Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom – Multi Format Review (kind Of)

Where I grew up, we actually had two places where you could play arcade games. The young and happy AmigaGuru, as I was, absolutely loved these spots—we called them heaven. I’ve already written about the bigger one, Spilleloftet, before, and I’ll probably return to blogging about that place many times in the future as well.

Back in the golden days of arcade halls, my brother and I were regulars, and sometimes our youngest sister joined us, too. We were frequent visitors, spoiled in a way, because we didn’t just have one arcade nearby—we had two, both within a 20-minute walking distance from home.

Spilleloftet Looked Something Like This…

The bigger location, called Spilleloftet, mostly focused on arcade machines rather than pinball—at least in the beginning.

The owner of the place was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting men I’ve ever met (Yngve Olsen). By day, his full-time job was running the largest bakery in town. By evening, he transformed into the man behind the arcade hall, while also organising snooker and poker events (1986-1997 (IIRC).

A (then) young man in his twenties risking all he had to make a place for us to hang out.

He eventually expanded even further, placing arcade machines in the local shopping mall (1993-1998), opening another bakery (1996 – 2020), and finally launching a full-blown bowling alley (1999 – 2003). Naturally, that place also featured arcade machines, an internet café, and football events shown on a big-screen TV. Today, he’s selling pizzas, quite a lot too. 

Snekken Looked Something Like This…

The other arcade hall was called Snekken, and this one was completely different. It featured only pinball machines, and most of them were actually built by the owner himself. The crazy part?

He was already in his 60s when I started going there. His wife told me several times that he had been building all kinds of pinball-style machines for at least 20 years by then.

From what I can remember, this was before I got my Commodore 64, so my time at Snekken must have been somewhere between 1982 and 1983.

When Snekken sadly closed down in 1988. It was a real loss—not just of an arcade hall, but of a one-of-a-kind place driven purely by passion.

Swapping Out The Machines Was Like Christmas…

The reason I’m mentioning this in relation to the game I’m reviewing in this post is that Spilleloftet regularly rotated its less popular arcade machines—usually every two months, one cabinet at a time. More popular titles, such as OutRun, Wonder Boy, and various Taito cabinets, often stayed on the floor for up to a year.

That Unmistakeable Sound…

Then, one day, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom arrived. The cabinet had that unmistakable Atari coin-op sound—so loud that most of the other machines in the hall could barely be heard. As always, when a new game appeared, the queue in front of it was long. Very long.

Indy, Is That Really You…

I immediately recognised the theme song, as I had already seen both movies by then. You could hear incredible speech samples (very repetitive, but still impressive), mixed with occasional screeching sounds—and a lot of swearing from the people playing it.

Finally, after what felt like hours, it was my turn. A small crowd gathered behind me, as most people knew I was quite good at these kinds of games (lol—sorry for bragging). I was completely stunned by everything the game threw at me. The graphics were insane, the sound was overwhelming, and the gameplay felt absolutely out of this world.

State Of Art, What An Incredible Game…

Using the whip to defeat enemies and snakes, swinging across gaps, and freeing children locked in cages—it was all mind-blowing. I ran around the first stage completely absorbed. There were no maps, no hints that I could see, and at first I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Eventually, a guy standing next to me told me that once all the kids were freed, the next part would start.

And then it happened—I got to drive the mine cart.
Now, how cool is that?

Oh, It’s All Mine Cart…

Driving the mine cart was absolute madness. The speed made it incredibly hard to concentrate, and I naturally lost all my lives there. After a few attempts—no, continues—I finally managed to complete it, only to be greeted by a new and brutally difficult level filled with slides and other hazards. It took me a long time to get through that one.

I honestly don’t know if anyone ever beat this game in that arcade hall at the time—I certainly didn’t. I simply didn’t have the money to spend on continues. Like with all games back then, I always started from the beginning to get the most out of my hard-earned cash, earned by helping my family and from the paper route I had for years.

This was both the first and the last time I ever saw the game in an arcade hall.

Indy, Are You Sick…

Several years later (I first played the arcade version in 1985), a good friend of mine and I went to visit his cousin. He owned a Commodore 64 and had a surprisingly large collection of original tape games. Among them were a few titles I had never even heard of—one of them being Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

I got extremely excited and immediately asked if we could switch off what I think was Enduro Racer and load up the Indy game instead.

Double Dragon C64: Got One Thing Right, The Music.

This was just after I had bought Double Dragon, and with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom added to the mix, I completely lost faith in arcade-to-C64 ports. Two extremely bad games in a row—both of them deeply disappointing.

Honestly, at that point, I thought the C64 versions of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Double Dragon were so poor and borderline unplayable that they never should have been released in the first place.

Double Dragon On The Amiga Is Pretty Shit, But we Still Had Fun…

After that, I started looking for the Amiga version almost immediately—mostly because I actually sort of liked Double Dragon on the Amiga. I figured that if that worked, then the Amiga version of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom couldn’t possibly be that bad.

How wrong I was.
It was actually worse.

Oh, Indy My Friend, You Are Sick…

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on the Amiga is, to put it gently, a complete mess. It’s horribly slow, the controls are bad, it’s generally unplayable, and there’s no music during gameplay at all, just some annoying sounds. In my opinion, it’s a proper trainwreck.

Which makes it all the sadder, really—because the box is actually excellent. A proper, high-quality box. The kind you’d proudly put on display on a shelf. Something I rarely did with bad games.

Edit: Added 4 box shots of the Amiga version.

THE AMIGA BIG BOX IS THE TREASURE…

As you can see, the treasure indy is grabbing…could have been the game, as probably knew it was shite, anyways, cool idea, and gotta love the creativity by the box designers.

You know what?
I still have it on display, I probably always will, just like it’s been on display for nearly 40 years already.

Verdict…

There was something very special about that time, and it makes me a little sad to say it. That feeling of discovering a new game at the arcade, then running home—or straight to the nearest computer game shop—to hunt down a version of it for your computer or console… that’s something today’s generation will probably never fully understand.

Yes, most arcade ports rarely came close to the real thing, but we still loved them. It was never just about accuracy—it was about the chase. The idea that you could play the game at home, learn it, practice it, and then return to the arcade to smash someone else’s high score. That loop was pure magic.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Atari arcade games from that era, thanks to titles like 720°, APB, Star Wars, Marble Madness, Paperboy, Gauntlet, Road Blasters, Hard Drivin’, and Super Sprint, among many others.

Those games—and that era—left a mark that never really faded.

The Arcade Version…

The arcade version is a tricky one. Looking back at it now, it’s honestly not among the best games out there—but then again, it’s about as old as the Amiga 1000, and game design back then could be pretty rough

That said, it was a generally responsive game, and the overall presentation—cabinet included—made it incredibly exciting at the time.

There’s no denying that my retro, rose-tinted glasses play a part in the score I give it today.

Revisiting the game now through emulation is a very different experience.

Playing retro games today on a real arcade machine, though, is still a fantastic experience that easily makes the game far better thanks to all the memories flashing by while playing it.

The Commodore 64 Version…

The Commodore64 version is quite bad in terms of how the port is handled. The graphics and sound were miles behind what the machine was clearly capable of at the time. This game was released in 1988—after titles like The Last Ninja and so many other great-looking, hard-hitting games—so there’s really no excuse.

That said, there are a couple of positives. The game is fairly responsive, and the mine cart level is actually fun, unlike the two versions below.

Oh—and compared to the two versions that followed, this one is at least fun and playable.

The Amiga Version…

The Amiga version almost feels like it was made badly on purpose. I honestly struggle to find a single good thing to say about it—well, except for the box, which is excellent.

The graphics are horrible, the game is painfully slow and unresponsive, and the sound will most likely piss you off. Oddly enough, there isn’t even any music playing during the game at all.

I’ve got to say, if anyone has actually beaten this version without cheats or savestates, you have my full respect.

Oh—and before I forget: an Atari ST port exists too… and sadly, it’s very much cut from the same cloth… Read all about it below…

The Atari ST Version…

The ATARI ST version is a peculiar one. I have no idea how this version looks or plays on real hardware, but running it in emulators—both on Amiga and PC—it somehow manages to look and play even worse than the Amiga version. How that’s even possible is beyond me. This is an Atari arcade game being ported to an Atari computer, after all.

It’s dead slow—and by that, I mean utterly unplayable. The graphics do look a bit different, though, whether they’re better or worse is debatable. The music—yes, there is in-game music here, unlike the Amiga version—doesn’t help at all. In fact, it drags the whole experience down even further. Honestly, I’m almost thankful this music never made it into the Amiga version.

All things considered, this is easily the worst port of the game I’ve ever seen. A complete and total train wreck.

I sincerely hope you guys don’t feel like I’ve wasted your time walking through these truly awful ports.