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Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures

 
Games: Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures

Game Description

Remember the good old days of video gaming where games were about fun rather than big beautiful 3D graphics? Older games tended to rely on its entertainment value rather than trying to impress you with its technical breakthroughs and glorious sound quality. LucasArts remembers this and the result is Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures

In these desktop adventures, you'll take control of the infamous movie hero Indiana Jones and guide him through an almost endless amount of little quests. You'll have to mingle with native jungle dwellers, overzealous treasure hunters, solve puzzles and use various weapons, including your whip, to terminate wild beasts and/or gangsters who are trying to stop you. The random quest generator is there to almost guarantee you a different quest every time so you never play the same game twice!

Are you looking for a game that revisits the "good old days" or you just want that perfect time-waster? Well, if so, Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures should be right up your alley!
~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide

Roots & Influences

Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures was designed soley for those people who are looking for that perfect time-waster. The many quests in Desktop Adventures are all quite simple and fun and don't take very long to complete. This is perfect for that gamer who has to sit in an office and work all day.
~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide

Review: Overall

Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures sure is a great idea. It puts you in the role of Indiana himself and it's up to you to guide him through an amazing amount of quests. In fact, because of the random quest generator, there's almost an endless amount of quests to finish. Most quests require you to find a certain item, give that item to someone who needs it and proceed to the next portion of the quest. Like any good adventure game, there's also some puzzles to be solved -- like how to get into certain houses or buildings or how to get from point a to point b and survive. You'll also have to do some fighting. Wild beasts and treasure hunters are trying to stop you from achieving your goals (usually to find an item). You'll have to use your famous whip or any other weapon you find to get by them. And the good news is that the quests won't have you playing for a seemingly endless amount of time. Almost every adventure can be finished in a good 30 minutes or an hour. The fact that this game is linear in what must be done merely amplifies the easiness and simplicities of Desktop Adventures. So needless to say, this is the perfect time waster. It's also very inexpensive and will play on just about any PC nowadays.

This game isn't out to impress anyone with its technological side; its main focus is on fun. Graphics buffs, beware, this game does not look too particularly earth shattering. It's 2D and done in the tradition of the old Ultima games. The visuals aren't very detailed and the animation is quite bad. Indiana doesn't exactly walk -- he hops from place to place, kind of like a "hex" game. And guess what, the soundtrack and effects are pretty outdated. Even the control isn't that great. This is primarily due to the fact that there's no sense of animation or realistic feelings. But you know something? None of this really matters in the end.

You see, Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures doesn't take itself too seriously and that's where it succeeds. It's not trying to be anything spectacular. It gives up the big flashy graphics and sound of today in return for a very fun and simple gaming experience. You can play this at work, at home or just whenever you're bored or need to kill off a few minutes. Kudos to LucasArts for keeping the main thrust of every game in tact here: fun.
~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide

Review: Enjoyment

Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures is a very fun little game and it's the perfect time killer. The quests are pretty fun and the game never takes itself too seriously.
~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide

Review: Graphics

The visuals are very plain looking -- there's not much variety in textures and the animation is pretty weak
~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide

Review: Sound

Equally unimpressive is the soundtrack and sound effects. They're all very outdated and won't impress anyone.
~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide

Review: Replay Value

With the random quest generator, you'll more than likely never play the same game twice, which adds a wealth of replay value.
~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide

Review: Documentation

The manual isn't too impressive, though it gets the job done. It explains all you need to know.
~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide
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Wikipedia: Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures
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Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures
Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures Coverart.png
The boxart for Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures features a still of Indiana Jones from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Developer(s) LucasArts
Publisher(s) LucasArts
Platform(s) Windows 3.x, Apple Macintosh
Release date(s) April 1996[1]
Genre(s) Adventure
Mode(s) Single player
Rating(s) ESRB: Everyone (E)
OFLC: General (G)
Media Floppy Disk
System requirements Windows 3.1 and up, IBM and 100% compatible computers, 486/33 or faster CPU, 8MB RAM, PCI graphics card.

Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures is a 1996 computer game. Desktop Adventures was made to run in a windowed form on the desktop to use the least amount of memory possible and still allows the player to perform other on screen tasks. This game is the first Desktop Adventures game, and was followed by Star Wars: Yoda Stories in 1997.

Contents

Plot

This game is set in mid-1930s Middle America with motley characters, challenging puzzles, and a huge variety of outcomes. Each game averages 30 minutes. The plot, size, and direction of each game are randomly generated at the start, with locations and items being different every time.

Gameplay

The playing area is displayed from an overhead perspective that is divided into many invisible squares within which Indy can only move between squares but one square at a time. To control Indy the up, down, left, and right arrow keys are used or by holding down the left mouse button and moving the mouse can control Indy and to shoot is the right mouse click button. To change weapons it used the classic drag and drop system into a box between the health meter and map arrows. The health meter turns through green, yellow, red, and black as Indy's health deteriorates. The green arrows to the left of the health meter indicate if Indy can travel any further off this side of the screen (the arrows going grey when he can't). The various characters that speak to Indy during the game use a simple white speech balloon to display their text which uses just as simple scrolls and close buttons on the right hand side of the balloon to view the speech. A few seconds after the winning screen at the end of the game comes up, clicking on the picture will take you back into the game leaving you free to explore around the game. For the most part, there is little else to do except kill any remaining enemies and restart the demo quest, although you can return to Marcus and receive congratulations on a job well done. Also, during this continued play, Indy cannot be killed, even when the health meter is completely black.

Current availability

As LucasArts no longer sells this game (and has not done so for a long time), it is generally considered abandonware, but there are still a few copies floating around on eBay and shops. The game was originally released on a 3 1/2 Inch floppy diskette so use on modern day computers can be difficult. However, it is possible (with the use of a floppy drive or an external floppy drive) to burn the disk's content onto a CD and use it that way.

In 1999 a Desktop Adventures fansite had zip files for both Indiana Jones and Yoda Stories full game downloads for free but the site owner eventually abandoned the site and the downloads subsequently got lost. The demo is more commonly found at many places.

Influence

Although Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine was a direct sequel to Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, elements from Desktop Adventures found their way into the next game:

  • The round health meter that changes colours ranging green, yellow, red, black as Indy's health deteriorates, this round meter was also used for the design of the breath, puncture and Aetherium threshold meter.
  • Health herbs, in small and large varieties, can be found growing throughout the game, also there was the introduction of a Venom-Kit and the Health Kit (although a health kit like the one in Desktop Adventures could be found after much searching in the Castle area of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure LucasArts had produced in 1989).
  • Scorpions, spiders, snakes and the odd jaguar were introduced in Infernal Machine along with wolves, monkeys, sharks and piranha. All could be killed with the exception of jaguars, wolves and monkeys when LucasArts was told by one of the play testers that even though these animals posed a threat they did not like the idea of killing them, LucasArts thus changed the programming slightly so that these animals would run away at the sound of gun fire giving the player time to get away from them. However, their dying "animation" was not actually removed from the game so with a carefully placed satchel charge, hand grenade or rocket they can still be killed.

References

External links


 
 

 

Copyrights:

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