☆ Door 8 - Christmas Retro Gaming Advent Calendar ☆ #Retrogaming #GamersUnite

Why I Love............

"Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis"
"Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis on the Commodore Amiga was my introduction to the amazing world of point n click.

This game opened my eyes to how awesome this genre of video game could be. The thing is if you have Indiana Jones in a Lucas Arts point n click video game then what could possibly go wrong? It was always going to be a sure fire winner but I just didn't expect just how great this game was going to be!

As a young Indy addict I knew that I absolutely had to own this game as soon as it came out. I bought the awesome 'BIG BOX' version for my Amiga 600 from HMV with my saved up pocket money and then I lost myself in what felt like an Indy movie.

It was thrilling for me to act out this interactive film as I attempted to solve puzzles and whip my way through the beautiful levels.

At the age of 12 1'm pretty sure that I wasn't actually that good at the puzzles but I just loved being in the game world.

The stand out moments for me within this game was the surveying equipment level where you have to line up the surveyors equipment with certain objects around the level. It was something that I'd never experienced before in a video game. It really made me work my grey matter as I struggled to work out the map that gave you the clues of where to line things up. When you do eventually line the correct items up then you are rewarded with a cool sequence that takes you to the next level.

The humour in the game was something that I hadn't experienced first hand prior to this game. I'd heard about Monkey Island but never owned it so I wasn't used to the Lucas Arts style of humour within their games. Obviously it wasn't laugh out loud funny like Secret Of Monkey Island but it captured the Indy humour and tone just perfectly.

The ghost scene was funny where from memory you had to pretend to be a ghost. I just found the whole thing so new to me, a game that really felt like it was me telling a story and being humorous at the same time. Just like a good Indiana Jones movie.

I didn't realise at the time but most of the backgrounds were actually mouse drawn in the legendary Amiga Paint Programme; Deluxe Paint.

Still to this day the game looks beautiful when I sift through the many online images to be found.

There was however,one thing that stopped my enjoyment of the game prematurely..........I got well and truly STUCK!

This was obviously the time before internet and the World Wide Web so when you got stuck you either asked a mate or prayed a game magazine would publish a walkthrough of some kind.

I didn't have access to either (to be clear I did have mates but none of them played the game) so I was hopelessly stuck.

I remember that I was stuck because I managed to crush one of the stone disks underneath a stone lift as I came down into a cavern. It was at this point that I couldn't work out what I had done wrong and I frantically tried to work out what I had to do next but after weeks of trying I got nowhere. So,embarrassingly I gave up.

Fast forward 20 odd years and at the age of 32 I managed to complete the game on my mobile as I played it through a SCUMM emulator.

It all came flooding back to me as I reached the same point and then I crushed the stone disk again!!!!!! But wait a minute it was all a part of the story!!!

As a 12 year old I thought I'd blown it but now as a thirty something t realised that it was actually meant to happen!

Of course I was armed to the teeth with a printed out walkthrough of the game from Gamespot so this time I wasn't going to get stuck, If I did get stuck I used the walkthrough as a last resort.

Completing the game after all those years was a therapeutic experience as the weight of time was lifted from my shoulders and Indy and I had conquered the Fate Of Atlantis in a truly remarkable adventure!

I had just as much fun second time around if not more and that is why I Love Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis!"