Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

aka: FoA, Indiana Jones IV, Indiana Jones et le Mystère de l'Atlantide, Indiana Jones i Sud'ba Atlantidy, Indiana Jones y el destino de la Atlántida, Indy IV
Moby ID: 316
DOS Specs
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$65.00 used on eBay
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Description official descriptions

Indiana Jones is back! The great archaeologist and adventurer has to solve a grand mystery once again, aided by his trusty whip, his sharp wit, and his courage. A man who calls himself Mr. Smith is interested in a certain ancient statue. When the unsuspecting Indy hands it over to the client, he finds out that Mr. Smith is in fact a colonel in the Nazi army! Why was he so interested in that statue? A young woman who had once worked together with Indy, the pretty red-haired (and a bit troublesome) Sophia, tells him the whole thing must have a connection with the legendary lost continent Atlantis. Gathering clues from all over the world, Indy and Sophia embark on a grand journey across the globe.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is a puzzle-solving adventure game conceived in the spirit of Indiana Jones movies; however, it is not based on a specific movie, introducing a new, independent story. The game utilizes LucasArts' SCUMM system, with action verbs the player chooses from a menu; objects that can be interacted with are highlighted. The game contains many puzzles of various kinds (mostly inventory-based) and dialogues with multiple choices. There are also a few simple hand-to-hand fights against the Nazis, some of which can be avoided.

The middle part of the game can be played in three "modes": co-operation (Indy and Sophia), adventure (Indy alone), and action (Indy alone, with fewer puzzles and more action). In each mode, there are different locations to visit, different puzzles to solve, and different characters to meet. The CD version of the game adds voice-overs to all the conversations.

Spellings

  • Индиана Джонс и Судьба Атлантиды - Russian spelling
  • אינדיאנה ג'ונס: בעקבות סודה של אטלנטיס - Hebrew spelling
  • インディ・ジョーンズ アトランティスの運命 - Japanese spelling
  • 印笫安那.瓊斯系列:亞特蘭提斯之謎 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

127 People (125 developers, 2 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 91% (based on 47 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 437 ratings with 17 reviews)

LucasArts got it right... again!

The Good
Well, it uses the SCUMM engine adventure game system. That's a GOOD thing. You know how sometimes companies have an engine and make a ton of repetitive games that are almost the same? Well, now that the adventure genre is (almost) dead, I wish they've made more. Beautiful system, practically flawless ease of gameplay.

You're Indiana Jones and you have to find Atlantis. On the way, you visit Crete, Egypt, Monaco, Iceland, Atlantis itself, and more locations. You can play as both Indiana Jones and his archaeologist female companion. You can play an adventure or action mode. Thus, it seems like you have more options available than in the usual adventure game.

The game is a tad more serious than most LucasArts adventures, but not as dark as its predecessor, Indy 3. While there is a sense of urgency and drama (the cutscenes whenever the evil Nazis do something, etc.), there's also the usual witty Indy humor. Also, Indiana Jones looks remarkably like Harrison Ford in this game.

The storyline is EXCELLENT. As a matter of fact - you know how they often make computer games after books, movies, etc.? They made ANOTHER computer game (the Indy 4 action game) and a 4-book comic book series (by Dark Horse Comics) after this game, THAT'S how good it was. Sure, nowadays when Warcraft has its own Paperback series, that's no big deal, but for ten years ago it was.

On a side note, this was the first game that I owned that actively supported Windows (it actually had a little .jpeg picture for the Windows desktop shortcut, something that games only slowly adopted).

The Bad
I hated all those dumb dial-a-wheel copy protections, but thankfully if you buy the game today (CD version on a compilation, or so) you won't have to do it.

The Bottom Line
Get it. Graphics and sound are not too outdated, and the storyline's worth it. I WISH the following Indiana Jones games (Infernal Machine, etc.) had still been SCUMM adventures and not Tomb Raider clones.

DOS · by Gothicgene (66) · 2001

A good game, though probably over-hyped by adventure buffs.

The Good
The game opens in a grand way that is a true cross between Indiana Jones and Lucasarts games, with a witty intro that intertwines the credits with actually playing the game, I loved this and wish more games were creative this way.

The plot of the game is very in the Indy vein, taking the much over-used idea of Atlantis and putting the Nazi spin on it. True to Jones form the game doesn't dwell in ancient scriptures and instead constructs an almost plausible story involving a lost dialogue of Plato as a cue for sending our hero across the world. Being an adventure game it gets pretty close to the feel of the film, given the constraints of being played out across static screens and being unable to use proper cinematography. The SCUMM game engine has clearly been used well, performing admirably and enhanced by great voice acting and an excellent score (helped along by the famous Indy motif).

The famous thing everyone says about the game is the different paths through depending on you playing style, which add a replayability to it, though I suppose were it a real Jones film, the muscles path would have to be taken.

The Bad
Being an adventure game the game has to have challenging elements I suppose, but sometimes these challenges are ramped beyond what you'd get in at the cinema. I felt that these detracted from the romping across the globe feel, as you were left sometimes doing a fairly ridiculous travel back and forth across the globe to attempt a different puzzle whilst figuring another out.

This kind of criticism may seem unjust given it does the best it can do as a game, but then it is trying to follow in the steps of a film series. I would write that the plot and ending is a little too overblown for an Indy story, but then I've now seen the Crystal Skull, so even the Infernal Machines plot devices could seem reasonable now. The staging of the story doesn't quite work so well, as the tone of the game is more light-hearted than the films, following more on LucasArts other games such as Monkey Island, though I suppose it might help relieve the pressure of 'using item a on object b' to solve a puzzle.

The Bottom Line
In term of where the genre was at when the game was released, it's a milestone, playing other games from the same era allows you to realise how smoothly this game plays and how well the 'never die' (at least giving you a fair warning otherwise) device works well and helps the game continue.

There are lessons to be learnt from this game on how to write and design a good adventure game, though also improvements that could come forth too such as injecting more a free-flowing film dynamism to the game, making the action sequences less stifled (long-winded boxing matches, anyone?).

Definitely worth playing for all adventure buffs and Indiana Jones fans who felt that maybe the latest movie installment didn't deliver.

DOS · by RussS (807) · 2009

Licensed title? I didn't hear anybody swear

The Good
(the Bad)

Due to conceptual reasons revealed later on in the review, I have decided to discuss the bad things about the game first.

1) the graphics aren't that good; if you consider that Sierra remade Quest for Glory this same year (and Kyrandia 1 was released as well), the backgrounds in this game just seem grey and dull and unimaginatively photo-realistic (though without such advantages of photo-realism as high resolutions and lots of colors) in comparison. The color palette in this game makes me want to ask a question: why hasn't there ever been a b/w adventure game released, ever? Also, the backgrounds aren't very detailed either, and the characters are pretty small, and mostly with no close-ups either.

2) you could die in this game, and quite easily; what happened to the LucasArts philosophy?

3) upon replaying it recently, I found it kinda short; sure, it has that advantage of having the middle-section in three different versions (you bet I was thrilled when after finishing the game for the first time I suddenly found out that there were practically two more somewhat smaller games there yet remaining) but if you play the whole story through, you get to play only one of those versions, and then you're smack into the last third (more like last half) which is always the same. And the middle-section isn't that long either - only a half-dozen locations (2 very small in Atlantic, 2 not-so-large in the Mediterranian, the large but not-so-exciting dungeons of Crete, optionally a mining site in Africa or a small island near Crete (both virtually unpopulated) and the sub, and that's it) and only a half-dozen characters with more than a couple of sentences to say or a fruit-on-a-stick to give you. I think that if they would've concentrated their efforts on one single definitive middle-section, they would've made a much more fulfilling game - but then again, that is what is always think regarding "non-linearity" in plot-led games.

4) the last section (Atlantis) is extremely questionable. First of all, the graphics go totally down the drain here - it's all a big muddy dungeon. Second, no characters to talk to (which is a big drawback because some comic relief would be very welcome here). Third, most of it takes place in a sort of a maze-like contraption, which thankfully doesn't involve any actual labyrinth-navigating (in fact, the top-down view makes it more like that handheld-game where you have to navigate this little ball through this little maze), but there are soldiers chasing you and it takes a pretty long time to get from anywhere to anywhere. Fourth, the actual gameplay in this section is kinda, er, I think "anal" is the word that describes it best: the thing is that some of the rooms in this maze just HAPPEN to be blocked off in some way (cave-ins, that sort of thing), yet there also just HAPPEN to be some chutes through which you can stick something into that room and knock something over, which just HAPPENS to have the effect of cracking open some door or starting some machine (which just HAPPENED to be standing there) which just HAPPENS to kill the two guards standing in that room. But why did I have to get into those rooms in the first place, I can't help asking (excepting the one which had Sophia jailed in it)? What, is it the ONLY room in the whole world to contain a stick, or a ladder, or some cogwheels I don't even yet know why I need? Have you ever seen an Indiana Jones film where he spends most of his time running back and forth from one room to the next, and to the next, and the next and then back again to the first one to see if the pile of crap he pulled out of the ancient Atlantidian garbage cans in those three "next" rooms just MIGHT switch/break something in the first one? WHY, tell me, why is it that if a robot breaks down in ONE room, his insides end up splattered across the whole goddamn underwater city? Or again, did the ancient super-advanced Atlantidian race have no conception of a "spare parts" shop/"room"/whatever and when something broke down they usually stole replacement parts from the robots/machines in the next room? When a computer at your workplace breaks down, do you usually sneak into the next room and break down your collegue's PC and steal parts from it? Don't answer that question.

And anyway - of course I'm not in any way suggesting that making the maze section even bigger would be a nice design idea (exactly the opposite), but it does occur to me that barely a hundred Atlantidians could fit in that "city", and even then they'd be very uncomfortable, there being no beds/toilet facilities anywhere to be found. And what did they eat anyway? Did they just open the window and fish? I just bet they did, because Indy certainly doesn't have any problem just barging in with his sub and then opening some door and getting inside (no diving gear/contact with water involved at any point). But then again, he doesn't have any problems being fired out of a sub's torpedo launch, so I guess he's just of a hardier stock than most people.

And what's worse (getting back to the mazes), once you get past the first biggest maze-circle and into the second one (smaller), the gameplay suddenly turns into "stand on the back of a mechanic swimming turtle (how aptly chosen!), and wait like 5 minutes until he transports you across the 3 desolate screens to the one which contains, again, a stick or a cogwheel". Then take the express back (I'm speaking ironically here), run across the whole of the bigger outer maze to some room where you can get some freaking beads you need to operate the machine which needs the cogwheel you just found. Look adventure game designers - having makeable/gatherable objects in a game which take a load of repetitive actions to make/gather, and the quantity of which is unlimited and the REQUIRED quantity is unknown (unless you're reading up on the walkthrough as you go along) = WRONG WRONG WRONG! What happened to the Monkey Island rope which you could never burn to the end? If LucasArts wanted to make Indiana Jones and the Legend of Kyrandia, maybe they should've included the option to EAT the goddamn beads by clicking them on yourself as well!

5) the Crete dungeon isn't that hot either; the puzzles are a bit funner here (particularly in the solo brawn version) but the top-down view has been removed and replaced with a regular multiple-screens maze. And the mineral-seeking fish-on-a-string is sure no match for the navigator's head! (Though the cool graphic effect of Indy climbing down a waterfall made up for it. In 1992, that is.)

6) character interaction generally left a lot to be desired: there clearly wasn't much effort put into branching out the dialogues, and aside from very flatly asking for the information that you need ("Have you seen any suspicious people digging around in the desert anywhere around here?"), the only thing Indy does is make some occasional off-hand one-liners ("I'm selling these fine leather jackets") or make some passably funny off-hand "I'm a big oaf" comments about the story ("uh, then they all died?" kinda stuff). There's little or no non-essential (to the plot) speaking going on - esp since Indy's witticisms usually end up with him either boxing with somebody or just plain being killed - which leaves the game world kind of bare, not fleshed out with little details like Sam and Max or Day of the Tentacle.

The Bad
(the Good)

Well. Those there were the drawbacks. The good thing is - this is the best single example of the "traditional", classic graphic adventure game. This is what adventure games where about until their surviving members sought refuge in cartoons (Tentancle, Sam and Max), or (intentional) self-parody (Monkey Island), or horror (Alone in the Dark) or film noir (Grim Fandango) or just simply much much more involved, "serious" stories, dialogues and plots (Gabriel Knight). The conceptual reason I put "the bad" first is this - though I KNOW this game is great, a classic, furthermore a classic I knew to be a classic way before anybody told me it was a classic (because I simply loved it so much when I played it), yet upon replaying this game a couple of months ago, I was unable to pinpoint the reason why I thought it was so great. Therefore I simply am unable to put anything constructive in the "good" section. Suffice to say that the drawbacks I have listed, and the rest is simply a defining chapter in the history of computer games.

But in the way of personal recomendation I CAN say this - when I first played this game, sometime around 1993 and 1994 (I was 12 at the time), I wrote it down as "my favorite game of all time". I hadn't played that many games at the time, but the game Fate of Atlantis stole the crown from was Dune 2, so it does say something. It held the title for about a year, until Gabriel Knight took over (and another year later, Ultima 7, pt 1). And about 7-8 years after I played it originally, I replayed it, and found it to be a mere shell of its former glory - the locations, the puzzles were all there but the magic wasn't. Why? Is it simply because I have come to expect much much more from a game, to expect film or cartoon-quality graphics (and original graphic design), top-class voice acting and witty, involved, surprise-filled dialogues? I guess you could say that I, like most gamers, have become lazy and don't use my imagination anymore (since there is much less need) - to which I would respond, true, but I would also rather prefer to have a modern car/computer/TV/whatever rather than have an old one and "use my imagination to make it come alive". Wouldn't you? And games are no different. If my imagination made the game "come alive", then I should sing praises to my imagination, not to the game. I certainly don't think it's true that games like Fate of Atlantis just gave an inferiour presentation of their content and therefore are now obsolete - I think that they weren't just pieces of mud your imagination made something out of, I think that the games of that time WORKED the imagination, were specifically made FOR the imagination, thus as to excite the imagination, to guide it and so on. Much like games today are made for 3d graphic cards and suchlike - games of that day were made for the imagination, some used it better, more efficiently, some worse. Obviously, Fate of Atlantis used it best of all - but. It doesn't work anymore. The naivette is gone, the belief that this game can "take me places" is gone. I can take the game apart like I couldn't before, I can note all the mechanisms that were supposed to drive the imagination, but they don't actually reach their target. It's as if I could print out some program's source code, read it and imagine how it was supposed to function but couldn't actually run it since it was written for some specific piece of hardware that nobody produces anymore.

There. I've exhausted THAT metaphore.

The Bottom Line
Play this game if you want to find out what was so great about the "classic" adventure game. Play this game if you want to find out why the classic adventure game became extinct.

DOS · by Alex Man (31) · 2002

[ View all 17 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

CD-ROM version

There are two versions of this game: a floppy version (11 disks) and a CD-ROM version. The floppy DOS version features talked interactions for only the introduction, while the CD-ROM one is a full "talkie".

LucasArts Logo Easter Egg

On the island of Crete while exploring the caverns, there are several rooms which have LucasArts logo etched in stone, to look as if they're something that came from Atlantis.

Comics

A Fate of Atlantis comic book series with four issues was published by Dark Horse in 1991. It was based on the story created by Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein, but only loosely followed the game's storyline.

Development

The original script for the game was written by Hal Barwood who also wrote movie scripts for The Sugarland Express (1974), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Dragonslayer (1981). He later created the story for Star Wars: Yoda Stories (1997).

For a short period, lead artist Bill Eaken worked at Sierra On-Line, and he hated every second of it. When he did the evil ghost animation at the end of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, where it swirls around and comes right up to the player and speaks, he made it say "F**k Sierra."

Fights

You can press Insert during fights to "sucker punch" your opponents and win immediately. Some enemies which can be circumvented by solving a puzzle are immune to this move. To this day this is being reported as a cheat, even though it is a feature of the game and clearly pointed out in the manual (page seven).

This is either a sign of how widely this game was pirated or of how few people actually read manuals.

German version

In the German CD-ROM version a small swastika in Kerner's pass was removed. It is still there in the disk version.

Plot

The story line of this game is fairly accurately based on history. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler attempted to rewrite history in an effort to prove that the Aryan race in fact descended from the Atlanteans. To this end he instigated archaeological digs in Iceland, the Middle East and Tibet. Similar occult/Nazi material appears in Raven Software's Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

More information about this can be found in the book Himmler's Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race.

References

  • When you are trying to sell the mask to Omar-Al-Jabbar, one of the things he gives to you is a baseball ball "signed by Lou Gherigh", as he says. But if you look at the ball, it's signed by "Ron Gilbert". Ron Gilbert worked for Lucasarts and was the creator of Monkey Island.
  • Several Harrison Ford movies are referenced in FoA. For Example, Indy complains that when he was in school, the principle would always send letters home to his father that began with "Regarding Henry..." (Regarding Harry is a 1991 drama which Ford starred in)
  • When Indy plays with the flashlight in the Monte Carlo hotel, one of the shadow puppets is the comic book character Max known from comics and the later Sam & Max Hit the Road.
  • In the CD-ROM "talkie" version, when Indiana strains physically he lets out a Wookie roar.
  • Many of the street names in Monte Carlo are insider gags. Among other things there is an "Avenue des Troi Bois" and a "Boulevard des Guerres des Etoiles". "Trois Bois" is French for "three wood", which is obviously a reference to Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island. "Guerres des Etoiles" translates as "Star Wars".

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #93 overall among the “150 Best Games of All Time”
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #4 Most Memorable Game Hero (Madame Sophia)
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #14 Most Memorable Game Hero (Indiana Jones)
  • Amiga Joker
    • Issue 02/1994 – Best Game in 1993 (Readers' Vote)
    • Issue 02/1994 – Best Adventure in 1993 (Readers' Vote)
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #37 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • PC Gamer
    • November 1999 - #42 Best Game of All Time
  • PC Games (Germany)
    • Issue 01/1993– Best Adventure in 1992
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1993 – Best Adventure Game in 1992
    • Issue 02/1993 – Best Presentation in 1992

Information also contributed by Agent 5, ClydeFrog, game nostalgia, Garcia, Istari, James1, PCGamer77, Rupert Breheny, St. Emydius, Swordmaster, Terrence Bosky and William Shawn McDonie

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Related Sites +

  • AmberfishArts - Fate of Atlantis 2 Fangame
    Founded in 1998, IndyProject set out to create a sequel to the 1992 LucasArts adventure Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. FoA2 will resume where the original game ended, and tell its story to the end. It will be a faithful recreation of the feel and atmosphere of the original.
  • Game Nostalgia
    Provides extensive background info for Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, pictures of the cast and examples of voice-overs, full credits with shots and info about the design team, demos of the game, specific details about the game, various goodies, all musical themes, shots of every location in the game, saved games, a list of reviews, including a "nostalgic" review and tech specs.
  • Hints for Indy - Fate of Atlantis
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  • Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis wallpaper (archived)
    A desktop wallpaper for the game. It seems to be a close-up scan of a section of the box cover or manual.
  • ScummVM
    Get "Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis", as well as many other adventure games, to run on modern systems by using ScummVM, a legal and free program.
  • The COMPLETE Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Walkthrough!
    The only 100% complete guide on the web!
  • Wikipedia
    Talks about technical details of the game, it's history, the making of it, and more.
  • iMDB: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
    General information about the game, including user reviews, ratings, and a message board.

Identifiers +

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Olivier Masse.

Windows added by Picard. Amiga added by POMAH. Antstream added by lights out party. FM Towns added by Terok Nor. Macintosh added by Jason Savage. Linux added by me3D31337.

Additional contributors: MAT, Istari, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Apogee IV, Johnny "ThunderPeel2001" Walker, Michael Zöller, CubbyKatz, DarkDante, martin jurgens, Ricky Derocher, 6⅞ of Nine, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, Ingsoc, FatherJack.

Game added October 20, 1999. Last modified February 23, 2024.