In: Culture

Published on 12 July 2012

By James

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is an awesome point-and-click adventure game by LucasArts originally released in 1992. Almost a year later, it was reissued on CD-ROM as an enhanced "talkie" edition with full voice acting and digitized sound effects. In 2009, this version was also released as an unlockable extra of the Wii action game Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, and as a digitally distributed Steam title. I spent countless hours playing this game as a child. Alas, I never beat it.

The story of Fate of Atlantis is set in 1939, on the eve of World War II. At the request of a visitor named Mr. Smith, archaeology professor and adventurer Indiana Jones tries to find a small statue in the archives of his workplace Barnett College. After Indiana retrieved the horned figurine, Smith uses a key to open it, revealing a sparkling metal bead inside. Smith then pulls out a gun and escapes with the two artifacts, but he loses his coat in the process. The identity card inside reveals "Smith" to be Klaus Kerner, an agent of the Third Reich. Another pocket of the coat holds an old magazine containing an article about an expedition on which Indiana collaborated with Sophia Hapgood, who has since given up archeology to become a psychic. Fearing that she might be Kerner's next target, Indiana travels to New York in order to warn her and to find out more about the mysterious statue. There, he interrupts her lecture on the culture and downfall of Atlantis, and the two return to Sophia's apartment. They discover that Kerner ransacked her office in search of Atlantean artifacts, but Sophia says that she keeps her most valuable item, her necklace, with her. She owns another of the shiny beads, now identified as the mystical metal orichalcum, and places it in the medallion's mouth, invoking the spirit of the Atlantean god Nur-Ab-Sal. She explains that a Nazi scientist called Dr. Hans Ubermann is searching for the power of Atlantis to use it as an energy source for warfare. This begins their adventure!

The game met with critical acclaim, and it sold one million units across all platforms on which it was released. Reviewers from Game Informer, Computer Game Review, Games Magazine and Game Players Magazine named it the best adventure game of the year, and it was later labeled a "classic" by IGN. Check out some of the highlights from the game.