It is very, very strange that there are so few excellent Indiana Jones games. The characters and fantasy-20th-century that make up Henry Jones Jr’s world are uniquely suited to the tropes and traditions of game design. This isn’t to say that Indy hasn’t had some success in the medium. The arcade game of Temple of Doom is a memorably colorful quarter-muncher (though, the less said of its home ports, the better,) JVC’s Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures on Super Nintendo is the best platformer that studio produced, and Lucasarts’ point-and-click adventures, an adaptation of The Last Crusade and an original story called Fate of Atlantis, are rightfully beloved for both their branching stories and their taxing logic puzzles. The rest of Indy’s gaming oeuvre, however, ranges from tolerably mediocre, like Traveler’s Tales’ Lego Indiana Jones, to plain bad, like Windows/N64’s Infernal Machine. (Infernal Machine is especially notable because it’s the only game in the franchise that falls into the genre most-suited to Indiana Jones, the Tomb Raider-styled 3D platformer. Tomb Raider has always been modeled on Indiana Jones’ particular brand of archaeological adventuring. Raider’s spiritual successor, Uncharted, is even more explicitly inspired by Jones, right down to the sarcastic male lead of dubious morality with a heart of gold.) It’s true that officially licensed videogames have something of a history when it comes to sucking, but given Indiana Jones’ Lucasfilms/Lucasarts pedigree, you’d expect the franchise to have at least as good a track record as Star Wars. (By my calculations, you get one good Star Wars game for every three terrible ones. Luckily, that equates to a lot of good Star Wars games.)
Today, the pertinent question is not why are there not more good Indiana Jones games, but why aren’t there more Indiana Jones games period? Intrepid internet spelunkers will find word of not one but two Indiana Jones games that will never se the light of day. According to IGN, the Xbox 360/Playstation 3 Indiana Jones that was all the rage at E3 2006 has finally been cancelled. Lucasarts still hasn’t officially confirmed that but, considering the game was being developed internally, it wouldn’t come as a huge surprise following the company’s massive layoffs last summer. Then there’s Indiana Jones: Staff of Moses for PSP. Developed by Amaze Entertainment, a small studio that specializes in small-scale licensed games, Moses was never even officially announced. According to NeoGAFfer Shiggy, who brought the game’s existence to my attention in the first place, Moses was supposed to come out in 2008, presumably to coincide with the release of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As of now, though, the game hasn’t been heard from since 2007.
Indiana can’t get a break. I’m very disappointed that the untitled 360/PS3 won’t be materializing. The early videos were admittedly stiff, but they showed promise, and Lucasarts proved themselves capable of making a decent 3D action game with The Force Unleashed. Alas, it joins Indiana Jones and The Iron Phoenix in the pantheon of cancelled Indiana Jones that might have been awesome.
(Link: IGN and NeoGAF)
Related links:
Where Is the New Indiana Jones?
Fortune and Glory, SNES-Style
Indiana Mackey and the Kingdom of the Cardboard Box