Developer: Factor 5 Publisher: JVC Released: 1994 Genre: Action
JVC and Lucas Arts hit on a winning formula with the Super Star Wars series for SNES. With those three games under their belt Indiana Jones was the natural choice to star in his own series. Yet rather than separate games for each fill Lucas Arts made one grand adventure to encompass all three. This could easily have been a bad idea but in the capable hands of Factor 5 Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures has turned out to be a great hit.
Despite the change in developer you can still see traces of Super Star Wars in Indiana Jones. Indy controls like Han Solo with a whip. Their jumping animation and arc is the same, the shooting animation is identical and they both have the same roll. The irony isn’t lost considering it is the same actor. Unlike Han Solo Indy uses a whip for the majority of the game. The whip is stronger and can be used to swing across gaps. The game makes use of almost every button on the controller so that you can choose to melee attack or switch between the gun and whip if you choose. The good controls are welcome as there are clear situations where one option is better than another.
Even though Indiana Jones Greatest Adventures’ covers all three movies you can’t select them individually. You play through the events of each film and they have a clear beginning, middle, and end. At twenty eight levels that means there is a lot of game with each film taking up a different number of levels. Raiders of the Lost Ark is the longest with twelve levels and feels fully fleshed out. The Temple of Doom and the Last Crusade clock in at eight stages which feels off. All three movies have enough material to be their own game which is disappointing. But since the game released in late 1994 I suppose they made the right choice; who knows if the SNES would have been active in 1996 when the last game would hypothetically release? Actually it was but I digress.
Variety is what makes Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures interesting for the long haul. If it were a straight platformer from beginning to end it would get old quickly. Instead the levels and their objectives vary from one to the other. You will go from exploring a dank cave to being chased by a massive boulder, to cruising down an ice capped mountain in a life raft. Most of the iconic moments in each film are present in some form which is extremely cool. You get to relive the hilarious gun vs sword battle and it is just as funny. There are occasional deviations for gameplay reasons such as the Taj Mahal maze and the few boss battles but that is not even a complaint. I appreciate the diversity.
Like the Super Star Wars series Mode 7 is used for a few vehicle based levels. Sadly these are not as tightly designed as those titles and have a number of flaws. The biplane segment should have been an easy win. Instead it is the most frustrating. There is no targeting reticle making it hard to hit enemy ships. Even worse, you can’t see their bullets either, resulting in random deaths. The control of the life raft is slippery but at least the level is not long and you can cheat by jumping constantly. The mine cart is a video game staple yet here it is also frustrating. The viewpoint makes it hard to see enemies and judge their distance. Unfortunately one hit equals death. Similarly the switches needed to switch tracks are finicky to hit. Prepare to lose many lives here.
You could say the same thing about the game as a whole. Even though it comes from a different developer Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures shares many of the same mini frustrations as the Star Wars games. Smaller enemies that can’t be hit pop up everywhere and it is annoying. Spikes, falling rocks, and pieces of debris crop up without warning resulting in cheap hits. Your life bar is not long so death comes quickly. It makes what should have been great levels like Club Obi-Wan pure hell. At the very least it seems the game knows when a particularly difficult segment is coming as there are convenient extra lives nearby. It doesn’t reach the level of Super Empire Strikes Back thankfully but could have been far better with some tweaking.
Indiana Jones looks stunning for a late generation title thanks to great art. Factor 5 have always been tech wizards and they work their magic here with aplomb. The sprites and animation look fantastic and exhibit lots of minute details. Many of the locations from the films have as many as six layers of scrolling and it looks stunning. Most importantly there is no slowdown, even in its Mode 7 levels. You can follow the story in truncated form thanks to digitized stills that manage to look great even through compression. Additionally all three titles have excellent recreations of John Williams’ score. This is an A class effort all around.
In Closing
Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures is a great gem in the SNES library and one of Lucas Arts better titles for the system. They have delivered in creating one monster title that encompasses all three films, giving excellent bang for your buck.
