Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

The Good
There's not a lot I like about this game. Nevertheless, the mine cart levels are fun to play. And when I first played the game (a long, long time ago) I thought the title screen looked great (look, it's Harrison Ford!). Also the game had the original Indiana Jones tune, albeit lousily rendered by the PC Speaker.

The Bad
Well there are really just three different levels. The mine level, the mine cart level and the temple levels. When you've completed a temple level, you have to play another mine level to save some more children, after which you have to escape in a mine cart AGAIN etc. Of course the levels do get tougher. [added later: well I recently played it again and found out this is not entirely true, after you've completed several cycles there's a level in which you face Mola Ram on the rope bridge (just like the end of the movie). Defeating Mola Ram is so easy you can't even call this a boss battle. After that you're dropped in another mine level and this time you can't escape in the mine cart. You'll need to whip a never-ending series of golden statues, that appear randomly throughout the level, just to increase your score until you die. The game has no decent ending.]

The designers could have done so much more with the Temple of Doom license. Following the storyline of the movie for example (I admit I was looking forward to eating monkey brains :-> ). The problem is that this game is a conversion from a simple arcade game. And there's no room for a storyline in arcade games.

Bad controls make the game really difficult when you're approached by several enemies. And it's not always easy to hit Mola Ram's fireballs with your whip.

The sound of an approaching bat is not what I like to hear. But then again most of these old games have sound effects (produced by the PC Speaker) that will make me turn off the sound.

The Bottom Line
A not so interesting conversion of an Atari arcade game that uses an Indiana Jones license. If you want to play a decent Indiana Jones game, play Fate of Atlantis. Even if you can look past the dated graphics and sound you probably won't enjoy playing this one. You'll likely have more fun with watching the movie once again.