Despite the recent release of Dial of Destiny, we’re sorely lacking a new Indiana Jones game.

With Bethesda and MachineGames new take seemingly years away, fortunately Antstream lets us look back at great Indy games of the past, including the oft-forgotten Greatest Adventures platformer on the SNES.

Introducing a new weekly column where we select a retro game of the week from Antstream Arcade and take a closer look at it. Played on an Xbox Series X.

What is this and when did it release?

Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures ended up as a SNES exclusive, developed by Factor 5, releasing October 1994. It followed recent successes of Super Star Wars and Super The Empire Strikes Back and launched in the same year as Super Return of the Jedi. Interestingly, a Mega Drive version was 100% complete and ready to ship but due its completion at the end of the hardware’s life cycle and U.S Gold ceasing operations, the project was canned.

The format was identical to the Super Star Wars games, converting all three of Indie’s adventures (at the time) into platformers – Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade.

There’s a whopping 28 levels (areas) to get through and the only way to play content from Temple of Doom or Last Crusade is by getting through the early Raiders of the Lost Ark levels. Which is no easy feat as this game is rock-solid!

Why this game?

With Antstream launching on Xbox this past week, I had a difficult decision on which game to play first. Let me tell you, I’ve rarely had to make a tougher call this year!

There’s such a treasure trove of classics on there, games I haven’t played or even thought about in years, but this one ended up sticking out. Most likely because it’s one of the few licensed games on there.

Also, I recently played the Super Star Wars re-release on PS5 and it got me thinking about this gem, especially with the release of the new film. I guess part of me subconsciously wondered why Lucasfilm didn’t do an updated port of this to celebrate the release of the final film. Especially with the Wii re-release in 2009.

And let’s face it, you can’t beat the feel of a classic platformer on a controller. I guess the stars just aligned on this one a bit.

So tell me about it.

So the release of this one is interesting. Up to its launch, the Indy games had been more focused on the point and click genre – both of those games are also on Antstream, by the way. But I guess the success of Super Star Wars, the desire to get the franchise on consoles, and the action-oriented nature of Indy just warranted doing something a bit different.

What we have is a game that does a really good job of taking you through the film’s classic scenes, from flying a plane to descending down a shaft in a mine cart, all of it broken up by static cutscenes that mirror what you see in the films.

It’s a typical platformer, but has a few interesting choices. For one, Indy has to actually collect a whip so by default uses his fists. He also throws grenades (which is, a choice) and the difficulty is unrelenting, even on easy.

You can use your whip to swing across ledges, which helps with traversal and provides some fun spots to get bonus points and collectibles. There’s also a wonderful, representative visual style about the game and its varied sections, with a slick UI that looks the part and the iconic theme playing in the background.

The use of save states on Antstream is going to make this one a lot more interesting and enjoyable for people and it’s a game that’s aged fairly well compared to others on the platform.

If you’re like me, getting the itch to play something Indiana Jones themed after Dial of Destiny, this might just do the trick.

We’ll be back next week with another spotlighted game on Antstream Arcade