Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1988 video game)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is an action game released in 1988 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game is based on the arcade game and film of the same name. The resulting product differed from the arcade version in several aspects, but kept the same underlying premise and style. By December 1988, there were two versions of the game available, distributed by Tengen and Mindscape, although the software itself was identical. After a lawsuit, Tengen's unlicensed version was pulled from the shelves and Mindscape's became the standard. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom gives the player control of Indiana Jones as he makes his way through the temple in a series of 12 levels or "waves". In the final wave, the player must defeat the villain of the film, Mola Ram, on a rope bridge that recreates the final scene in the movie. Reception of the game was generally negative. Version history The film version of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released in 1984 and starred Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. A year later, in 1985, Atari Games capitalized on the franchise by releasing the initial version of the game on arcade machine. This version was a platform and fighting game and featured theme music and sound clips from the actual film. The game takes place over three zones that are based on the movie's plot, where the objective is to free the slave children and recover the Sankara stones. This version was also the first translated from any of the movies in the Indiana Jones series into an arcade game, although Raiders of the Lost Ark for the Atari 2600 and Indiana Jones in the Lost Kingdom for the Commodore 64 had come out in 1982 and 1985 respectively. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom satisfied both of these categories. Aside from the original arcade version, in 1987 ports were released for the Atari ST, Commodore 64 (completely independent ports for NTSC and PAL regions), Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, and MSX. By December 1988, the Nintendo Entertainment System had already seen two separate editions of the Temple of Doom game. The first version, distributed by Tengen, came in a black cartridge that was different from Nintendo's traditional grey color format. By this point, however, Tengen had split from Nintendo and was producing unlicensed games that attempted to circumvent the need for a 10NES lockout chip. Nintendo filed suit and Tengen lost, forcing it to remove its NES games from the market. The officially licensed version was released by Mindscape in the form of a standard Nintendo cartridge. Aside from the differences in cover art and cartridge form, however, the actual software of the two games is identical. After the NES version, the game was subsequently released for the Amiga, DOS, and Apple II in 1989. There are several differences between the arcade game and its console adaptation. In the original arcade version, the Sankara Stones were not all found in one