Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
System: NES
Release Date: December 1988
Developer: Tengen
Publisher: Mindscape (Later Tengen)
Genre: Action
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a much loved film starring Han Solo as an archaeologist who has a knack for finding all sorts of ancient, priceless treasures. Dr. Jones finds himself in India, where he is asked to save the children of a village from a Thuggee cult who have kidnapped them all. He also surmises that he can snag the valuable Sankara Stone in the process, so agrees.
We pick up Indy as he enters the cave system. This is where everything falls apart. You move around with the d-pad and that seems to work alright. You see the heads of children popping out from little holes, so you run over them. This nets you points and items. Often, the children are sitting on swords and guns but sometimes you can get map pieces or arrows that point to hidden rooms. You blow these up with bombs that are retrieved from boarded up holes that your sword slices through.
Dr. Jones is equipped with his whip, which is activated with the A Button. You can use this to attack enemies and swing across gaps. The B Button is used to jump down. This is where the developers should have been tied up and offered for sacrifice instead of the children. You know what’s often down from Indy? Lava, which kills you immediately. The B Button is basically the suicide button. Sure, you can jump left and right by holding the d-pad, but you can’t jump up, nope, you have to jump down. Stupid.
The levels are in the stupidest configuration I’ve seen in awhile. Some of the levels loop left and right, others loop up and down. You need to find a key from saving children, which unlocks the door to the next level. You have to jump mine carts and keep from falling into the lava. The instruction manual lays everything out about how all the different levels work, but I lost patience before being able to make it to the end.
Graphics: 1.0
Pretty bad overall. I feel like something smarter could have been done instead of those terrible backgrounds.
Sound: 1.0
You get the Indiana Jones leitmotif and typical poor Tengen music.
Gameplay: 0.0
Yep, a big fat zero. The gameplay here is trash. Most of all, the jumping breaks the game and makes it unplayable.
Difficulty: 0.0
The terrible controls make this a game that very few of us will ever suffer long enough to beat.
Fun Factor: 0.0
I’ve got no time for love, Dr. Jones… I feel so bad for you if you got this game as a kid and were stuck with it. It’s bad.
Overall Grade: 0.4
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom earns an E. I think this takes the cake as the worst game of 1988, but we’ve got a few more games to play before we can solidify that.