrating if you are four levels on from that point and run out of lives!

The graphics are generally well done in Greatest Adventures. Indiana Jones has a good amount of animation, as does the enemies that he faces throughout the game. Nice graphical touches abound; for example, leaves move as Indiana walks over them or if Indy's feet touch the water as he swings across it with his whip, a watery splash will occur. The colour-palette of the Super Nintendo is used well to create an accurate feel of an Indiana Jones movie with levels appearing either dark and drab, or bright and colourful depending on the area they are trying to re-create. The backgrounds are also well done and can be quite dynamic; particular praise goes to the background in the Nazi's castle as lightning flashes through the windows – it certainly adds atmosphere to a level that would otherwise be pretty ordinary. Overall, while the graphics are certainly not among the best for the system, the individual parts come together quite nicely to create an aesthetically pleasing experience.

The music in this game is excellent as John Williams' academy award nominated soundtrack makes a great translation into midi format. The score is not overly used however as the game designers made the wise choice of leaving some levels with only the wind and other atmospheric sounds to keep you company which certainly helps heighten the mood in these particular levels. The sounds are unfortunately, more of a mixed bag. It is nice to hear (albeit limited) voice in this game. It almost makes it worthwhile hearing Shaun Connery saying “I've lost him!” after you have ran out of lives. The crack of the whip is also another nice audio highlight. On the other hand, everything else is rather stock-standard. The bullets fired from your gun really don't sound like they have any ‘meat' on them, enemy death sounds are uninspired and the sound from your plane when your shooting down Nazi warplanes is hardly awe-inspiring to name just a few examples of average sound design. It also appears that there are a few places where an enemy won't make any sounds at all; either from firing of their weapon or from by being hit from Indy. It seems rather odd, that for an otherwise professional game, a bug this obvious was let through the testing department.

The gameplay on the other hand is rather good and offers a nice degree of variety to keep the game from becoming stale. The levels follow the movie pretty well and while in many cases the level designers have ‘embellished' a little, on the whole it's a pretty accurate representation of the movies. The vast majority of levels are done in the style of a 2D platformer however there are a few levels that take place from a more 3D aspect which certainly helps break up the game. With that being said, the majority of the 2D levels are done quite well with many of them providing unique challenges that you must master in order to progress to the next level. For example while searching the catacombs you must constantly find places where you can avoid the frequent wall of fire that roars past you. In another level you must use your whip frequently to outrun a series of windows that burst into flame. All-in-all between the 3D levels and the variety found in the 2D levels there is little room for boredom.

The game is not perfect however and some of the levels are fairly weak. I personally found the levels based in Cairo to be overly long and overly repetitive, although including the scene at the end where Indy shoots the fancy weapon wielding bad guy makes the level almost worthwhile. Another level that I was disappointed with was in Pankot Palace where you run around randomly moving statues in the hope of finding the secret entrance into the underground temple. This level was incredibly frustrating and really should have been scrapped from the final product. Finally the game certainly has the potential for many cheap deaths as getting hit from an enemy pushes you backwards which certainly can cause you to die if you are standing just in front of a pit.

To defeat the wide variety of enemies throughout the game Indy can use his fist, his gun, his whip or his grenades. The fist tends to be a last resort however it is useful for moving boxes around to reach otherwise unreachable areas and certain boss fights where you must engage them in fist to fist combat (which was surprisingly fun). Indy's gun is weaker than his whip however it does have certain advantages. It has a faster rate of fire, it is possible to move and shoot at the same time and finally it has a longer range. The whip, along with being more powerful, is also more versatile as you are able to use it to swing from certain ‘hooks' that are scattered throughout the game. Indeed, I found myself using the whip the vast majority of time for three reasons; it is more powerful, it is more versatile, and it's a lot of fun to use! Finally Indy has a limited supply of grenades that are useful for clearing the screen of all enemies. It is the most powerful weapon of all and knowing when the best time to use this weapon is, adds a nice strategic element to the gameplay.

The controls in this game are fairly well done. The default controls are, Y uses your current weapon, B jumps, A rolls (while ducking), X throws a grenade, L or R throws a punch, select switches between your gun and the whip and the direction pad moves your character. As you can probably tell this is an intuitive set of controls for Indy however if it is not to your liking, it is possible for these controls to be changed from the options menu. I did find a couple of issues with the controls however. Rolling, I felt, could have been handled more intuitively and it does feel somewhat awkward to use. My other issue is when using the gun; while you can shoot and run with the gun you are only able to do that if you start off running first. If you shoot from a standing start you are unable to move your character until you stop shooting. This seems like an odd oversight to my eyes.

The replayability of this game largely depends on how much you enjoyed it on your first play through as there are no extras to aim for here. There are difficulty settings however and I was certainly motivated to play through this game on hard after beating it on normal as I had a lot of fun playing through this game the first time. Playing it through on hard certainly adds another dimension to the game as you certainly have to think more about how you will tackle individual enemies in order to avoid getting hit, while in the easier difficulty settings this was less of an issue.

While Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures is not among the Super Nintendo's best it is a highly enjoyable game with decent production values and is certainly a worthy title to add to any Super Nintendo game collection. While it is currently not yet available on the Wii virtual console, I certainly recommend that you hunt it down from ebay or any other source that you can think of as you won't be disappointed!

Story: 6/10
Graphics: 8.5/10
Sound/Music: 6.5/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Control: 7/10
Replayability: 6/10

Overall (not an average): 7.5 (rounded to 8 for gamefaqs)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/29/08

Game Release: Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures (EU, 03/30/95)