Retro spotlight: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Punching Nazi scum by way of SCUMM
This column is “Retro spotlight,” which exists mostly so I can write about whatever game I feel like even if it doesn’t fit into one of the other topics you find in this newsletter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.
It’s pretty fair to say that Indiana Jones, on the whole, has been an inconsistent franchise. Raiders of the Lost Ark was a tremendous debut for both the character of Jones, played by Harrison Ford. Temple of Doom certainly has its fans, though, reception is a bit more mixed overall for that second entry, even among the people responsible for creating it. And the same goes for The Last Crusade, though personally I find that one to be delightful, and a fitting end to a movie trilogy.
Indiana Jones kept going, however. In some ways, this was great: there were video games, comics — an expanded universe of Indiana Jones in the same way George Lucas’ Star Wars lived on outside the theater after its initial trilogy, and that continued presence and influence helped create other properties inspired by Jones’ adventures, like Tomb Raider and Uncharted. In other ways… well, the persistent popularity of Indians Jones meant that eventually The Crystal Skull happened, and now Dial of Destiny is acting as a sendoff for Ford, but just how that will look in the future is unclear.
The games also bounced around a bit quality-wise, like the movies did, but like with the best of the films, there’s no question that Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is a fantastic one. It was beloved when it released over three decades ago, and has held up exceptionally well over the years. Fate of Atlantis is a point-and-click adventure developed by LucasArts, back when LucasArts was churning out quality point-and-clicks like it was nothing. Fate of Atlantis is the seventh game to use LucasArts’ SCUMM — the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion — engine, which allowed for you to point and click and experiment with ease. With early adventure titles, you had to keep in mind all of the possible actions you could make, or guess at the ones that might work, all via text. In SCUMM games, though, like Fate of Atlantis, your possible actions are mapped out, and it’s the combinations of those actions you have to consider. Which you can do so contextually, while looking at an actual environment instead of just text describing one.
At the bottom of your screen, you had a window full of verbs, like Touch, Use, Talk to, Push, Pull, and so on, and you’d click on one of those, then whatever object you wanted to interact with in the environment or in your item collection, or to talk to someone… everything you would do in the game was done by identifying how you wanted to interact with what.
Generally speaking, this system is utilized in a way that makes sense for the character and world of Indiana Jones. Finding a jar in the dark to fill with gas siphoned from an old truck you find at an abandoned dig site so you can put it into a generator you also found (and opened the cap to) in that same darkness, with the gas going into the jar and back out of it through a length of piping you happened to find earlier. Scraping away at accumulated dirt on the walls with a piece of ship rib you found discarded, or using it to dig a hole in the ground. Little logic puzzles where you have to check your environment, check your inventory, and then test combinations of “Use” as you sort out just what it is you’re supposed to be doing, and why.
There is the occasional moment that feels a little too video game-y with this system, however, the most notable of which was probably when Professor Indiana Jones put some gum on the bottom of his shoes to climb a metal chimney in the furnace room up to another floor. But since those are few and far between and you can kind of just roll your eyes at them, it’s not a problem worth complaining about overly much. Just enough to make note of it as out of place. It should be said that the vehicle minigames can be pretty annoying for different video game-y reasons, however: controls outside of the “Use X with Y” or clicking on a specific point on the screen can be a bit annoying, especially when you can crash a hot air balloon in the process.
The reason those moments do stick out, though, is because otherwise, Fate of Atlantis just nails the whole Indiana Jones vibe. The interactions between Jones and his rivals, the relationship, powered by sarcasm and wit on both sides, between Jones and a past romantic interest slash colleague, Sophia, the inclusion of Nazis to be punched. Jones being fooled by a guy interested in an ancient artifact even though said guy didn’t even try to hide the fact he was from Nazi Germany. What did you think was going to happen, Jones?! Then again, this is the same Indiana Jones who has a real hard time accepting the supernatural at first, even though everywhere he goes faces end up being melted by ancient artifacts or dying dads are healed by holy cups. Is it really that difficult to believe Sophia is a spirit medium, Indy?
Thanks to the fact you get your choice of dialogue options fairly regularly, it doesn’t have to be that difficult to believe! You can make Indy more Scully or more Mulder, depending on your own tastes. You can make his relationships with other characters more or less antagonistic, though, be warned that some characters probably aren’t going to divulge information if you decide to be rude about everything. The Nazis, though? Make fun of those dorks and threaten them all you like, they’re Nazis and you’re going to have to punch your way out of things, anyway.
It’s not just in the dialogue that Fate of Atlantis feels like it belongs in the Indiana Jones universe. Jetting around all over the world between big cities, dig sites, and ruins helps — you’re rarely in one place for very long, which makes you think of those travel montages in old movies taking place over maps while the characters perform actions while fading in and out of the background — and everything is pretty tightly told, all things considered. It can take longer to play Fate of Atlantis than it does to watch the original trilogy of movies, sure, but it doesn’t feel long: it’s paced appropriately for the format, with Indiana Jones as a concept ported to a different medium with clear expertise and understanding of the subject. The music is also a lovely touch — there are some scripted musical cues, of course, but oftentimes the game’s sound is reacting to what you’re doing on screen, which also helps push you along to keep trying or to do something new. It helps with the sense of satisfaction when you’ve achieved something or progressed somewhere, to hear the game playing your song, essentially.
While I mentioned it above, punching isn’t always the answer (unless we’re talking about Nazis) in Fate of Atlantis, as the game actually has three distinct paths, all based on the kind of play style you want to utilize. Fists, Wits, and Team, those are your options. They aren’t listed as such, but before Act 1 ends, you’ll get the option to choose how you want your experience to go — along with Sophia, as a team (or Team, as it were), by trying to outsmart everyone else looking for Atlantis by using that professor-sized brain of Indy’s (Wits), or by punching everyone until they give you what you need, be it access or information (Fists).
They’re all engaging in different ways. Fists obviously requires more fighting from you — there’s a fighting minigame, which is pretty easy to win so long as you don’t have to start stacking fistfights together. When you do, the somewhat clunky interface that has you clicking and pressing keys to block and punch will be far more noticeable, since failure to win a fight ends your game. Even Indiana Jones can only take so many punches to the head, you know. Wits has additional puzzle solving, or at least, more difficult puzzle and problem solving, since the ways to achieve your goals are more limited and you don’t have a built-in hint system alongside you. Team is fascinating for that reason, as it allows for far more dialogue — entertaining dialogue and productive dialogue, too — since both Indy and Sophia work together here, and you can even play as Sophia sometimes, depending on the situation.
The three paths diverge at the close of Act 1 after you’re introduced to a little bit of each in the game’s opening hours — it’s easy to miss the fight with the doorman because you decide to find another way into the theater that Sophia is performing her psychic act in, but otherwise, the puzzles and teamwork are there for you to experience — and then rejoin for Act 3, at the time you make your way to Atlantis. There, you’ll have no choice but to punch Nazis while also solving puzzles. Presumably this is where the people who think things like, “When did Rage Against the Machine get so political?” turn their PC off in disgust.
If you want to fully experience all Fate of Atlantis has to offer, you’re going to have to play it a lot. Not only are there the three different paths focused on completely different ways to play, but many of the game’s puzzles have multiple solutions. Your actions are graded through IQ points — which stands for “Indy Quotient” — and there are 1,000 of them to collect throughout the game. Figuring out the proper way to talk yourself into what you want with another character, without messing up in said conversation, can get you IQ points. One solution to a puzzle is worth X IQ points, another might be worth Y. Avoiding all combat on the Wits path will net you extra IQ points, as it takes using your head for more than taking punches to get out of a fight. Whether you want to mine Fate of Atlantis for all it’s worth is up to you, but if you do want to play again and again without having the same experience each time, you can.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis originally released in 1992 on MS-DOS, Amiga, and Mac platforms, but it’s seen quite a few ports in the ensuing decades, including as an unlockable extra on the Wii edition of Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, owing to that system’s infrared pointer on the Wii Remote. As of now, it’s on Steam for all of $5.99, and playable on Windows, Linux, and OS X. It still looks and sounds great, though, you’ll want to turn off the automatically enabled pixel smoothing in order to enjoy its visuals, and make sure you play in a smaller window, too, not stretched to full screen.
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