NES box art for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the cover of NEStalgia episode 449

449 · Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

▶ Game info

VerdictSkip it

GenreAdventure

ReleasedMarch 1991

SeasonSeason 7

DeveloperSoftware Creations

PublisherTaito

October 9, 2026 · 36 min · transcript available

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About the game

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a 1991 action video game for the NES, developed by Software Creations and published by Taito. The game is based on the 1989 film of the same name.

From Wikipedia: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1991 video game) (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Our verdict: Skip it

The third Indiana Jones movie gets squeezed into a handful of NES set pieces, published by Taito and developed by Software Creations, the studio behind Solstice, Silver Surfer and Pictionary. We like the movie and the music. We never felt like Indy.

What works

You pick the order. Six stages, and your choice sets the difficulty of the rest. The Cross of Coronado asks for 15 enemies if you do it first and 30 if you put it off, and some stages can be missed entirely. Nobody had thought this hard about a licensed game all year.
A fail state with a story. Lose a stage and you lose your dad's diary, so you run the Road to Berlin motorcycle chase to get it back. You get two tries, and the chase runs longer the later it comes.
The whip. Land it with the very tip and it does extra damage. Swinging off the castle chandeliers is the one moment we wanted a whole Prince of Persia style game.
The score. It's Indiana Jones at a funk concert, riffing on the John Williams theme.

What doesn't

Slap fighting. Most of the game is one-on-one brawling by button mashing, and Indy looks like he has ants in his pants. Enemies pour out of a tank like a clown car until you hit the count.
Jumping. Pressing A and B together gets you a jump straight up when you wanted forward, and the reverse.
Indy narrates the plot. "I just read this, so now I should do this" kills the loner-adventurer feel. We also wanted a rat level.
Copied homework. The cutscenes look like bitmapped, collaged movie stills, which is less impressive after Ninja Gaiden's from-scratch cinemas.

The sliding puzzle

The Venice stage is a six by six sliding puzzle of the Holy Grail, with a fire creeping across the screen as a timer. We called it the game's original sin. Pressing Start accepts it as done, which we only found by accident, and if the fire wins you lose the picture. You need that picture at the end, after walking the temple maze by following the squares that spell out Jehovah, which the game never explains. Then you guess the right grail from a row of cups, and one bad pick can erase a clean run.

Beyond the game

There are two NES games called The Last Crusade. This is the "video game", and Ubisoft's is "the action game", which we haven't covered yet. We also agreed Temple of Doom was way worse than this.

The bottom line

Skip it. Both votes were no, so nobody voted it onto the Essential Games List. The level select is a smart idea and the music is great, but the thing you do most is slap one guy at a time, and the finale can undo everything on a single guess. It plays like a museum tour of scenes better seen in the film.

Written from our conversation in this episode.

Opening hook: STEP ON IT JUNIOR

I. Setup & Premise

The pitch: the movie chopped into six set pieces, and you pick the order
- A package from Venice turns out to be Henry Jones Sr.'s diary, and a telegram from Marcus Brody says the Cross of Coronado is sitting on a ship off Portugal.
- From there the game hands you a menu of destinations and lets you decide where Indy goes next.
Software Creations developed it, Taito America published it, March 1991
- Software Creations was the Manchester studio behind Solstice, Silver Surfer, and Pictionary.
- Michael Crick is credited as designer, artist, and co-programmer, which tells you roughly how big this team was.
The identity problem: three Last Crusade games exist, and two of them are on the NES
- LucasArts made the point-and-click Graphic Adventure in 1989.
- US Gold and Tiertex made The Action Game the same year, which NMS Software later ported to the NES for Ubisoft in 1993.
- This one is the outlier: NES exclusive, built from scratch, no computer original behind it.

II. What Makes It Stand Out

You choose the order, and the order sets the difficulty
- Every stage gets harder the more stages you have already cleared.
- The Cross of Coronado asks for 15 enemies before the boss appears if you take it first, and 30 tougher ones if you save it (GameFAQs).
- Two stages, the Cross and Venice, fall off the menu permanently if you ignore them twice.
You can skip most of the game if you want to
- Play the bare minimum, head straight to the temple, take the lesser ending.
- Clear everything and you get the best ending.

III. Gameplay Structure

Six scenes with cutscenes between them
- The Cross of Coronado (ship), Venice (sliding puzzle), Castle Brunwald (maze), Iskenderun (tank), the Road to Berlin (motorcycle), and the Lost Temple.
The combat loop
- You never face more than one enemy at a time, which is the most generous design decision in the game.
- The whip is a one-hit kill at the right distance. Fists are close to useless.

IV. Unique Gameplay Elements

Lose a level and the Nazis take Dad's diary, and getting it back is the punishment
- Fail almost anything and the diary is gone. Fail the Cross of Coronado and it is a straight game over.
- The Road to Berlin motorcycle stage is how you win it back, and it is the hardest thing in the game.
- Skip the recovery and the finale gets much worse, because the diary carries the symbol you need at the end.
Castle Brunwald is a maze in three dimensions
- Five layers deep, three floors high, and you only ever see a slice of it.
- Notches on the floor and shields on the wall are your only orientation cues.
- Whip the torches to open hidden passages. Sit in the chairs to open the fireplaces.
- On harder settings doors lock and the route through changes completely.
Venice is a sliding puzzle with a fire timer
- Reassemble a sketch of the Grail while flames climb up the bottom of the screen.
- You survive either way, but bail early and you only carry out part of the picture.
The ending is an actual test, not a boss
- Walk the floor spelling JEHOVAH one tile at a time while your torch burns down. Wrong letter, you fall.
- Then step off the correct symbol into open air.
- Then pick the true Grail out of a lineup, checking lip, cup shape, handles, stem, and base against the sketch from Venice.
- Choose poorly and you lose the entire run at the last possible second.

V. Music & Presentation

Tim and Geoff Follin wrote the score
- Same brothers, same studio, same era as Silver Surfer and Solstice, which is the whole pitch for taking this soundtrack seriously.
- The John Williams theme is in here, and it is the thing most people remember hearing.
Digitized actors on an NES cart
- Cutscenes use sepia-toned bitmapped photos of Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, and Alison Doody.
- Worth pausing on how rare an actual actor likeness was on the NES in 1991.

VII. Sequels, Spinoffs, and Comparison Games

There is no sequel to this game
The early 90s wave (relevant to the show):
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992, LucasArts) and a separate Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game the same year, repeating the two-games-one-title pattern from Last Crusade
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (Jaleco, NES, December 1992), based on the TV series Wikipedia
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Ubisoft/NMS, NES and Game Boy, 1993), the port of the 1989 Action Game
Instruments of Chaos starring Young Indiana Jones (1994, Sega Genesis) Fandom
Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures (1994, SNES), which covers all three original films on the Super Star Wars engine
The LucasArts years:
Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures (1996), Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (1999, PC and N64), and a separate 2D Infernal Machine for Game Boy Color in 2001 Wikipedia
Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb (2003), generally considered the best of the 3D ones Den of Geek
Three Adventures of Young Indiana Jones edutainment PC titles in 2007 and 2008
The Crystal Skull era:
LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures (2008) and LEGO Indiana Jones 2 (2009)
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (2009, Wii/PS2/PSP/DS)
A mobile Kingdom of the Crystal Skull tie-in (2008)
Then a fifteen-year gap, and:
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (MachineGames/Bethesda), Xbox and PC in December 2024, PS5 on April 27, 2025, and Switch 2 on May 12, 2026. Its story DLC, The Order of Giants, landed September 4, 2025.
Comparison games
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (NES, 1988): the earlier Indy attempt on the system, and the bar this one clears without much effort.
- The Adventures of Bayou Billy: another license that mixes brawling with vehicle stages and lives or dies on how the punching feels.

VIII. Essential Games List Vote

Case for Essential
- The single strongest argument: the level select is a real design idea, not a menu. You choose the order, the order sets the difficulty, and two stages walk away if you ignore them. Almost nothing else in the 1991 licensed-game pile was thinking that hard.
- Supporting: a Follin score and digitized movie stars make it a genuine showpiece for what the NES could look and sound like.
Case against Essential
- The single strongest argument: the thing you spend most of the game doing, hitting one guy at a time, feels unreliable, and no amount of clever structure fixes an action game whose action you cannot trust.
- Supporting: the finale can erase an entire clean run on a single guess about the shape of a cup handle.

Click a timestamp to play from there. Landing a little off?

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Step on it, Junior!

And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. And I'm Sean. And I believe Joe is out there looking for the Holy Grail. I thought that's what he was doing. We are talking about that movie. Yeah, we're talking about that movie. We're talking about the end of the Indiana Jones trilogy. Surely, just like Back to the Future, they won't ever go back to that well and make more Indiana Jones movies.

I actually, I remember watching it when I was a kid and I actually rewatched it recently. Maybe even just hours ago, just in preparation for this. And yeah, it was, it's, it holds up. It's, I mean, it's not, you know, it's not Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it's still pretty good. Yeah, it's very much like the Back to the Future thing where it's like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't agree with anyone who says that any of the three movies are bad. Like they're, it's a, it's a, it's a great trilogy all around.

They're, you know, the highs were earlier in the series, but it is unfortunate that there is two other Indiana Jones movies that were made significantly later that just kind of like, just, I don't, I don't even know if they, like, I don't acknowledge them. So I guess they really don't tear at the foundation that was laid in these three movies because I just don't really even think about them. No, no, just, just a little fun fact about this movie.

It is, I, while I was rewatching it, I remembered that this is the movie that gave me like, you know, like a powerful attraction and yet intense distrust of German women.

Yeah. They, I mean, look, they're just going to take you for everything you have and leave with it and die trying. Yeah. And then they'll just be reaching for something that shouldn't be reached for and, and, and die kind of unceremoniously. Absolutely. And if we're talking about the movie, I also read that, um, the original like script for this did not involve a, um, a father figure for Indy at any point.

And that that was kind of like a Spielberg suggestion late in the game. And that's how they picked up Sean Connery and added all that into it. Little interesting. Um, but I do think Sean Connery is great in this movie. Yeah, he's fun. It is weird seeing Harrison Ford like be the junior. Right. Yes, I agree. It's kind of, it's, it's kind of uncanny, but he's not exactly, you know, um, young in this movie.

But he ends up talking like you would talk to your parents, which I guess it's, you know, it's a little good writing there in certain points. Well, I'm glad you brought up how Indy talks because I was going to ask you if you think while, while they did faithfully recreate a lot of scenes from the movie in this video game. Do you think that the writer of this game ever watched an Indiana Jones film? Because the way that Indy talks in this game is so expository and so, um, like, you know, oh, I, I just read this. So I now should do this. So, you know, it's like, it's so bad from a, uh, uh, from a literary point of view that I just, I couldn't get into character with Indy here.

I didn't feel like I was playing as Indiana Jones because this whole, like, uh, you know, spirited adventurer who goes on his own and can, and can handle himself is like reduced to this character who just openly monologues about everything that's happening to them in real time. I guess I didn't think too hard about that just because like, they're trying to actually portray events from the movie in a very, uh, in a very quick way trying to get you into it. And I don't know if you could use like the actual word, like words from the movie, all that usefully to like get somebody that maybe didn't see the movie into the game. I think there are other things that make me not feel like Indy in this game.

And the game does try to recreate, um, a lot of the set pieces from the movie. It's very much like the untouchables in that it just chooses like a few set pieces from the movie to turn into, uh, moments into a video game. All, all a little different from each other. No two exactly alike, but maybe more interesting here than what the untouchables laid out is that you pick the order, you know, not like you get all six and it's not like choose your own adventure in that regard, but you do pick the order of what you want to do.

And based on the order that you choose, the difficulty of the other levels increases as you go on. And I think that is a very, uh, you know, whether we like the game or not, you just have to hand it to them to manage to come up with yet another new system on the NES in terms of level design.

Yeah, it's, it's weird. It, you know, it kind of goes into your note about if these people watched the movie or understood the movie. This one's more an understood the movie. Right, right. Cause you have to do certain things. Like, like the movie happens in order. So it's like, you can't necessarily choose to just, uh, you know, uh, Oh, instead of going to Venice, I'm going to go to Berlin. Like you can't, you can't do it that way. Yeah. It's almost like they were just skipping around on the VHS or whatever. And they saw the crossroads scene and it was like, that's it. That's the heart and soul of this movie is they decided to go to Berlin instead of Venice.

So that's what the, that's what the game is going to be about. Um, and that's, that's the only thing I can think of. It's just strange to have that option or for that to even be thought of, um, decide the events, not the events of a movie, but just the order in which they occur.

And the way that every stage gets harder, just as an example is like, you can do, um, the cross of Coronado right at the beginning and it will ask you to, uh, defeat 15 enemies before you have to take down the boss. There's like a little counter in the top, right? And, uh, if you do it first, then you are technically on, as the manual describes difficulty one. But if you skip it for a different, um, mission, then when you go to it the second time, it will be on difficulty two and will ask for 30, uh, enemies.

And, uh, you know, um, I'll, I'll say that's a big jump. Yeah. Like 30 from doubling the amount of enemies in a, in a game that, uh, doesn't exactly, uh, you know, you don't always fight in this game. So the way that they, uh, developed each one of these games is kind of like a little half-assed, uh, a little bit of just like throwing some stuff out there and seeing if it works in video game form. And I will say that like, you know, Indy is, looks like he's slap fighting here instead of like a big tough guy. That was the, what I was going to say makes me not feel like Indy is because it always just looks like he has ants in his pants. Um, cause you kind of have to button mash to win any one-on-one fight.

Yeah. And, uh, cause they're just rapidly slapping you too. And like, it turns out like just, you know, kick a little bit. And then like, if you have the whip, that's great because you can, um, the whip has like this thing where if you whip it so that it just like the edge of your whip, when fully extended touches them, it does more damage. Uh, which I think is awesome, uh, to include something like that. But again, for the most part, um, if you're just punching and kicking, it, it does feel like a slap fight. Uh, one thing that I did like though, is that if you fail, it's not the end of the game and you have to do like a kind of, I mean, yeah, you kind of have to do a motorcycle chase.

Yeah. You have to do a redemption and then you get back to the game after you do that redemption. I think the motorcycle chase gets harder the later in the game you have to do it as well. Um, I think it gets longer. Um, so you get like two tries, which is nice. Um, and I guess you could also just not do the second part and do other levels between, I don't know. It's, it's a weird design again, especially in a game based on a certain sequence of events that happens. Right. Well, the way the game lays it out is that you have your dad's diary and you're trying to, uh, both rescue your dad and find the Holy Grail. And when you lose on any one of these particular stages, you lose the diary.

So you have to, uh, do the motorcycle, uh, what they call the manuals, the road to Berlin chase. Uh, you have to do that in order to get it back. And the game does let you, uh, that's like the final fail state. It will, if you can always fail a stage and then, um, do this road to Berlin in order to, um, get the diary back and try to try the other levels again. But if you do fail this stage, then it's a game over because you've lost the diary.

And there's so many important things in that diary. Well, so here's, here's the interesting thing about the, the choices of the games. And first, I think it's just worth mentioning that, uh, this is a Taito published game, but software creations developed it. Software creations, not a name that like, I wasn't like, oh, where have I heard that before? But they're the studio behind Solstice, which we know Joe loves. I think you're, I think you're positive on that. I like Solstice. Yeah. The asymmetric puzzle thing. And then they also did Silver Surfer, which, uh, you know, pretty, pretty damn challenging game. Yes. And Pictionary.

Love Pictionary. Always love Pictionary. Exactly. So, um. It's good that you're pointing this out because there are two Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade games on NES. Well, that's a huge problem, right? There's, there's, there's, we haven't played one of them yet. We will. But there are two Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade games. One, uh, developed by software creations. The other one developed by Ubisoft. Um, and what I thought it was interesting about that, because I found that box first, the Ubi and soft are separated. They're not one word. Or at least it doesn't look like they are back then. So back then they were like Ubi soft.

Well, it's French. So it'd be like Ubisoft. Right. But it looks like it's like capital U, capital B, capital I, space soft. So it's like, you're supposed to read it like, like as if they're initials, like they're Ubi software, like IBM. That's a good, that's a good point. I don't know. I feel like I always just called them Ubisoft, but I have no idea if there was ever a, uh,

previous pronunciation. Right. And that one's called Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the action game. So you won't get it confused with this one. You'll be like, oh, that's fine. Yeah. There's, there's just the video game. And then there's that action game.

Action. And LucasArts also made a, um, point and click, uh, video game in 1989 for, uh, the Last Crusade. So that one comes before both of these. They really, they, they really squeezed every piece of gameplay out of this franchise all in a very short amount of time. I feel like that's a really good game too. I just wonder how many tie-ins there are in general. Like this is the video game space, but like, were there, were there like multiple cereals out at the same time too? And like, who got the, who got the soda partnership? Like it just feels like something that was like back then, even back then the, the crossovers were all over the place.

What was the equivalent of Fortnite in 1990? That's a great question. And I don't, I don't know. I don't know when, like, were there land parties in 1990? I don't think so. Yeah. All right. Back to the game. Um, you can skip most of the game if you want to, like you, you choose the order, but you could also just play the bare minimum, head straight to the temple and, um, and try to, try to clear it. Uh, clearing everything apparently gets you the, the best ending.

I didn't quite, uh, like research enough to see what the difference in the endings is, but I do know that no matter what you have to, uh, when you get to the temple, you'll have to refer to, um, the correct picture of the Holy Grail, which is something that you do in the Venice stage, which I was like, oh, I'm excited. We'll go to Venice. Who knows what we'll be doing? It's just a sliding puzzle. God, like that is the, I think that is the, the original sin.

Um, like you can't do that. You just can't, you can't do that because also if that's the like way that you find out what the, what the thing you have to do at the very end of the game is, if that's how you find out, you, you're going to screw over people like me because I, I actually thought I wasn't even able to continue the game because of the sliding puzzle. But it turns out if you just hit the start button during that level, it just like accepts it as, yep, you're done.

Like you can do the next thing. Like, yeah, you, you finished the puzzle. I see. Yes. Okay. I thought you don't have to like actually complete it or something. Right. No, no, no, no. You just, you don't have to actually complete it because I don't know if I could actually complete one of these things. I'd never completed a sliding puzzle in my life. I feel like I've done, you know, maybe four by four, but I think this is something like six by six, which is much more complex and I don't, I don't like it. Yeah. I'm looking, I'm looking right now and I believe you're right. It's six by, yeah, I think it's six by six. This is crazy. Can't do it. It starts like pretty done.

So that's like even worse. It's like, oh, everything is kind of like where I want it to be. I just know I can't slide these things, you know, just as easily as I want to. I have to like kind of rearrange a bunch of the puzzle just to figure out. And I'm just not, I'm not good at that. I get it that like you basically want to work in boxes of fours around this thing and not like move entire sections away from each other.

But even that is just like not something that, you know, everybody's brain works differently. There are some people who, uh, for Tetris, it's like they can just, you know, they just know how to make big lines and then clear them right away. And then other people, yeah, sure. But, um, but I wasn't bragging. I was saying like, and then there's other puzzle games where I'm just like, I have no idea how, how people solve these all the time. I would, I would say in general, everybody has like that one puzzle they're really good at, but there are very few people who are just like naturally good at all puzzles. Like that feels like a real outlier. I'd say you're probably right there.

And, and the frustrating thing of course, is that, uh, that puzzle that you're assembling is the Holy Grail. And then you, at the end of the game at the temple, um, which we, I guess we have to talk about also the crazy, uh, over the top down, um, maze you have to walk through, uh, with all those letters inscribed on them, those tiles. Do you know what I'm talking about at the end of the game? The Jehovah walk?

Yes. The, and then the lights go out and it's like, you're, you have a, you have a flame in your hand. So it's like, wait, why, why can't I see anything? Like, why can I only see the illumination of the flame? What's the point? It's unnatural darkness. It's from, it's from D and D.

Got it. So all, all this to say that like, what, if you do make it to the end of the game, it's very frustrating to find out that like, yeah, I successfully somehow got to the end of this maze, but I didn't complete that sliding puzzle earlier in the game. And so I have no idea which one is the actual Holy Grail. Cause they present you with a, um, a row of them and you have to kind of like look through

them and I'm, I'm sure, um, you know, a magazine back in the day would have, uh, would have helped out some listeners and showed what this was. But like, for the most part, this is, um, this is just like a weird way to gatekeep the ending. Yeah. I mean, I guess they are doing, you know, you, they, you do have to pick out the right grail at the end of the movie so that they are, they're, they're being very accurate there. Yeah. So good for them.

And, uh, getting back to maybe, uh, the brawler stages, uh, where you have to kill a certain amount of enemies. You have the one on the ship, um, which is the, uh, that's the cross of Coronado. And, uh, that one, I, I think you're, you're never like forced to fight multiples of these guys at the same time. Like you can see multiples, but they're usually on different, um, levels of the ship and stuff and they don't climb, uh, up and down the ladders. So it is all like one-on-one fighting, but we already talked about like what we don't like about this fighting stage thing, but like on the ships you're confined to like wherever you are on the ship in the tanks.

Now you're just like on top of a tank, which already feels like a little bit of a ridiculous situation. But, but like, you're just on like, uh, uh, a super smash brothers final destination of sorts where there are like no places to hide and no platforms to jump onto. And these guys just keep coming out of the tank as if it's like some kind of tank clown car. And you just have to like fight them off one by one. And, uh, and then eventually, um, uh, rescue Marcus.

Yeah. It's weird feeling that like, at least when you fail or like when you fall off, he just kind of gets back on. I mean, you lose a life, but you feel like less of a bitch because like Indy wouldn't just like die like that. Um, so that's cool. That's cool. But, um, you know, the, the scene in the movie is better. So whatever. In terms of any kind of platforming in the game that really happens at the castle and, uh, I still want to call it platforming because it's basically just like, first off, it needs to be said, jumping is that awful A and B together system.

Uh, I don't know why they couldn't figure that out. You're going to end up jumping straight up instead of forward when you want to do that. You're going to end up jumping forward when you mean to straight jump straight up or whatever. So. Right. But they did figure out, they figured out one good thing here. And that is when you're timing with the chandeliers to take, uh, Indy's whip and use it to swing across. And I guess I just was like, if you would have asked me what I was expecting from the game before I played any of it, I would have expected not just like with the use of the whip, but just in general, like more of a Prince of Persia style game.

Yeah. You know, like. Not just the one time that happens. Yeah, exactly. Like just Indy doing like more like cool stunts and dodging snakes and shit like that. But instead it, it was mostly like, uh, Indiana Jones is the world's greatest boxer.

I don't know why they didn't have a rat. Like they should have had a rat level. Like that was cool. Like when he has to go among the rats, like that's more Indiana Jones. They did do, they did do some good touches though, even in like the way that they were communicating, uh, timers in this game and stuff like that. Like when you're assembling, um, the picture of the sliding puzzle at the bottom of the screen, you can see like this really, I wasn't even sure what it was at first, but then I realized it's like, Oh, that's another view of Indy.

Like with a, uh, from a ring camera that's in the, that's in the room and it's showing him assembling the puzzle. But then there's this fire that is, uh, slowly inching its way, uh, towards you. And I guess I forgot to mention that like, while I think that that's a neat touch from like a UI or, uh, you know, working into the story of the game of the movie, it's another frustrating thing in this fucking sliding puzzle that it's like, it's not bad enough that like you have to know how to like work a sliding puzzle, but you have a timer in addition.

Yeah. Wasn't a big, again, the, the sliding puzzle is, is the worst thing you could have put in a video game. Like it's just, it's like having a crossword. And if you take the sliding, uh, if you don't finish the sliding puzzle in time, if you don't like press the start button or complete it and you let that fire gauge fill up, uh, you do lose the picture of the puzzle completely. Oh, yeah. It burned in the fire. Yeah, exactly. You have to just take a, take a stab in the dark there. Well, that's a pretty crazy soft lock. I guess not soft lock, but you may as well be at that point.

Now you called that final, uh, temple level with the overhead of Indy walking around, you called it the Jehovah, uh, maze. And did you want to explain why? Uh, yeah, because you can only step on, like basically the maze is a, you know, don't step on the wrong square, but if you just follow the line that spells out Jehovah, which, you know, name of God, yada, yada, or close enough to it. I wasn't a theologian. Um, that will, that's basically your safe, your safe squares. You just have to get to the other side. And then you, that once you're there, you move on to the, uh, um, the select a cup mini game. Yes. And you, you do get this, um, uh, maze illustration before you go into the level that has like a bunch of X's all over the place.

And, um, uh, has at the bottom only in the footsteps of God, will he proceed? But like, was it ever communicated elsewhere about like the Jehovah thing? No, you're just supposed to know that. Just supposed to know it. Got it. Okay. Just making sure that it's not like, oh, if you complete this level earlier, then you would learn that information. It's kind of like just from that Sunday school. Yeah. Of course. Did they ever say then Sunday school? I didn't go to Sunday school. I, uh, didn't go to Sunday school either, but I'm sure they said it. They tell you everything in Sunday school. Tell you everything. Tell me everything.

Well, let's talk about the, you know, since we've been talking about the movie recreation part of it, the most impressive part is the pixel art of these, uh, cut scenes from, uh, from the movie and everything. But I think these are just like, these are just actual stills from the movie that are like, I'm not going to use the wrong term here, but like bit mapped. Like, yeah. Like, is that how they did it? And I think they're also, um, I think they're also kind of collaged because I don't think that the, the like composition of these shots is all that correct. I think like they're, some are like cut and paste together. Right. Like there's that one at the end of the, um, when you jump off the ship, I think.

Yeah. That's just like, yeah, that wasn't, that wasn't like a still from the movie, but maybe it was a still from two different stills in the movie mixed together or something. It's like less impressive when you know that though. Like, I feel like what was so cool about the cut scenes in a game like Ninja Gaiden was that there, you know, they were just like making that shit from scratch and it looked really impressive cinematic, you know? And it's like, eh, this is kind of like you're copying someone's homework. And I also liked the, like, basically when you beat this game, you've just done the most boring part of the game, um, which is sort of the maze and then like comparing and contrasting the differences on a bunch of cups.

Uh, so they, they know that they have to give you something, uh, to actually like make this worth it. So they just give you the most detailed picture of Indiana Jones that they can muster. Um, who is, his face is sort of materializes among the stars. It's very funny. Yeah. And I mean, like, had you told me that this is just like, if I would have just saw this still, and you would have told me that this is a eight bit demake of Red Dead Redemption or something, I would have bought it. I've been like, oh yeah, great.

For sure. It feels weird to say that there is no sequel to this game. Uh, but like, I guess like there's no like, um, Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull, uh, video game. Like there's no, there's no, there's no tight over. Yeah. Right. There's plenty of other Indiana Jones games, uh, Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis. Um, and then also a separate fate of the Atlantis, the action game. They just kept fucking doing that. They just kept like, this is the video game and this is the action game. Um, there's the young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

There's, uh. When he's a boy scout? Yeah. Well, it reminds me of like James Bond Jr. Yeah. You ever hear that? But the young. I don't know if you know this, but the young Indiana Jones Chronicles was a, um, not an animated show. It was a, um, a live action show on ABC that, uh, I think got more than one season. Wow. Yeah. Is he like super disrespectful to, uh, archeological sites in that as well? Uh, yeah, I'm sure he is. I've never seen one episode of this. Um, but do you know who's Indy?

No. Sean Patrick Flannery. That name rings a bell. Boondock Saints. Oh my God. Wow. That's funny. Oh, we, you know, it's too bad. You know, we had, we had River Phoenix in this. We were, we were spoiled. Man. We didn't know what we had back then. We didn't know we had.

And there's a bunch of other Indiana Jones games. Like I, including the one that just came out. Well, not just came out, but came out like three, three years ago now. Maybe that's. Indiana Jones in the great circle. Yeah. It's a, I mean, I played maybe like an hour or two with that. It's pretty, pretty cool. I'll, I'll, I'll return to it. I'll only be impressed if they drew a perfect circle by hand.

If any, if there was any CAD involvement that I'm, I'm out. That's true. Yeah. That's actually what it is about. Right. Is that like somebody finally drew a perfect circle by hand and it's like that guy must be a God. I will track him down. I'll believe you.

Yeah, sure. Why not? But there are like, there's a lot of fun. I actually, I remember how I said that there was no kingdom of the crystal skull game. There wasn't, but there was a mobile game tie-in. So I guess I feel bad saying that there wasn't, but I just know that that's not like, that's not a big enough game. Like that's like, yeah, everything got a mobile game. Mobile games don't count that much, you know, but there were the Lego Indiana Jones games too. And those are just like any other Lego game. But like, if, if that, that's a high praise to say that they're just like, I eat up those Lego games. You like those Lego games? I've never played any of them. I know that they are well regarded.

But usually I, if I want to play a game about the property, I would prefer them not be Legos. I don't know. Well, here's, yeah, no, I mean, but actually some of the funniest stuff is how they recreate scenes from these movies or properties that they're like Lego-ifying and how they handle it using Legos. Like it's very creative and the fact that nobody can speak.

It's really funny. Like in Lego Star Wars for the original saga, like Luke's like, you know, because the hands are like those little claws. Oh, yes. You know, it just like pops out when he gets hurt by, when Darth Vader cuts it off. And like, there's like a little funny things like that all the time. So I got good news for you. The Lego games aren't best experienced solo anyway. So maybe next time you're over, we'll do a little co-op Lego sesh so that you can get a taste. Yeah, we'll do it. Yeah, why not? But we did get it. We already had an Indiana Jones game on the show. And that was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Do you remember anything about that one? Not a goddamn thing.

That's great. That's music to my ears. I'm glad that we're doing this. No, that game was awful. Oh, good. That game was way worse than this. I feel comfortable saying that. Okay. So this was Temple of Doom NES. I'm just going to look. I'm going to look at a little bit of this. Go for it. Oh, dear God. Wow. This looks terrible.

It's all purple. Oh, dear God. Yeah. I guess I have some vague sensory memories of this. You just blocked this all out because we did it during COVID. I mean, we did have to show during COVID, Mike. Right. I know what I'm saying. So it's just like, forget about those things, man. That's a scary time. Wow. But that game was developed by Tenjin, who everybody always wants us to cover all the other games that they made that weren't released officially for North America, which defeats the premise of the show. Guys, listen to the beginning. Listen to the opening. But if that's what they had to offer, I'm not sure even how good those other games are. I kid. I'm sure they're great. They're probably pretty terrible. I don't care saying that.

One other thing we forgot to mention about this specific iteration of Indiana Jones, though, and you should know it based on the fact that the games I mentioned were Solstice, Silver Surfer, and Pictionary. Do you know what I'm going to mention? No. The music.

Oh, yes. No, the music's amazing. Yeah. This is another Tim Fallon thing. This is another one. It was like if you brought Indiana Jones to like a jazz festival. Or something like that. Or more like a funk concert. It's very strange. They have the Indiana Jones song theme. That's what I was going to say. It's like Tim Fallon and John Williams collab on the NES. That's incredible.

Now, I know they didn't actually talk to each other or anything, but just Tim being able to riff on John Williams' theme is pretty amazing as it is. And I do think that this soundtrack absolutely rocks. Even if people probably remember the crazy menu music from Pictionary and the first stage of Silver Surfer a little better than this. Yeah, it's pretty wild. You know what else is wild? I'm just going to make you. Yeah. It's the essential games list. Okay. Sean.

Yeah. I, you know, this is a totally, you know, it workman like video game about Indiana Jones and the last crusade. Thankfully, somebody else is going to get a shot at this. Maybe they can make it more than just like a, like a museum tour, like a museum tour of some scenes from the movie that are sort of adapted in a very strange way. I don't think that any part of this game aside from the absolute disgrace of a slide puzzle is all that bad. But the fact that the slide puzzle is here is in the words of Sean Connery. Say it, Mike. I actually don't know which one I'm supposed to say.

It, you know what? It's funny because I forgot the word too. So I was hoping you just covered my ass. But Sean Connery says like, he's got like a catchphrase in this and it's, it's what that is. It's a, it's like unbearable, but like, it's almost as if like, I forgot half the English language right now, regardless for the essential games list. This is a no for me.

Passing it along to you. That's, I'm still trying to think about the catchphrase because it's not junior. No. Not the fact that he calls his, okay. All right. I got a clean vote here. And that is that Indiana Jones and the last crusade on the NES does not belong in a museum.

It, it, I guess like the single strongest thing in favor of it is that level select design. It is a, it's an actual idea, not just a menu, not just something that the game feeds you the next level. You choose the order. The order sets the difficulty. There are certain stages that are missable. If you skip, if you don't choose them in a certain amount of time, nobody was thinking this hard in regards to, uh, licensed games, uh, that we've seen so far this year as this game did on that. So huge kudos there. Obviously love the Tim Fallon score, but intolerable.

Intolerable. He says intolerable like several times. It's a catchphrase. Uh, my brain is fried. He could have just said it twice and that'd be a catchphrase. Yeah. He probably only did say it twice. Right. Uh, but here's the, here's the problem. The thing you spend most of the game doing just hitting one guy at a time over and over again, it not only it doesn't, it's not, it's not clever, but it also feels unreliable. I don't like that whole like slap fighting thing.

And the fact that the finale, no matter how well you played the rest of the game can just like erase an entire clean run based on a single guess of which shade of the cup handle is, is the correct cup to choose. It's just like, it's, it, that's not a satisfying field of feeling. And I feel like that's the overall vibe I get from the game. It's just not necessarily a satisfying game to play. And I definitely didn't feel like Indy. And that's like that, that, you know, come on. How many times has the joke been made that like, you know, oh, Batman Arkham Asylum really makes you feel like Batman, but it's true. And here I never felt like. It's not a joke. That's just an observation. No, I know. But like now that's been applied to like everything.

Yeah. Like that, you know, like just take that and put it on everything. But it, but it works here as well. Like I don't, I didn't feel like Indy, whereas like I haven't played the great circle yet, but I bet that did a good job of making you feel like Indiana Jones compared to something like this. I think it's just a good philosophy of, of game design. If you're designing a game around a recognizable character that people particularly like. Hear, hear. You think you're ever going to watch those other two Indiana Jones movies? Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and.

Probably. Yeah. What was the fifth one? The, oh God. Yeah. It like just came out a couple of years ago, right? The Dial of Destiny. I, I, I could have been, if you would have put a gun to my head, I wouldn't have got that right. Yeah. I have probably, I'm probably going to watch them like drunk one night. The budget was $419 million. Finally got that Disney money. Yeah. They really screwed up there. Um, but sure. I'll take, um, you know what I would take instead? Bring back the young adventures of Indiana Jones.

Let me see what that's like. I should watch one episode of that. Catch us next week where Mike watches an episode of that. Yep. It's just apparently the first episode is an hour and 25 minutes. So I actually don't know if we're ever going to get there.

I'll be right back. Thank you.

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