Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure is a graphical adventure game, originally released in 1989 (to coincide with the release of the film of the same name), published by Lucasfilm Games (now LucasArts). It was the third game to use the SCUMM engine.

Plot
The plot closely follows, and expands upon, the film of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. As the game begins, Indiana Jones has returned to his college, after reclaiming the Cross of Coronado. He is approached by businessman Walter Donovan, who tells him about the Holy Grail, and of the disappearance of Indy's father.

Indy then travels to some of the places seen in the movie, such as Venice and the catacombs, after meeting fellow archeologist Elsa Schneider. In the process he finds his father held captive in the Brunwald Castle, after passing through the mazelike corridors, fighting and avoiding guards. Then Elsa's double role is revealed when she steals the Grail Diary from Indy. After escaping, father and son pass through Berlin to reclaim the Diary and have a brief meeting with Hitler. Then they reach an airport, from where they intend to seek the Valley of the Crescent Moon, by Zeppelin or biplane. There are many action scenes, involving fists, and the biplane sequence above Europe, pursued by Nazi planes.

Several key elements of the movie&mdash;such as the Brotherhood of the Grail, Indy's friend Sallah, the Venice water chase scene and the desert battle (except for a small hidden reference)&mdash;were not included in the game.

Technical details
Last Crusade was one of the most innovative of the LucasArts adventures. It expanded on LucasArts' traditional adventure game structure by including a flexible point system - the IQ score, or "Indy Quotient" - and by allowing the game to be completed in several different ways. The point system was similar to that of Sierra's adventure games, however when the game was restarted or restored, the total IQ of your previous game was retained. The only way to reach the maximum IQ of 800 was by finding alternative solutions to puzzles, such as fighting a guard instead of avoiding him. This countered one common criticism of adventures games, whereby since there is only one way to finish the game, they have no replay value. Some of the alternative fights, such as the one with the Zeppelin attendant, were very difficult to pass, so the maximum IQ was very difficult to acquire.

The DOS version of the game was originally released with EGA graphics. It was later updated with VGA graphics and a digital soundtrack for the Japanese FM Towns PC. The final version of the game was released for DOS. It used the FM Towns' version's 256 colour graphics and the EGA version's MIDI music. The project was led by Ron Gilbert, David Fox and Noah Falstein.

A replica of Henry Jones' Grail diary was included with earlier versions of the game. While very different from the film's version, it provided a collection of background information of Indy's youth and Henry's life, as well as copy protection codes. Later versions of the game came with a much shorter version of the Grail diary which contained only copy protection codes and basic instructions. The diary gave Indy's mother's name as Mary, which was contradicted by subsequent canon.

Last Crusade was also the first Lucasfilm game to include the verbs Look and Talk. In several situations, the latter would begin a primitive dialogue system in which the player could choose one of several lines to say. The system was fully evolved in The Secret of Monkey Island and remained in all later LucasArts adventures, with the exception of Loom.

Reception
UK magazine C&VG gave the PC version a score of 91 %, praising the graphics, sound and playability and calling it "a brilliant film tie-in and a superlative game in its own right".

Sequels
One final Indiana Jones graphic adventure, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, was released in 1992.