Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures

Released in North America on October 11, 1994 for the Super Nintendo by Lucasarts and JVC, and developed by Factor 5, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures recreates the globetrotting archaeologist's cinematic adventures with 2D side-scrolling action. 

Like most children of the 80's, my cinematic youth's landmarks are signed by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Star Wars and Indiana Jones operated on some heavenly plane far above the Earth of other films, only sometimes visited for brief moments by Back to the Future and the Goonies. Indiana Jones rested on top of the pinnacle of mighty heroes, the man every boy, or at least this man when he was a boy wanted to be. The heroic archaeologist was brave, adventurous, virtuous, but not too virtuous, too cool for school, but also the teacher, and most importantly, able to take a licking and keep on ticking. While 90's action stars like Steven Seagal were too immaculate to even take a punch, 80's hero, Harrison Ford, was getting the crap kicked out of him by huge Nazi goons (before, of course, getting in a few good punches, and outsmarting them), getting drug through the desert by a truck, REALLY, and I mean REALLY getting drug through the desert by a truck WITH NO CGI ASSISTANCE, and partaking in so much dangerous action that Ford literally had to staple his hat to his head to keep it from flying away. What a guy.

There he is

Of course, when Lucasarts announced they would be releasing a Super Nintendo game based on all three films' worth of Indy action, I freaked out. The Super Star Wars games Lucasarts had released were some of my favorites. Now, the greatest hero of all was going to be immortalized in 16-bits, in a 2D side-scroller, just as Star Wars' heroes were. Be still my beating middle-school heart.
However, it looked like a different developer would be working on this game for Lucasarts. While Sculpted Software created the Super Star Wars games for the Super Nintendo, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures would be developed by German upstarts, Factor Five.

Nothing Indy can't handle

I have 90's history with this game. My local Sears clearanced out a huge section of their SNES games to make room for Playstation, and the incoming Nintendo 64. They also had a demo Sega Genesis running Sonic & Knuckles at the time. I saw they were selling Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures for $20. I wish I would have bought it then. That's half of what I paid for it (in the box) recently. At some point in the 90's, I did rent it, and made it to the final boss, though I can't remember if I beat him or not. For some reason, 20+ years later, I just got the fever to buy it and play through it. Does it do Indy justice?

Run, Indy, it's my expectations!

Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures looks good. It ran on the Super Star Wars engine, and those are good looking games, as well. Levels are colorful, detailed, and faithful to the aesthetics of the films. Indy himself is excellently animated, and it's a joy to see this gloriously 16-bit depiction of him running, jumping, and whipping around the world. Enemies are mostly well-rendered, as well. Special mention must go to the backgrounds. The original Indy films are famous for their incredibly realistic background matte paintings, which frankly put many computer-generated backgrounds of today to shame. The backgrounds for all 28 of Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures' levels are treated with equal love and detail. They're beautiful, and I died a few times admiring their distant mountain peaks, and bustling cityscapes.

Hey guys, can we stop fighting for just a second to look at these happy little clouds?

The music is also given great care, as each track is a meticulously rendered 16-bit interpretation of the themes composer, John Williams, created for the films. "The Raiders March," "Main Title: South Ameria 1936," "The Basket Game," "The Map Room: Dawn," and "Slalom on Mt. Humol," among several others are faithfully recreated, with all the glorious, warm, Super Nintendo textures you could want. Unfortunately, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is not represented musically at all, and many themes from earlier in the game are simply repeated for the latter portions. Considering other Super Nintendo games released around the time of Greatest Adventures, i.e., Chrono Trigger, include more than 60 tracks, the fact that there is only a single digit amount of songs here, when the films include multitudes of musical cues, is inexcusable. Sound effects are great, with Indy's whip sounding exactly like his whip in the film, and some digitized speech, like Indy saying "Let's go!" at the start of each level adding an extra layer of immersion. The birds sound weird, though, and boy, will I get to those birds again later.

Let's, uh...swing away from that for now.

As far as gameplay goes, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures is a mixed bag. Factor Five have generally been known more for their technical prowess than game design. They were one of the only developers to get film-worthy sound out of the Nintendo 64, and their Rogue Squadron games look and sound incredible, but none of those games feature mind-blowing gameplay. Same thing here. Indy controls okay, his running, walking, and jumping movements feel right, and his trademark bullwhip handles like a dream. However, the crouch and roll mechanics feel a little off, which can be frustrating when those moves are needed in dangerous areas. That's a minor complaint, though. The more major problems with this game don't really lie in how Indy moves, but in the environments he moves through. As I've said, they look great, highly detailed, with stuff moving everywhere. However, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures falls prey to the same problems lesser 2D Castlevanias do.
Indeed, Indy's whip mechanics are quite similar to the Dracula-hunting series' weapon of choice, as Indy can swing from hooks, and like in absolute classic, Castlevania IV, strike with his whip in almost any direction. The problems come when Indy has to jump over one of the games many pits. Apparently, bio-diversity over pits is higher than in the rainforest, because when Indy's in mid-air over their depths, a previously unseen bird, bat, or rock will always strikes him from the sky...knocking him backward into the pit...and killing him.

A guy who can rip out a human heart with his bare hands? No problem. A two-pound bird with hollow bones? Insurmountable.

This is insanely frustrating, just as it is in the games I previously mentioned. Castlevania: Dracula X, which I just reviewed, is lousy with it. Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures does not at all need this cheap difficulty spiker. The player is forced to trial-and-error memorize their way through many of the game's levels, discovering where all the hidden airborne wildlife is. The game would have been just fine without this element. Sure, it would be a shorter adventure, but at least it would be more satisfying, less aggravating, and require more skill than repetition-ingrained memory. Also, this makes the game feel silly. Indy's greatest enemies should be Nazi's...not an unceasing horde of unladen swallows (and sometimes laden! I'm not kidding, some of them toss rocks at you!). Indeed, the parts where you actually fight Nazis are a blast, when you're also not being dive-bombed by pernicious birds.

Fighting a Nazi on top of a moving tank #lifegoals Or, I guess I could fight a bird instead.

Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures' weapons include the previously mentioned whip, Indy's fists (the punching mechanic is fun in theory, but Indy seems to miss when his fist is dead on just a few too many times), and at select moments, a gun with unlimited ammunition. The gun is weaker than the whip, but obviously has greater range. To highlight the scatterbrained level design, there are a few stages where Indy is given the pistol, or some health refuel (health in the shape of hearts is hidden around the levels) just as he's exiting the stage...which does him and the player no good. The game also features collectible jewels, or maybe gold balls, I'm not sure, scattered through each level. Collect 100, and in true Nintendo fashion, you receive an extra life. There are also some extra lives hidden throughout a few of the game's levels. The player starts with three, and is allowed three continues when their lives are expired. Each geographic area of the game, generally composed of 2-4 levels, has its own password, which the player can use to return when they've had a game over, or God forbid, turned off their SNES. This means that during a difficult, four-level area, if the player suffers a game over at the boss, of which the game has several, they have to start the entire area over. True to an old-school difficulty vibe, but annoying to modern gaming sensibilities. True to the films, a map is superimposed over images of Indy traveling from area to geographic area, when he completes the former, and a red line follows his progress.

Anywhere they don't have birds

On a production value level, the game features text-supported screenshots from the films that loosely tell their stories between levels, though these screens are not as impressive as the more interactive animated ones in the Super Star Wars games, as unfair a comparison as that may be. There are also three awesomely Mode 7 vehicle levels, one on a raft going down a mountain, one on a mine cart, and one in a plane. The first is thrilling, the second has its frustrations, and the third requires an exploitation of the frame to complete. If you'll remember, Mode 7 is a utilization of the Super Nintendo's highly touted ability to create the highly-pixelated illusion of movement through a 3D space.

In other words, it's basically a PS4 game.

Ugh. I love the aesthetics and vibe of this game. It captures a period of time where Indiana Jones and Star Wars, free of the Crystal Skull and prequel debacles, were unassailable. I looked at incredible console and computer games, lithographs, and other assorted Lucasfilm merchandise in the Lucasarts catalogue, under a blue, relaxed, puffy-cloud pocked sky. I read books by Timothy Zahn, and watched all my favorite Lucasfilm works, except for Howard the Duck, which I pretended didn't exist, on the USA Network. Life couldn't get any better. Looking back, though, underneath the dreamy vibe, Indy deserved a better 16-bit game than this. It's fun on a nostalgic, and dopamine-releasing level, but it's too flawed to be a classic like the films upon which it's based.


Graphics: 8.5/10.0

Sound: 8.0/10.0

Gameplay: 6.5/10.0

Lasting Value: 5.0/10.0


Overall: 6.8/10.0