32. Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Atari 2600 1982

Raiders of the Lost Ark is quite a bit more ambitious than your typical based-on-a-Spielberg movie Atari game. It includes such mechanics as multiple weapons, buying things, exploration, and an inventory system that you use a second controller to navigate. They really tried to make something cool with this game. Unfortunately, Raiders is cursed by the same problem that has plagued so many Atari games: It is an Atari game.

I tried to play this game several times and each playthroughl followed the same basic pattern. I started on the “whip” screen. I collected the whip and avoided a snake, before moving on to the next screen.  On this screen, the “random shit” screen, I wandered around causing things to appear in my inventory magically.  Because the manual told me that they had different functions, I used the other joystick to try equipping the various items I had collected. Perhaps some of them do things, but I couldn't achieve any positive results. While fiddling with the other controller, a snake appeared and killed me. 

In order to avoid further snake related deaths, I ventured onto the next screen. This is the “tree branch” screen, and you sort of fall through this one. Despite it being painfully obvious that I’m supposed to use the whip to snag the tree branch and swing into what I assume to be a cave, I think the programmers may have forgotten the part about making that possible to do.   I could not snag that branch.

So, I fall through that screen and land in the “get robbed, then killed” screen. On this screen some dude takes my stuff and then kills me. Consistently. In multiple attempts, I just can not kill this guy, despite landing on the screen with a pistol, a whip, and a hand grenade.  Maybe the programmers forgot to make him killable. 

To fulfill the obligations of the license, all this game needed was a screen of running from a goddamn big boulder and a screen of hitting Nazis with a whip. And maybe a screen with a monkey. Instead, the game designer chose to  make an overcomplicated, unplayable mess of a game.  I applaud the ambition, but not the game.