Added: 5 years ago
From: tr0d
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  • i remember this game and i fuckin hated it simply because it was a load of SHIT.

  • Awesome game

  • I spent hundreds of hours on this game as a kid. ...Holy shit how did I ever figure this game out?....oh right, I spent hundreds of hours on this game. :)

  • damn this guy is WAAAAAAAAAAAY to positive, this game is horrible and near impossible to figure out without a guide. he acts as though this and E.T. are good. he called smurf rescue a masterpiece and he said the 5200 was well designed.

  • I don't remember any of these scenes from the movie. Maybe it's just me...

  • if that weird lookin' tic tac toe board thing at 2:50 is a spider, then that must be a fuckin' huge spider...

  • sometimes the snake will eat the grenade! time to reset when that happens- LOL

  • SWEET GRAPHICS!

  • damn is this game complex i allways gave up in one of the first rooms where a ..we called her witch was.. she rub up and down (wtf???) and i cant move anymore

  • @FAndreee You fell into the "Valley of Poison" where the black cloaked "Thief" (if you watched the movie you might remember a character by the name of "Toth", and it looks just like him) steals your stuff and then shoots you. You can't move because you probably got bit by a swarm of tse tse flies. If you equip the flute (plays a tune) you are immune to both flies and snakes! And if you shoot/whip the guy in black before he leaves, you get your stuff back!

  • they don't even mention that you need two controllers

  • There is still one thing not explained. Where do you find the shovel?

  • @jtomally9681 At the black market. If you are in possession of the Chai relic, give it to the black merchant at the normal market and you'll be teleported there. Give two bags of money to the "Raving Lunatic" (the weird looking smiling guy) so you can enter (failing to do so kills you) and go to the merchant selling shovels. It costs you another two bags of money. Or you can use the secret entrance found in the Valley of Thieves (right below the Well of Souls).

  • I think I subscribed to some sort of Atari magazine back then, and I found all of those hints in there. But, yeah, without that magazine I would've never figured that damn game out.

  • lucasarts has done a decent indy game since E.T ~

     is indy dead R just gone the way of legos

  • What's crazy is I was 6 or 7 when we got this, and I was able to finish the game purely through experimentation. There were no walkthroughs back in the day, but I managed to see the end. For some reason we could replay something over and over again and over again back then. Now, if I play any retro game, even NES games, I think what-the-hell, how did I last 5 minutes in those games and not immediately rage-quit.

  • Man I feel kinda pathetic now after watching this. I could never get past the first screen. How the hell are you supposed to know to put a grenade by the right wall?

  • I agree with everyone, my main criticism is that this game seems to have little to do with the actual events of the film save for the ark being the prize itself than with just running around doing the same sort of crap you'd do in any atari game really

    And the music would drive me insane. The theme sounds like they couldnt get authorisation from lucas to use the real theme so did one of those approximations, and the game music while ur playing is fucking tedious and noting from the film at al

  • @bluejeckett I wonder how old you are... were you a kid in the early 80s? Or maybe you weren't even born yet? Actually, A LOT of things are true to the movie - especially the room which shows the location of the Well of Souls - and the theme is pretty close to the real thing. This was 1982. This game is almost 30 years old. It's really hard to go saying things like "doing the same sort of crap you'd do in any atari game really" and not sound like another hater. Think about it.

  • @RatedJpG Im 31 so Atari was before my time a little but I did play it and Im not "just another hater" I was fully content playing things like Frogger or Space INvanders because thye were simple games that didnt reach above thmesleves but trying to get the subtleties of an epic movie into a game system which has the complexiity of chunky blocks on a screen is a little too ambitious which was my point.

  • No F'ing way! Game was impossible at 6 or 7 years old...

  • My friend and I beat this game back in the day and it was so easy, once you figured it out!!!

  • This game made me hate Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford for life!

  • video games arn't really that fun when you can't figure out anything and can't do anything, and there not much better when you use a game guide to solve everything. basicly, this game completely dodges the middle, where i would actually enjoy the game, and therefore it sucks. just like all of the other puzzle games on the atari 2600

  • i could never get my head round that this game!!!!!

  • The secret to this game was that it made perfect sense if the player were high. Then it was "Duuuuuuuuuuuude, I need the hour glass to grapple from mesa to mesa, but first I have to grenade that wall to get into the temple."

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  • it's quite enjoyable when you've got a walkthrough, but you could never figure it out on your own, i thought the grenade bit was random enough but how on earth am i supposed to know to use an hour glass as a grappling hook.

  • Fricking loud music!

  • I feel like an idiot. I must have passed this game a half dozen times but never knew it. I always thought I died at the end because I parachuted off of a wrong mesa. Wow! I agree with the others - this game made no sense when I was 9 years old. There was no real indication that you completed the game.

  • wait.. he said its like scenes from the movie? funny i dont remember the beginning of the movie when he floats down from the ark in space or what ever.. maybe its in lucas's super amazing happy fun time joy edition...

  • So where's the giant boulders, the nazi soldiers, the one on one combats etc etc? I spose you can't ask a lot for 1982.

  • man, that music is irritating lol.

  • I remember those adventure scenes from the movie! I loved the bit in the movie where that one group of pixels moved jaggedly towards the other group of pixels...

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  • @markdeaton My brother has down syndrome asshole,and it is HYSTERICAL to watch the freak eat.

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  • Darn! That thing was LOUSY even back in 1982!

  • "This game makes me feel like indiana jones"

  • Yep we were pros back then. Now it's "oooh da pwetty gwafix" and shit.

  • @elfirrepins There's nothing pro about brute forcing solutions! Just trying everything until something works isn't skill at all, it's just persistence. Unfortunately, a lot of older games were so obtuse that this is pretty much what ended up happening.

    Ironically it's a much newer game (albeit one made in an older "style") that I think completely averts this - La Mulana. It punishes brute forcing by locking out parts of the game, and everything can be worked out with just the in-game clues.

  • This and Riddle of the Sphinx SUCKED. A kid isn't going to figure it out and an adult won't sit in front of an insipid game for hours.

  • This was an amazing game for its time.

    It is the grandfather of graphic adventure games.

  • who is the announcer so i can see what hes up to now days

  • "You Adventure through the tombs in like the ones you remember from the movie", all i see are fucking pixels. EPICCC FAAILLLLL

  • you guys are crazy...this game rocked. You actually had to think. It was the Zelda of it's day. Truly revolutionary.

  • I don't remember if it was Atari Age, or from the actual instructions, but I sent off for the instructions on how to beat it and it came in the form of a cool "Top Secret" file folder. It worked and I loved beating it.

  • Had this game at home as a kid..... hated it. How the hell are you supposed to know what to do in this game? How do you get a spider out of that? Watch out for the square spider everyone!

  • I got this game for Christmas in like 1982 or so.  Then I had no clue how to play it or how to move the person. I was so upset I could not play my Christmas game, but when we returned it my mother got me Chopper Command! Those were the days.

  • I played this game for years and never guy ANYWHERE, and this guy is talking like all this crap you had to do was obvious and easy to figure out.

  • as a ten year old playing this game....it was the most FRUSTRATING GAME EVER. You had to figure out all this stuff from trial and error,,,,I remember blowing up that wall and those stupid snakes....lame game...

  • it took me 20 yrs to beat this game

  • how shit did computer games used to be!

  • Just you wait Indiana..lol..

  • You know who designed Raiders of the Lost Ark for the Atari 2600, Howard Scott Warshaw, he was the guy who also designed E.T. for the Atari 2600.

  • But the game E.T. was only given 3-4 weeks to be completed. Most games were given 3-4 months!

  • But before 1982, atari was successful, and now at that point they screw up?

  • They screwed up E.T, but I don't think they screwed up this. They were just experimenting, without experiments the game industri would not have been what it is today.

    Who knows, maybe this experiment caused the creation of "The Legend of Zelda"?

  • Maybe it was Hydlide.

  • What a flashback. I rmember getting the game and totally NOT getting it, so giving it up. Then one day, we got it back out and did ALL this stuff in the vid. I remember the heirogylph, but dont recall actually getting the arc. Why does this vid end before the ark! Great flashback , thanks.

  • Where was this show 28 years ago? When I needed you? I never understood this game till now lol.

  • I wish there was a two thumbs up option for this comment!

  • @RetroVGamer It's a little something called a manual. Besides, this was made in 1984...

  • Holy! I played this game when I was 11 or so, and, yea, I did finish it because I used the whip with skills...

  • For Atari 2600. this is a very complicated game...I just bought it at a local retro game store..

  • Steilbrurg liked this game so much, he asked Atari to make a game for his film E.T ...

  • This is the pretty much the best way to find out how to ace Retro games; on a cheesy 80's television program still living in the 70's with its "futuristic" laser sound effects that were stereotypical to an old school arcade game for decades.

  • when i played this game, i have just 9 years old.

    And yes.... i can finished it...

  • If this doesn't make sense, then read the instruction booklet. E.T. included one, too. Too bad most places where you rent video games back then threw away the manuals. This kind of thing happened to most SSB fans thinking Captain Falcon never fought before, but he actually did in the comic found in the SNES F-ZERO's manual, along with his gun and Falcon Flyer. His swinging punch in it might be the Raptor Boost or Falcon Punch, while his elbow attack might be his Forward+A Smash move.

  • There is no way a 7 year old could figure this game out.

  • Is this footage of the game or the movie? The graphics and audio are so lifelike, I can't tell the difference!

  • I obsessed over this game as a kid. It entered my dreams.

  • This game is absolutely ludicrous.

  • god i hated that game

  • Maybe the fact Zelda had better graphics and better game play made it easier to play? It had a lot of hard puzzles and out there shit to do like burn the third bush from the left to enter the secret cave?

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  • The fact that Zelda was selfexplanitory made it easier to pick up and play. They could have made this just as good had it been selfexplanitory.

    Like a crack in the wall you are supposed to blow up, that would have made a huge difference and it aren't to advanced for the Atari either.

    And maybe a sign over the head of the merchand saying: "Trade". That is more advanced, but not impossible either.

    Things like that would've made this game much better, and Atari's limitation wouldn't matter.

  • LMAO! I had an atari when i was probably 5 or 6. I didn't know how to play anything on it. The graphics were so horrible I decided legos were more fun. Thanks Reddit:)

  • You thought the *graphics* were bad huh? lol

  • what are you 12 now?

  • what, he is 22...

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  • I remember playing this POS! Couldn't get past the first 2 screens! At least ET was slightly playable- Worst Game Ever!

  • This is why I fucking hated Atari games like this as a kid. They make no fucking sense.

    How was a kid in 1982 supposed to figure out you have to place a grenade by the right wall. Thats total BS.

    The game expected too much from the primative 2D graphics. Its like finding a needle in a haystack.

    I remember buying this game and giving up on it the same day. Worst off I spent my allowance money to by this POS.

  • @whocaresnow2 i totoally agree! i was stuck at that exact place, and gave up lol.

  • The graphics are primitive by today's standards, but in 1982 the big deal was that this game had so many discrete rooms with different objectives. referable to another Pac Man clone, or Frogger retread!

    Even as a young'un, I saw this game as an interactive piece of artwork. It holds up today for its bizarre geometric abstractions and the spatial liberties it takes.

    It was rich, deep, filled with things to solve. More a progenitor of Zelda and the like than the heir to arcade shoot em ups.

  • @whocaresnow2

    So right. I didn't grow up in the 80s, but I can imagine the frusteration. You were a kid in the 80s, you just got your allowence, you go to a video store and get a game, and this piece of shit was your weekend. I've watched a few reviews on this game, and how the shit was anybody to know how to beat this game?

  • @whocaresnow2 Just exactly when were you a kid? In the late 80s? The 90s? No offense, but almost everything is actually explained in the original manual. And the game, in spite of the Atari 2600's hardware limitations, is true to the movie plot.

  • @whocaresnow2 Try reading the manual?

  • @whocaresnow2 Well, if you had read the instruction manual way back then, they offered you vital hints on what to do - as for the grenade by the right wall, the manual told you flat out to do that so's to begin the game. I admit it wasn't easy - what the manual didn't tell you you usually had to figure out w/a lot of experimentation - sorry you felt you got gypped when you bought this game (I got mine for xmas) but look on the bright side: you might've bought the ET game instead

  • @whocaresnow2

    Yeah, ATARI was a piece of shit back then but, you are looking at it by today's videos games.

    I have to be honest I use to stay up until 3:00 in the morning playing these games they were alot of fun & great memories.

  • AHHH THE MUSIC!!  *pokes out ears*

  • This shit makes no sense.

    The developers of this game must be hunted down and made to give a pound of flesh from their obese genitals.

  • i got this game for christman the good old days

  • how was a kid ever supposed to figure this stuff out back then, and no internet for them either

  • God did this game suck. This is just ET revisited -_-

  • wow, it's been over 20 years since I played this game. I seem to remember being all excited when I figured out how to use the parachute and get underneath the branch when youre falling.. and then bugs killing me in a secret room?

    I failed anyway because I didnt get what the map room was telling me.

    Ahh to be 8 again.

  • i am sure people who were 8-14 in the early 80s enjoed the atari games a lot cause it was the best thing around at the time. ..i however grew up with the nes when i was 12 in 1989 1990 , but looking back i purely respect the atari since it started videogames...

  • Did ANYONE actually figure out how to beat this game without cheating?

  • The theory of relativity is easier to figure out than the puzzles here. These are just the most random steps possible.

  • Doo doo dooo dooo, doo doo doo doo doo doo...lol :-)

  • I had this game as a kid and could never figure it out.

  • This was one of the last games I ever got for the Atari (1986/87) before I upgraded to Nintendo. Picking up the whip was the only thing I was ever able to figure out...

    What a waste. If only I saw this video back then.

  • LMAO that made no freaking sense, how the @#%% did you even figure any of that out?

  • Dude, thanks so much. This is the only freaking game I never could figure out to play. I got to the second or third screen but that was it. No one I ever knew even knew what to do. This game was screwed up, Lol. hehehe, I was just thinking about it and was wondering if anyone ever figured out how to play it. thank you.

  • lol, that brings back so many memories....

  • cmon this is vintage gaming people!!!!!

  • Hmmm... likke i would understand that those blobs were baskets 0.0

  • Best.

    Soundtrack.

    EVER!

    -I couldn't stand it when I was five... Time has done it no favors.

  • One thing I don't understand about Atari 2600 is how the animations of the characters in some games are so fluid.

    Just look at Indiana Jones' walking animation or the movement of the snakes. The sprites are of course pixelated, but the animations are damn good as for a 32 years old system.

  • Wow they expected little kids to figure this out?!

  • I'm sure you are. :p

  • Oh yeah, that was so obvious.. Damn, I was a stupid kid wasn't I. Good Grief.

  • took me a friggen month to figure it out and another couple weeks to find all the alternate stuff like paths to the black market, etc - first serious puzzleshooting game I played

  • i never figured out how to play this game!! very confusing. but great post!!

  • dude....you took me almost 25 years away!! thx 4 uploading

  • Did Indiana Jones play this? Not likely.

    Instead, he got Marion to play some POLE POSITIOOOOON

  • I can't recall if I beat this game! Now that I'm seeing it here, I do remember that it was one of the most challenging for me back in the 80's.

  • Fun Fact: The guy who made this also did E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial.

  • Figures...

  • The Indiana Jones stick figure sprite can be found in E.T., but it would require a little extra patience and time.

  • MY EARS!

  • jesus christ, you cant hear the announcer half the fucking time because of the music volume. they were pretty careless on the volume back then, eh?

  • haha. This was my first "quest" game. yea somehow i beat it. wow i`m old

  • I got this game from eBay today by mail! It sure is hard, and it came with Donkey kong!

  • The 'music' in that game is very disturbing.

  • i hated this game.

  • Interesting this video explains alot about this game. I used to love playing it as a kid. Just becarful around that thief (aka the humper) you'll lose both your items and innocence lol.

  • lol @ 0:18 the 8 bit middle eastern theme.

  • omg this is pretty fucking complicated

    so thats what graphical adventures looked like on the atari

  • The objective in this game is kind of pointless, i mean you're looking for a box that kills you if you open it...some prize.

  • yeah, but uh, that's the plot of the movie too.

  • Indy looks like a Stickman

  • dio santo sti giochi me le ricordo benissimo a quei tempi erano bellissimi.

  • One of the things about old-school Atari games like this that has always freaked me out, even when I was a kid, is that in some rooms gravity applies, and in others you can walk around in the sky. Games would switch from 2D to overhead with absolutely no prior indication.

  • im-fucking possible!! but you know...with vg challenges like that, ist no wonder kids achieved more then, compared to the spoon fed shit they get in todays videogames.

  • i take back the comment, apparantly I did find the arc, but never knew it ! haha ! i played this in 1987 !:P

  • do you know how LONG I have tried to solve this as a kid, it still bugs me today ! please continue, becuase you did not talk about the balck market to get the shovel, the parachute and actually completing the game ! pleaseee ! consider doing it !

  • COOL

  • What's with that sound??!!! it makes my ears bleed.

  • Hey, where's the rest!

  • omg omg omg! i cant wait for that to come out!

  • it dosen't even mention how you use controller one to select items and controller 2 to move indiana...

  • wow. i never knew that atari could be so complicated! i was frickin' 5 years old when my brother got this.

  • I had a dream a few nights ago after I watched this video, and since the game is actually really bad, I dreamed that the host said " Why are we playing these shitty ass games like Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, and Smurf rescue? I QUIT!".

  • THANK YOU so much for posting this! This game still haunts my memory! Summer of '79, listening to the Doors, eating Party Pizzas and spending hours and hours and hours trying to find the Gigantic Pixelated Lego Treasure aka the Lost Ark. Thanks for the flashback!

  • rock on. party pizzas owned

  • Nice story, except Raiders didn't come out until '81.

  • What a flashback! This game frustrated me to no end, but as a 10 year old kid I was hooked! When I finally figured it out I was SOOOOOO happy!! The end was anti-climactic though, because it just looked the same as it did when you started the game, with the ark floating above you. Pretty sophisticated for its time.

  • My sister and I had this game and it took us weeks to work it all out. I seem to remember that you had to drop over the side of a mesa eventually and if you didn't force the character to a hole in the side of the mesa quickly enough you had to start all over again. However, we did once find the lost ark and were so happy!

  • NO, no, no! This was the WORST cartridge I ever bought for my Atari 2600. It was soooooooo bad, that the company let you write them and they'd send you a copy of the solution (most people couldn't figure it out). You had to figure everything out yourself, but with the graphics being so rough, nothing looked like what it was supposed to represent so you were just lost wondering what was what and what you were supposed to do with it...It was a bad 1980s memory!

  • have you ever tried E.T??? took me months to figure out....

  • I'm impressed with the design of this game considering the limited technology they put together a fairly complex adventure.

  • What a suckass game!

  • Thanks for posting this.When I was a kid,I had this game and couldn't for the life of me figure it out.The Swordquest games were just as frustrating.

  • I can't believe that! That's old game about 1982. I don't like game and looking like very CHEAP game.

    But I love play new game "Lego Indiana Jones" That very good cartoon pictures. Lot of action. ( not cheap game)

  • dang your good at this game

  • jezuz thats fucking hard

  • lol.

    "you go through places you will recognize from the movie."

    HOW THE HECK CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING RECOGNIZABLE?!

  • What? You don't you remember the part in the movie where Jones got attacked by Tse Tse flies and moved around a mesa field using an hourglass?

  • what about the map room?

  • Oh, okay, I'll give you that one. And I suppose there was a marketplace in the movie too. But that's about it.

  • yeah, that was a landmark scene too.

  • I remember this game, It was actually pretty fun to play back then, surprising considering the graphics compared to todays games. Goes to show that game play and graphics don't necessarily go hand in hand.

  • I remember this game....

  • You people bitching about this game suck!

    Couldn't you people read? Everything in this video was in the freaking instruction manual!

    Yes, there was a lot of trial and error involved to actually beat the game, but it wasn't THAT hard.

    And the same thing goes for E.T. If you read the instruction manual, then it was a breeze!

    I didn't realize there so many dumbass kids in the 80s!

  • Someone who also understood this had the complexity of a computer game for its time. I did see a warning in the RotLA manual about spoiling how to beat the game. I think that was the first time I saw instructions warn about spoilers.

  • like the nerd said, how are you supposed to know that you have to bomb the wall, horribly designed game

  • so simple, the nerd was right