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First, a word of explanation: The third Indiana Jones movie was so successful that Lucasfilm released two completely different games based on it. One (this one) was an action game, and the other was an adventure game built around LucasArts' excellent SCUMM™ engine (as used in Secret of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and many other games). Magazines of the era distinguished between the two games by referring to one as "Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade - Action" and the other as "Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade - Adventure".

With that out of the way, it needs to be said that the action game is a very good game indeed. If forced to pick its bad points, I would gripe that Indy could do with one or two more frames in his walking, and the scrolling is quite coarse (eight pixels at a time, I'd guess), but these are minor niggles. It's a great arcade adventure with lots of variety in the graphics, and it follows the movie plot very well.

Each level starts with a digitized frame from the appropriate section of the movie (see top screenshot). These don't appear very impressive to the modern eye, but they exploit the ST's graphics capabilities as well as can be expected. The frame shown is from the very start of the movie, where a young Indy in his Boy Scout uniform is escaping (with the Cross of Coronado) from a gang of thieves. The lower screenshot is from level 1. In this level you need to negotiate a side-on maze of tunnels, avoiding thugs (or beating them with your whip). You need to find the Cross of Coronado and take it to the next level (walking along on top of a train) - the exit to the next level is somewhere in the upper right corner of the map, if I recall correctly. It's quite complicated to get around; you won't complete this game in a day. There are ropes to be climbed, thugs to avoid, collapsing floors to be run over, and rocks falling from the ceiling. There is also a time limit, which in this level is ingeniously imposed by a torch burning low. As the torch burns lower, the whole play area gets darker and darker; when everything gets totally black, you lose a life. It's a very nice touch.

Verdict: Enjoyable arcade adventure with excellent graphics, particularly the digitized Harrison Ford shots. Get this one.

Ratings (five stars = maximum)
Graphics	Sound/Music	Gameplay	Overall
*****	*****	*****	*****