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Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

 
Crapshoot: Indiana Jones and the Fate of AtlantisJul 28, 2019 - PC GamerFrom 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about bringing random obscure games back into the light. This time it was one of Indy's most unfortunate misadventures this side of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Where to begin? Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is a godawful mess of a game by anyone's standards. It's ugly. It's boring. It's barely playable. What little plot there is gets buried instantly under the bad controls and embarrassingly poor puzzles. The interesting idea of being able to control two characters at once is utterly squandered by the fact that you won't want to spend a single second more than you have to in their company. And yet despite all this, when you mention Fate of Atlantis, you'll struggle to find anyone who doesn't have warm memories of it. They'll tell you it's one of Lucasarts' best adventures, with a great story and characters that deserved to be immortalised in an actual movie. So what's going on? Simple. We're not thinking of that Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which is indeed fantastic. No, we're playing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game. Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game is an odd one—a cheap movie cash-in, only without the movie. It owe its existence to one, though. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was also split into two games—a SCUMM0based adventure by Noah Falstein, David Fox, and Ron Gilbert that wasn't great but did some interesting things, and a fairly generic cash-in platformer that didn't. The Fate of Atlantis version took the form of an isometric action-adventure hybrid, but otherwise stuck to the stripped-down nature of movie ports at the time. The original adventure version was huge. The Action Game offered just six levels. The adventure featured a fun plot, with three paths designed around wits, fists, and Indy's new partner, feisty psychic Sophia Hapgood. The action game relies on the manual to tell you what you're doing and why. Most notably of all, at least on first glance, the adventure game actually has Harrison Ford's face on the cover, while the action game had to make do with a random guy in a fedora, plus a huge INDY logo to draw your eye away from the hideous artwork. It's quite clear which of the two games Lucasarts gave a damn about. And in case you're wondering, yes, the Action Game does admit that it's based on the adventure, rather than pretending the two were equals. You know you're in trouble from the start of the first level, which drops you into a Monte Carlo casino and promptly washes its hands of you. A few enemies wander around, occasionally shuffling over to punch you in the face for a bit, but just as quickly losing interest and getting back to more important daydreaming. If you punch them, sometimes they drop sweets. You can switch between Indy and Sophia at will, with the other in either 's...Rediscovering the brilliance of Indiana Jones and the Fate of AtlantisApr 2, 2019 - PC GamerFew adventure games actually feature much adventure. It’s a curious name for this, the most languid and cerebral of genres. But Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is a rare exception. Like the movies that inspired it—and the adventure serials that inspired them—it’s an exciting adventure in the truest sense. And it’s remarkable how they managed to squeeze this much energy out of a pretty standard point-and-click adventure game.  The myth at the heart of this original Indiana Jones story is, as the title suggests, the fabled lost city of Atlantis. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Indy finds a mysterious Atlantean artefact in the vast, unorganised collection of the college he teaches at between expeditions. The discovery of the object serves as the game’s comical prologue, where a bumbling Indy stumbles through the college archives and leaves a trail of destruction behind him.  But, as is often the case at the beginning of an Indiana Jones story, the artefact is cruelly snatched away from him by Klaus Kerner, a pistol-wielding agent of the Third Reich. The Nazis have taken a special interest in the Atlantis myth, in particular a mystery metal called orichalchum that is said to generate an incredible amount of energy—energy the Nazis want to turn into a nuclear weapon. And so Indy embarks on a dangerous quest to stop them, because as we know from The Last Crusade, he really hates Nazis. Despite coming out well before some of LucasArts’ most famous games, Fate of Atlantis is one of the most innovative point-and-click adventures it ever released. There’s the IQ scoring system, which awards you bonus points if your solution to a puzzle is particularly imaginative. And some of the puzzle solutions are randomised too, making the game surprisingly replayable. But my favourite feature, which also adds to its replayability, is how the game is split into three distinctly flavoured paths: Fists, Wits, and Team.  Early in the game Indy teams up with Sophia Hapgood, a selfprofessed psychic medium who claims to be in contact with the spirit of an Atlantean king. The pair were romantically involved once upon a time, and their relationship is similar to those of his female companions in the movies—more playful and sarcastic than romantic. Sophia has definite echoes of Marion Ravenwood. She’s tough, resourceful, and quick-witted, regularly putting Indy in his place. It’s refreshing (and surprising) to see a strong female character like this in a game, especially one from the early 1990s.  If you choose the Team path you’ll spend the rest of the game with Sophia, solving puzzles together, trading barbs, and occasionally taking control of her. For me this is the most enjoyable way to play the game, simply because the interactions between the two characters are so much fun. The dialogue is sharp and funny and some of the puzzles involving both charact...Lucasfilm issues informal cease and desist order to fan-made Indiana Jones remakeMar 1, 2017 - PC GamerAnother day, another promising player-made remake of a big-budget developer's game gets shut down. Hardly surprising nowadays, but it's always a shame to see such ventures being forced to close—especially when being distributed for free. The Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Special Edition project is the latest to bite the dust, after its creators were "politely" asked by Lucasfilm to cease development of their ambitious remake.  "Our mission is to create a remake of this legendary game after more than 20 years, which nobody has attempted yet," says the creators' missions statement on Facebook of the remaster, which also promised high definition digital artwork, new animations, new music, new sound effects and new voiceovers.  Before Lucasfilm's intervention, the Fate of Atlantis Special Edition team had crafted a fully-functioning demo—which can still be downloaded on the game's site, but is set to be removed come Sunday, March 5.     Taking to its Facebook page to break the bad news, the game's team said:  "We have been asked politely by a new promoted Lucasfilm Head of business development person to stop developing and distributing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Special Edition demo. We will remove the downloading buttons from our website this Sunday (5th March 2017). We have been told that Lucasfilm don't want to share the Indy license with anyone right now, so we came up with other solution and we will see if that is going to work for them." The game's creators don't go into detail regarding their proposed compromise, however do suggest they have "proved skills" to Lucasfilm, and that it's "now up to them if they change their minds and start independent developers." The post continues: "Whatever the response will be, We are extremely proud of what we have done, it has been a great fun, we will love this project forever and we thank you all who participated or support us during this 'long-term, free-time' development… This is not the end of this project and this is not the end of any fans projects. Big companies need to understand that: 'All things come to him who waits.'"  Cheers, Kotaku UKThe 10 Best Games Based On MoviesNov 27, 2015 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunI had twin criteria for this. The first was ‘is it a decent game?’ and the second ‘does it meaningfully evoke the spirit, themes or characters of the movie in addition to having Quite Good Guns And Graphics?’ The second saw quite a few games which would otherwise qualify ruled out. This year’s Mad Max, for instance, was an agreeable murder-romp but it’s much harder to argue that it nails the desperation or oddness of the films it’s based on. Star Wars: Battlefront, meanwhile, is an OK online shooter with marvellous graphics, but it’s too mechanical to ‘feel’ like Star Wars once you get beyond the spectacular presentation. Ah, ‘feel’. That’s the thing, isn’t it? Does a movie game make you feel like you’re a part of that movie’s wider world, or is it just wearing its skin? It’s that question which most informed this list. I don’t disagree that there are, in some cases, better games-based-on-movies if ‘game’ is the foremost criteria, but these, in no particular order, are the ten games which most understood and even grew my appreciation for their subject matter, rather than simply piggy-backed it. (Additional FYI: I decided not to include any superhero games, reasoning they’re really their own thing rather than innately movie-based). … GOG launches the Bundle Tower SaleApr 13, 2015 - PC GamerThe first part of GOG's new six-day "Bundle Tower" sale is simple enough: It's about game bundles. Today, for instance, they've got the Hasbro D&D Immortals package, the Divinity Trilogy, LucasFilm Adventures (including the fantastic Sam & Max Hit the Road and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis), and the Broken Sword Saga, all discounted by up to 80 percent. Good deals all around—but what's the "Tower" part all about? "New floors, with up to four new bundles, will be unveiled ever 24 hours—some of the bundles will even include fresh GOG.com game releases!" GOG explained, not especially helpfully. "Beyond that, the tower is a mystery, so it's worth the daily trip to see all news, intrigue, and a mystery final offer." Sounds good to me, even if I don't really get the architectural angle. One point probably worth clarifying is that bundles added to the "tower" will remain on sale until it's "built" rather than being swapped out for the next group, so there's no harm in waiting if you're on a budget and want to see if something better comes along. The GOG Bundle Tower sale is live now and runs until 12:59 pm GMT on April 19. Let s Guess The Fate Of The Fate Of Atlantis Fan RemakeSep 19, 2014 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunOption 1) Disney give it the thumbs up and it carries on to completion, rapturous acclaim and a whole host of olden LucasArts titles getting a similar do-over. Option 2) You know. The other thing. For now, let’s just admire the effort and care this five-person team are putting into a 3D remake of classic LucasArts pointer-clicker Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which as we all now know is really about kissing. (And, frankly, that raises other concerns about just how carefully this project needs to be treated in order to not upset its delicate balance of characterisation and comedy). Take a look at work in progress below, anyway. … S.EXE: Indiana Jones And The Fate Of AtlantisSep 12, 2014 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunA long time ago, when I was just a fledgeling writer who had just attended her first Game Developer’s Conference and only accidentally brushed shoulders with Tim Schafer at a bar, I was surprised to get a message on Facebook from Noah Falstein. He had noticed that my cover image was of the 1992 LucasArts point and click adventure Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. He saw it on my page thanks to a connection of a friend of a friend. He ‘liked’ it. And I realised: Noah wrote that game. I guess that was the moment I knew I was privileged to be able to talk to the people who make the things I care about, and that I should spend my time critiquing their work. This week’s S.EXE is about the ‘team’ narrative strand of Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis. It’s got clinches worthy of Hollywood. I’ve not seen a kiss in a game that’s ever topped Sophia and Indy’s frequent tonsil-scraping embraces. … Daily Deal - Indiana Jones series, 50% off!Jun 19, 2012 - AnnouncementToday's Deal: Save 50% off Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade! Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! Lucasarts adventure game background art compilation triggers mass nostalgiaOct 6, 2011 - PC Gamer It's easy to misremember the locations and characters of the old Lucasarts adventure games. I recall wandering through the vast caverns of Atlantis, stepping over streams of molten gold to activate titanic robots. It's only when you go back and see the original art that you realise how much the artists did with so few pixels. Redditor Hovercastle has compiled 604 pieces of background art from some of the very best Lucasarts games, including Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Dig, Loom, the first two Monkey Island games and Sam and Max Hit the Road. The whole collection can be viewed online, or downloaded. Because they're displayed at their original resolution, they seem tiny on modern monitors. Have a flick through and be prepared for a bit of a nostalgia shock. We've picked out a few favourites from Monkey Island 1 and 2, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and The Dig below. Monkey Island   Monkey Island 2   Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis   The Dig Indie Indiana Jones adventure game releases demoJan 4, 2011 - PC Gamer Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth is a fan made Indiana Jones adventure game inspired by the Lucasarts classic, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. The game features new artwork, it's own soundtrack and a new adventure in which Indie must get his hands on the elusive fountain before the Nazis. If you fancy some classic retro adventure gaming an updated version of the demo has just been released. Read on for more details. The trial can be downloaded now from the Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth site. The demo sends Indie to the tropical island of Bimini as he picks up the trail of the fountain. The game was made entirely using the free Adventure Game Studio software, and was created by a team of nine Fate of Atlantis fans, who started the project in 2003 and are still working hard on getting the whole game finished. Hopefully they'll be finished sooner rather than later, a brand new Indiana Jones adventure game can only be a good thing.Retrospective: Indiana Jones and the Fate of AtlantisOct 17, 2010 - EurogamerThese retrospectives are rapidly becoming confessionals for me. Here's this week's: I don't much care for Indiana Jones. If I ever saw the films as a kid, they washed right over me. As an adult, I find them mostly quite boring. I went out and bought the DVD box set many years back, convinced I'd want such things in my life. But they're not adventurous enough to be adventure movies and not fantastical enough to be fantasy movies. The middleground in which they exist is clearly ideal for the vast majority, but somehow not for me. Once again, I miss out. However, like wrapping a pill up in tuna so your cat will eat it, putting Dr Jones inside a LucasArts adventure game is the surest way to make me forget my hesitation and happily open wide. (My mouth, you weirdo.) What's more helpful is making it one of the finest adventure games the studio ever made. Fate of Atlantis really is outstanding, and even more so for being one of very few nineties adventures that hasn't become too infuriating for modern play. Nazi business It's a good job the Nazis didn't have access to all the mystical, powerful idols and machinery that gaming would have us believe. Although it's equally odd that our fiction wants to take one of the most horrific and murderous forces ever to have existed, and suggest that had they only got their hands on the Holy Grail or secrets of ancient worlds then they could have caused some real trouble. But such is the way of both gaming and the Indiana Jones franchise, and so once more the good doctor is trekking about the planet trying to beat the Nazis to finding the lost city of Atlantis. He teams up with Sophia Hapgood, a surrogate Marion Ravenwood, with whom he also had a brief affair in the past, and again with whom he must work in order to succeed. Hapgood was formerly a successful archaeologist, but quit in order to become a psychic, aided by her spirit guide, Atlantean god Nur-Ab-Sal – something that disgusts the rationalist Indy. Together they chase down three stone discs that are said to allow access to the sunken city, visiting Iceland, Tikal, the Azores, New York, Crete... Construction for the Modern Idiot But before any of that, there's one of the most splendid introduction sequences of any game. You begin controlling Indy with only the mouse cursor, the rest of the SCUMM verb system blanked out at this point. Your attempts to locate a statue see him having a series of clumsy accidents, as he crashes through floor after floor, before the game's intro proper. There's a strong whiff of precognitive satire as you play, using an interaction system that's pretty much how modern adventures play now – one cursor, no choice about how its used – and how clumsy this makes Indy. But it's the way this sequence is then later reversed - as you must make your way back to the top of the building – that demonstrates quite what splendid structural thinking is going on here. In fact, the whole game is remarkably well constructed. It never makes you fe...Crap Shoot: Indiana Jones And The Fate Of AtlantisOct 2, 2010 - PC Gamer Richard Cobbett looks back at one of Lucasarts' worst ever games, and one of Indy's most unfortunate misadventures this side of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Shudder. Where to begin? Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is a godawful mess of a game by anyone's standards. It's ugly. It's boring. It's barely playable. What little plot there is gets buried instantly under the bad controls and embarrassingly poor puzzles. The interesting idea of being able to control two characters at once is utterly squandered by the fact that you won't want to spend a single second more than you have to in their company. And yet despite all this, when you mention Fate of Atlantis, you'll struggle to find anyone who doesn't have warm memories of it. They'll tell you it's one of Lucasarts' best adventures, with a great story and characters that deserved to be immortalised in an actual movie. So what's going on? Simple. We're not thinking of that Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which is indeed fantastic. No, we're playing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game. Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game is an odd one - a cheap movie cash-in, only without the movie. It does owe its existence to one though: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which was also split into two games - a SCUMM based adventure by Noah Falstein, David Fox and Ron Gilbert that wasn't great but did some interesting things, and a fairly generic cash-in platformer that didn't. The Fate of Atlantis version took the form of an isometric action-adventure hybrid, but otherwise stuck to the stripped down (read: lazy) nature of movie ports at the time. The original adventure version was huge. The Action Game offered just six levels. The adventure featured a fun plot, with three paths designed around wits, fists, and Indy's new partner, feisty psychic Sophia Hapgood. The action game relies on the manual to tell you what you're doing and why. Most notably of all, at least on first glance, the adventure game actually has Harrison Ford's face on the cover, while the action game had to make do with a random guy in a fedora, plus a huge INDY logo to draw your eye away from the hideous artwork. It's quite clear which of the two games Lucasarts gave a damn about. And in case you're wondering, yes, the Action Game does admit that it's based on the adventure, rather than pretending the two were equals. You know you're in trouble from the start of the first level, which drops you into a Monte Carlo casino and promptly washes its hands of you. A few enemies wander around, occasionally shuffling over to punch you in the face for a bit, but just as quickly losing interest and getting back to more important daydreaming. If you punch them, sometimes they drop sweets. You can switch between Indy and Sophia at will, with the other in either 'stop' or 'go' mode, which lets them amble around on their own random walking and face-punching adventures. Indy starts off with his whip and his fists, while Sophi...LucasArts Brings Classic Adventures to Steam MacMay 12, 2010 - ShacknewsIndiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Loom, and The Dig will be among the titles available through Steam for Mac when the digital distribution platform launches on Mac later today, LucasArts has revealed. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and The Dig Each of the four games will sell individually at $4.99 and collectively in a $9.99 bundle, though LucasArts cautions that "the great price of $9.99" is a "limited time" thing. There's no need to re-purchase if you already own the games via Steam PC, as LucasArts is among the companies using "Steam Play" so that "folks who have already purchased an... Read More