m0zart's Review of Raiders of the Lost Ark

A Hint at Action Adventure Games to Come

User Rating: 7.5 | Raiders of the Lost Ark 2600

By m0zart | Review Date: January 16, 2008

Early video games were based on simple concepts. Pong was a smash success not because it was a complex in-depth game, but because it was simple. We were dealing with a time when games on a television set was in itself such a new concept that levels of complexity were almost entirely unnecessary. Yet when videogames started being made from movie titles, that focus changed. While the Atari 2600 was a great system for simple concept games, it wasn't really good for acting out the action in an adventure movie. Today, videogame graphics and computer-generated movie graphics have almost coincided, but in these "old school" days of videogaming, the difference between movie special effects and videogame console effects were staggering. Yet out of all of this came one of the best Atari titles available, one that was based on an extremely successful movie. That game was "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and it introduced many gaming concepts that we still see today.

The purpose of the game is similar to the purpose of the movie... you must find the lost Ark of the Covenant. What keeps you from the Ark is a lot of platforming-type puzzles and a few villains. To solve these puzzles or vanquish these villains, you will be experimenting with items you gather along the way in your inventory, each necessary to solve a given puzzle. One of the difficulties of course is that you use one controller to control the Indiana Jones character in the game, and a second controller to manage your inventory. That aspect of gameplay seems too complex for a game of this sort, but then I also wonder how else it could be done on a system like the Atari 2600. Given the single joystick and single button available on the system, anything like item management couldn't have been accomplished without another controller. "E.T. The Extra Terrestrial", also on the Atari 2600, did it by treating the single available button as a context-sensitive button, but that really doesn't fit when the solving of the puzzles requires a choice of items from a list. Overall, I think the developer did a fantastic job at making this setup work on a system that was never made to support that level of complexity.

Graphics are just terrible on this game. Nothing really looks right. Its not always clear what the items in the inventory even are, let alone why they solve a given puzzle, but its well-done enough that its not terribly difficult to finish the game. Villains in the game are so poorly done that you might not realize what they represent from the original movie, if anything. Still, they are obviously villains, and so the game itself doesn't suffer from the poor artwork. Sound is somewhat better. The movie theme is recognizable, but you only actually hear it at the beginning of the game and at the end when you find the Ark. The rest is devoid of music, but not of the typical sound effects.

Looking back at the Atari phenomenon in the late-70s and early-80s, its clear that this title acted as a catalyst for adventure platforming conventions for years to come, and was one of the more fun and fitting Atari 2600 games overall. I highly recommend it to old school gamers who haven't yet given it a try. It represents a major step forward in gameplay, perhaps well before there was a system available to support such changes. For that, I tip my hat to the developer.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

A Hint at Action Adventure Games to Come

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