Do you like the Raiders of the Lost Ark game?

[T.A.P.]

I'm on the fence about actually hunting down a copy of it.

 

I had one as kid, but never actually played it because it was just the cartridge, and I didn't know you needed to have two controllers hooked up (so I just assumed the game was broken and went back to playing something else).

 

I've seen plenty of videos about it online, and it looks pretty... funky. It looks weird and confusing, but still kind of interesting, I guess?

 

Have you played it? Did you actually like it?

[eegad]

Got it as a kid when it first came out.  At the time I really liked it because it was so complicated and you had to figure almost everything out yourself. Plus, having to use both controllers to play it? Wow.  I finally won after a month or so of playing every day. But never got the highest possible score or found the Easter eggs.  The thing is though, even after getting back into Atari the past 10+ years, I've never played through it again....it's like I remember how much time was involved figuring it out, and I don't have the patience for it anymore.  ?

[TheDevil'sCompass]

Never had it as a kid, but a friend down the street did. He'd gone through the entire thing and figured it all out. After he had mastered it, he had me over one day and played through the entire game. I was amazed at the complexity and the length of the game. Really stood out as something special for the 2600 back then. We were also huge fans of the movie at the time. Not sure how it would hold up today.

[+Stephen Moss]

Have not played it for decades but quite liked it back hen, could never finish it though. I could never figure out and therefore progress beyond the robber? room.  

[+GoldLeader]

@eegad took my  answer! haha...

 

I bought it BITD,  I remember solving it once, maybe twice...But I don't remember playing it much after that.  I can recall very little about it now.  I bet I'd be very confused if I tried to play it.  Oh, also...True story;  When I put in the game for the very first time,  it glitched!  I saw some screen with something (thieves ?) going back and forth.  Nothing seemed right so I turned it off, and then read the instructions.  What is weird here is I usually would read the instructions before I played the game the first time,  even if I thought it would be easy to understand.  After reading the instructions I put the game back in and it started on a totally different screen!

[+Atari_Warlord]

It was fun to play a couple times.  Once you figure it out, it doesn't have much replay value.  If you're a fan of the movie, you should get it. 

[zzip]

15 hours ago, T.A.P. said:

I'm on the fence about actually hunting down a copy of it.

 

I had one as kid, but never actually played it because it was just the cartridge, and I didn't know you needed to have two controllers hooked up (so I just assumed the game was broken and went back to playing something else).

 

I've seen plenty of videos about it online, and it looks pretty... funky. It looks weird and confusing, but still kind of interesting, I guess?

 

Have you played it? Did you actually like it?

It's one of my favorite 2600 games.    I remember one summer my friends and I were playing every day trying to solve it, and we eventually did.   It's definately a game you will want to check out the manual for.   It's not very long but it explains a lot and gives some hints.

[zzip]

5 hours ago, Stephen Moss said:

Have not played it for decades but quite liked it back hen, could never finish it though. I could never figure out and therefore progress beyond the robber? room.  

If the robber room is the room I'm thinking of...  you were so close to finding something important that helps with the rest of the game.   Keep searching that room

[NE146]

I do have a lot of fond memories of the game.. the biggest being figuring out the whole map room thing on my own.

 

Most frustrating part of the game is the parachute section trying to get into that damn cave where if you miss you have to gather all the crap again.

[Chris+++]

I love it. I still play it on occasion, even though I know what to do to beat the game and find both Easter eggs.

Please keep the context in mind, though: I happen to love multi-screen adventure games and I don't mind using two joysticks.

I see the game belonging to the same handful of VCS titles as Adventure, Superman, E.T., Pitfall II, Riddle of the Sphinx, etc. It's just a type of game I'm really into.

Are you able to fire it up in Stella or Archive.Org and Try Before You Buy (TM)?

 

[keithbk]

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a great game. As a kid pre-internet, it drove me nuts attempting to defeat it, but I really liked it.

 

There are a variety of memories I have about it...

 

1) It took me forever to figure out how to get past the crazy person in the black market.

2) I hated waiting around in the map room for the spot to blink.

3) The parachute jump at the end was SO HARD, it bugged me that you could lose everything you were playing for with one badly timed leap.

4) The game felt "huge," even though it's not really all that big.

5) The game was unforgiving. If you forgot something, you were in trouble.

[Video]

Liked it as a kid, not so much now. Its inconvenient to need two controllers, and I never got the hang of v whip swinging or whatever. I always fall through the trees. I beat it once bitd, but its been forever. Its technically a great game and impressive, especially for 2600, I just prefer more actiony games. Even ET gets more play, mostly due to being simpler/smaller, and if you've read my posts on that, you know how I feel about that one lol.

 

As far as should you get it? Do you like adventure types, like adventure, et, superman, etc? If so its a great game of that type, if not, other than being more complex, this probably won't do anything for you.

Edited March 12, 2022 by Video

[suspicious_milk]

Raiders of The Lost Arc, Adventure, Haunted House, E.T. (yeah, that's right!), Superman, Secret Quest ...

 

Some of my favorites.  Hands down.   Absolutely love this style of game.

[cwilkson]

Raiders is an amazing game on the 2600.  It has great replay value before you solve it the first time.  After that, there are still some remaining secrets to discover and new ways to solve it for a better score.  Definitely get it!

 

The "robber" room is commonly the known as the Thieves Room.  Getting through it successfully leads to the Black market.  There is something in the Black market that you have to have to finish the game.

The Thieves Room is tough, but there is another way to reach the Black Market.

[Leonard Smith]

As a kid, I didn't understand the game.
Couldn't figure it out.  Put it back on the shelf.

Then one rainy weekend I dove into the instruction manual and then it was like a new world had opened up. 
Just like when I first the read the manuals for Asteroids and Berzerk and found out that there were awesome options programmed in (like shields instead of stupid hyperspace in Asteroids and the non-Evil Otto game variants in Berzerk).

Suddenly I fired up the game and at least had the basics down.  Granted it was still very obtuse and really required some imagination to appreciate, but reading the manual was an absolute must.  

[Zoyous]

I need to watch a playthrough of it to refresh my memory. I seem to recall finishing it, but not with the best possible result. I definitely played it a lot as a kid and it had a cool, mysterious atmosphere. Kind of like the later Swordquest games.

[Flojomojo]

It's inscrutable and weird. I guess there's some thrill for puzzle solvers and codebreakers, but that's not generally why I wanted to play Atari games. 

 

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (the arcade game by Atari Games), is more my speed. That's fun. 

[zzip]

41 minutes ago, Zoyous said:

a cool, mysterious atmosphere. Kind of like the later Swordquest games.

I went into Swordquest hoping for a similar experience like I had with Raiders,  but those games felt like an exercise in futility and annoying minigames.    I kept dropping random items into random rooms hoping something would happen.   Maybe I didn't read the manual or comics close enough.

 

42 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

It's inscrutable and weird. I guess there's some thrill for puzzle solvers and codebreakers, but that's not generally why I wanted to play Atari games. 

It's the kind of unexpected experience we didn't know we wanted until we got that game.   My friends and I spent a good part of a summer trying to solve Raiders.   I remember the elation when we figured out how the map room worked or the location of the black market.   But before that yeah, our expectations were that video games were strictly skill-based "get three lives and game over" affairs.

[schuwalker]

I posted on this before... this is one of my top tier games for the 2600.

 

Despite my fanfare here, it does have it's issues:

 

- Some items are sorta useless. Gun is redundant especially if you have the whip. Hourglass is basically has the same m.o. as the Ankh sans the instant mesa warp.

 

- Some areas/rooms are not used or incorporated enough. Spider room is the big one here. Sometimes I go outta my way just to visit this room. Valley of Poison is another area not well used. Especially true if you're good at parachuting.

 

*It's to note: I believe some of these might've been used for the infamous J.D. easter egg that was subsequently removed. My understanding no prototype carts have been found with this feature still included.

 

- The big one here (as mentioned above) is not accumulating the full amount of adventure points because of said removal. I would love if someone did a hack of this to accommodate the removal of points being key to reach the highest point total. 

 

There's a certain charm to this game because of the replay ability factor. I've seen countless videos on Youtube and each one has their own little twist on the order of rooms they visit and their inventory selection.

 

This video I have linked is probably the most thorough and fastest completion I've seen done.

 

 

 

 

[zzip]

On 4/3/2022 at 8:39 AM, schuwalker said:

Some items are sorta useless. Gun is redundant especially if you have the whip. Hourglass is basically has the same m.o. as the Ankh sans the instant mesa warp.

They are similar, but there are slight differences and trade offs.

 

The gun is more powerful and easier than the whip, but bullets are too limited to make it useful.

The hourglass can make short trips from the top of the mesa easier,  you can also disengage the hourglass without dropping it (unlike the ankh).   But the Ankh has a safety feature the hourglass doesn't-   if you miss your jump, you can avoid death with the ankh by pushing the button while falling to respawn.

 

On 4/3/2022 at 8:39 AM, schuwalker said:

- Some areas/rooms are not used or incorporated enough. Spider room is the big one here. Sometimes I go outta my way just to visit this room. Valley of Poison is another area not well used. Especially true if you're good at parachuting.

If you've ever used the "secret passage" in the lower room, then barriers will start closing that will force you to use the spider room to get to the temple.

 

Anyone new to the game that hasn't discovered all the secrets will probably leave the map room via parachute and have to walk through the Valley of Poison to get back to the Marketplace.   The Valley is a nasty place you don't really want to visit so I think it's fine as is :)

[Chris+++]

 

This has become quite a cool thread, regarding the details and intriguing idiosyncrasies of the game. For years, well up through the '90s at least, I figured that I was pretty much the only person on the planet who enjoyed ferreting out things like the minutiae of a 1982 adventure game.

For what it's worth, I wrote a ludicrously thorough "guide" through the game a few years back.

 

 

[+jeremiahjt]

On 4/4/2022 at 9:28 AM, zzip said:

The hourglass can make short trips from the top of the mesa easier,  you can also disengage the hourglass without dropping it (unlike the ankh).

Slightly old bump, but I have been playing Raiders of the Lost Ark lately and I cannot disengage the Hourglass without dropping it.  Whenever I try to move off the Hourglass in the inventory strip with the left controller nothing happens.  How do you disengage the Hourglass so you can keep it?

[zzip]

8 minutes ago, jeremiahjt said:

Slightly old bump, but I have been playing Raiders of the Lost Ark lately and I cannot disengage the Hourglass without dropping it.  Whenever I try to move off the Hourglass in the inventory strip with the left controller nothing happens.  How do you disengage the Hourglass so you can keep it?

You should be able to just select the item next to it and the grappling hook goes away

[+jeremiahjt]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

You should be able to just select the item next to it and the grappling hook goes away

I tried that and I could not move the dot off of the Hourglass.  I tried multiple times.

[+Mitch]

There are two different items that have similar uses. One is the grappling hook and the other is the anhk (sp?). I think the grappling hook you can use multiple times but the anhk you can only use once. Check the manual and see which item you are using.

 

Mitch