Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Arcade
Nostalgia Factor:
My grandmother used to be part of a bowling league. Every week when she was babysitting me, she'd take me along to a place called Kuglitch's. It was a pretty big place, with a kid's play area, a restaurant, several bar areas, private rooms, etc. I remember the whole place smelling of beer, cigarette smoke, and freshly polished bowling lanes. It had its own unique sound, too.
While my grandma was bowling, I used to wander around and do a lot of exploring in areas that I probably shouldn't have been exploring by myself. There was one particular room kind of tucked away in the back of the building. It was a glassed-in private bar area. It was a small room, but very ornate looking. Nice wooden furniture, red carpet, a fully stocked bar counter, some elegant looking ferns and greenery lining the edges of the room. It's what I picture the smoking room in Titanic looking like. A nice, quiet place for distinguished gentleman in their finest suits. No one was ever in there, though, and the door was always locked. I normally wouldn't have paid this room one iota of attention if it wasn't for the one interesting thing they had in there: an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom arcade unit. It was so out of place in this fancy, elegant room. I always wondered what it was doing in there. I was a big Indy fan, so I always wanted so much to go in and give the game a try. The only problem? Like I said, the room was always locked.
Every time I'd visit this bowling alley with my grandma, I'd end up walking over to that room and staring longingly through the glass at this arcade game. I thought the game looked incredible. Being able to sit down and play it would have been an absolute dream for me. And I had quarters, too. My grandma would give me a handful to keep me busy while she bowled. I had the means to play the game, I just couldn't get in the freaking locked room to play it. It was painful to me as a kid because the arcade unit was SO CLOSE but so far away, locked behind the glass, the gameplay segments looping on the screen over and over again. It was like it was mocking me.
That's what comes to mind whenever I think of this game. That longing feeling I felt as a kid, seeing this arcade game and having the money to play it, but never being able to because it was out of my reach. The demo screen would cycle between the different stage types as I watched. The standard on-foot stages, the mine cart levels, etc. They looked like so much fun. I would have given anything to try one of those mine cart stages, if only just once. When I think of this game, I think of this arcade unit tucked away in that little room. I think of pressing my face against the glass, hoping someone would see me taking interest in the game and unlocking the door for me. But it never happened.
30+ years later, I am finally ready to sit down with this game and give it the attention I was never able to as a kid. Little Danny boy would have been so excited to have this game at his fingertips like I do now. Let's do him proud.
Story:
The game loosely follows the events of the movie. You're Indiana Jones. You have to make it through each level and rescue all the kids from their cages. Once you've saved all the kids in a particular stage, you move on to a mine cart escape level. When you reach the end, you enter the main chamber and take one of the Shankara stones off the altar and run away. The game begins to cycle. Rescue kids in cages, do a mine cart level, grab a Shankara stone. I think you have to do this three times.
Once you have all the Shankara stones, you move to the last level of the game, where you must run across a suspended rope bridge. Mola Ram, the big bad guy of the game and the movie, appears in front of you. Chop the rope and send everyone else falling to their Doom. Indy escapes and is reunited with his friends. The end (kind of). After you "complete" the game, you move to a bonus stage that never ends until you use up all your lives. I don't remember that happening in the movie.
But yeah, there isn't much here as far as story goes. There aren't even any in-game cutscenes or story sequences. The game just assumes you've seen the movie and know what is going on.
Gameplay:
When the game begins, you are given the choice of the Easy, Medium, or Hard path. You'll notice right away that this isn't a side scrolling game, but it isn't really an isometric title either. Indy moves up and down on a 3D plane, kind of like a beat 'em up. That's really the best way I can think of to describe it. But as far as the actual gameplay goes, this title is no beat 'em up.
The first level starts in the mine. You'll notice you have a certain number of kids you need to rescue. You must fully explore each stage, whipping bad guys and saving the kids from their cages. The hardest thing about this game isn't the combat. The enemies are annoying and require a lot of hits to kill (or at least to knock them off the edge), but they aren't necessarily difficult. What makes the game hard is the constant falling.
This was my most common cause of death. I couldn't stay on the little paths, or the little bridges, or the little staircases to save my life. If you are even remotely close to the edge, you are going to fall. I wasn't good at keeping myself in the middle of them. It's so hard to judge just where exactly it is that you need to be, and you have to be pixel perfect to stay alive. Hard to do when the controls can get a little jank sometimes. So yeah. This game can get really hard, really fast. Depending on how many quarters you put in, you get either 3 lives or 7 lives, and there are no continues. It's hard as fuck on either setting. I don't know how you can possibly beat the game with just 3 lives. I'm sure there are people out there who have done it, but I can't fathom it. Even with 7 lives, I constantly had to micromanage my progress using save states. Call it cheating, call it what you want. If I didn't do it, I never in a million years would have been able to complete this game.
Once you've rescued all the kids in a level, you must head to the exit. The better you are playing, the more enemies will attack you. What I mean is that the game punishes you when you are doing well. Mola Ram appears all over the place and launches homing fireballs at you. The action goes faster and faster, and the enemies become more and more harder to evade. They keep coming and coming. And Mola Ram keeps appearing and peppering you with projectiles. When you are on a good run and haven't died in a while, the game is going to make sure you die soon enough. But as soon as you so die, the game lets up on the difficulty a little, and you're able to play in relative peace for a short period of time. Funny how it does that. Gotta get those quarters.
After rescuing the kids and reaching the exit, you move to a mine cart stage, where you must pilot a mine cart downhill. You have to take the correct paths, or you risk crashing into things like boulders. You have to whip enemies in other mine carts that are trying to chase you, in addition to the people standing near the tracks looking to get a cheap shot in. You have to do this while managing the right speed. Go too slow, and you may encounter a gap in the tracks that you fall into. Go too fast, and you won't be able to react to the broken pieces of railroad track. It's a real screwed it you do, screwed if you don't situation. Again, I save stated my way through this.
10-year old me would have been so disappointed with these mine cart segments. Heck, he would have been disappointed in the game as a whole. The controls are so touchy, and the game itself is way too overly difficult. It's impossible to make any real progress, especially with no continues. I can use save states now in present day times, but back in the day this wasn't an option. Even if I'd put in a bunch of quarters and picked Easy difficulty with 7 lives, I still would have struggled to make it to the first mine cart stage, much less past it.
The only stages that are truly fun are the Shankara stone stages, and that's not saying much. I think I just like to be able to play through the iconic area with the skull altar that you see in the movie. The goal of these stages: you have to wait until the trap door in front of the altar closes itself. Then you run up to the altar, grab the stone, and run out the nearest door. If done right, you can beat one of these "stages" in 10 or 15 seconds. That's probably the only reason I like them. Not because they are that great, but because I can be over and done with them in a very short amount of time.
For review purposes, I played through Easy and Medium difficulties, completing the game in each mode. I did not bother with Hard mode. I'm sure it is more of the same thing, just tougher. No thanks. I didn't have much fun on the easier levels. I probably would have hated Hard.
Graphics/Sound:
I am lumping these two categories together for this review, because I feel like they compliment and rely on each other in many ways. The programmers did a great job at bringing the look and feel of the movie to life. The game may not be fun to play, but it least it is visually appealing and it sounds like Indiana Jones. The music in particular is great. The iconic theme song is present. But it is the Muse-like stage music that steals the show for me.
Check out the game's music here
The graphics may not be "beautiful" but all the iconic Temple areas from the movie are represented here. The stages are simple, but draw you in with the atmosphere the game creates. You can easily see why a little kid who likes Indiana Jones would have been mesmerized by this arcade cabinet. It looks and sounds the part.
Overall:
I hate the fact that I didn't have a good time with this game. On paper, it does a lot of things right. It looks and sounds good. Any kid who grew up in the 80s and loved Indiana Jones was going to be drawn to this arcade unit. The basic gameplay hook is intriguing, and it can be fun to scour the stages looking for kids to save. But that's really where the fun ends. And trust me, it doesn't take long for it to end.
Probably within about 15 seconds of starting the game, you are going to fall off a ledge and die. At best, you'll have 7 lives to beat all these levels. At worst, 3. Every life matters. But you can get killed in the silliest of ways. Lots of falling off ledges, oftentimes when you aren't under attack or under any kind of pressure. An "unforced error" in sports terms. In other instances, you can be walking along and minding your own business, and all of the sudden spikes pop up out of the ground and kill you. In most games, you can see them coming and adjust yourself accordingly. But in this game, you can't see very far ahead. Plus, you are under pressure of collecting all the kids within the time limit. So you go fast, and you don't have time to react. And that results in a lot of frustrating deaths. I also died a lot coming down ladders right on top of spikes popping up out of the ground. Again, you have no chance to adjust or to save yourself. It's instant death.
So you are always battling many things at once: staying on the ledges and not falling, fighting off enemies, rescuing the kids, avoiding spikes, and navigating the maze like stages. As if this wasn't hard enough, bats swarm you, and Mola Ram will begin to appear and start launching fire balls at you. Good luck beating this game with no save states. There aren't even any in-game continues, or the ability to keep pumping in quarters to keep going. It's back to the beginning of the game when you are out of lives. Who thought this shit up?
I feel bad for the little kid with his face pressed up against the glass, gazing longingly at the Temple of Doom arcade unit. He had such high hopes for this game. The power of imagination made it ten times better than it is in real life. In reality, the game kind of sucks, and that's too bad. I can't possibly see myself coming back to this and playing it again.
THE GRADE:
D
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