The creator of this game is now a psychotherapist - he's trying to help all the people with PTSD caused by trying to figure this game out when they were 8 years old.
I was like 9 years old, and sunk so, so, SO many hours into this game, just trying to grasp the freaking mechanics of it. My older brothers were better at it, and watching them helped me a little, but man....Watching this unlocked a flood of recognition, all the screens, all the sounds, but it was frankly amazing to see it all unfold in under ten minutes.
I remember trying to play this game and thought it was so dumb until I read the manual and it helped out...was such a great moment when I beat it my family thought I was a genius and took a Polaroid pic lol
Your story gave me goosebumps when I got to the end and you brought back my memories of the Polaroid camera. Great Times man and I loved this game as a little kid in the 80s.
This has been one of my favourite games to play on the Atari 2600. I liked the puzzle solving, the complex gameplay and I didn't mind the trial and error due to it being pretty short. Read the instruction manual and this game is beatable.
Both games are just fine if you have the instruction manuals, if not, well then they are difficult to just "figure out" I think both games are good games for the system from a creative standpoint. Hard and cryptic yes, some poor hit detection in ET, sure, but both a puzzle solving games ahead of their time I think.
Nunya bizness I think everyone who gives ET a bad rap has never actually played it. Especially never played it back when it was new. I got it for xmas that year and loved it as it was one of few (this one included) that you could actually beat. ET is actually quite a good 2600 game for the time. Never could figure out how to beat Ark, but watching this video, I think I got close...
I believe, too, that a lot of the contemporary hatred for ET really comes from the younger gamers and the critics that probably never actually played it. I think that the AVGN has really had a hand in swaying a lot of this modern feeling. As a long-running and popular RUclips game reviewer his thoughts and opinions about whatever games have carried a great impressionable weight. After one of his videos goes up about a particular game or otherwise, views of related videos about it increase dramatically. One of his longest-running gags was that he would never review ET because it was "so bad", and people watching him bought into it as truth. There were much-worse Atari 2600 games out there then this one, but ET was his chosen target for comedic purposes though.
I had both ET and this game as a kid. ET was so much more fun. I could actually beat ET. Raiders was just so frustrating. I think I got stuck, because I didn't know you had to wait for the sun to come up in the map room. (Either that or I didn't know you were supposed to jump off at the right spot afterward. Can't remember which.)
Never could figure this game out. When I FINALLY figured out how to get to the black market area I felt like I’ve accomplished a LOT. The Mesa part was the most confusing ever.
Once I got to the room where you dig, I panicked and didn't delete my parachute fast enough and one of those running dudes touched me and took my shovel. ***rage
I didn't know you were supposed to dig on that dirt pile on the bottom, so didn't win it as a kid. I don't think there are any dirt piles or other places to dig for practice.
@@sandal_thong8631 In fairness it didn't look anything like a dirt pile. There was nothing to indicate we should dig there. Everything was so crazy random.
@@dewey70 Yeah, a normal game would have had other places to dig to practice and to give you stuff. And why have a game with grenades and bullets if you're not supposed to use them? I can understand if they were to set them up as a "cheat," so you'd win easier and then you could go back and win a game without them. But as is, it's like being punished if you use the sword to kill a dragon in Adventure.
This so awesome ! I always thought I had to bribe the regular market person with coins to enter the “black market” but you simply got there after the sun rose and you made your way through the thieves .
I remember when I was little kid in the 80s figuring this game out with my friends. Always fun beating this game once you learned how. Loved parachuting into the Well of Souls.
Similar to my experience. I borrowed this game from a friend after he had figured it out and also got help from my cousin. Someone definitely spent a lot of time with the instruction book.
This is mind blowing. It has literally been 41 years ago almost to the day that I got this for Christmas. I couldn’t figure it out for months but once a friend gave me some pointers, I found the ark quite a few times. I loved the problem solving and the challenge. I kept the game on while in school until the sun lined up 😂😂
@@Anubis22774 but THIS didn't exist back then. The solution was published some time after release in I think Atari Age magazine. Also there were sometimes hints in a comic book which came with the game. But yes without the walkthru in Atari Age, I would never have gotten it.
The parachute under the branch was a major pain and if you didn't get in the cave you had to repeat everything from the beginning to get back there...but I won the game which was the first video game I every completed. Only took 2 years on and off of playing, asking around from other people and many frustrating attempts to finish.
Remember when I finally figured this game out & then I'd play it over & over, trying to do it faster each time. Wish I had timed myself. Loved this game, because it was the first game I remember where you had to figure shit out.
At like 10 for christmas got this game ,from cover thought it would be best game ever ,NOT ,think i made it to black market but learned lesson to this day ,dont believe what you see on tv
I remember hiring this game, did it blow our minds. We nearly went insane trying to solving it. Up all night with a friend plying it. We had to take it back the following day, unfinished. We later bought a game cartridge. Time moved on, we never finish it. Our Atari 2600 has long since gone. Pity really, this was a forerunner to many puzzle solving games of today. For old times sake, I'd love to play this game again.
With the Ankh, you don't need to go all the way to the mesa field. Wherever you are, hold the Ankh, press the joystick button that uses (not drops) an item, and you will be transported there.
Interestingly enough, I won this game when I was a kid and didn't even realize that I had won it because it never said "the end". You never actually touch the Ark either.
Same here!!! I got this game when I was 8 years old and me and my neighborhood friends and siblings tried to play it without reading the manual and had no idea what was going on. Usually you could easily figure out games back then. I then read the manual by myself and understood what I was supposed to do, but still didn't get why. I also recall that the manual said if you got the Ark you would rise up on a pedestal to meet it at the end. However, my Indy didn't rise up that far, so I also didn't think I'd won. The first time I found the Ark my friend Chris and I just stared in surprise that the game just ended after I dug through that dirt pile. He said, "I think you missed some step somewhere in the game so at the end when you dug through that dirt you fell through a hole in the ground and died." It made as much sense as anything in that game and I thought he was right. Took me a while to realize I'd actually solved the game without knowing it. Evidently how high your pedestal rises up towards the Ark is supposed to indicate how many points you got out of the maximum possible. Who knew? E.T. has the rep as the worst video game ever, but Raiders was designed by the same guy, was also based on a Spielberg blockbuster, and I think has more confusing game play. Worst video game I ever owned.
Like the Angry Video Game Nerd said, it would probably be easier to find the actual Ark in real life. Well done. I played this game countless times before seeing the movie. I can honestly say this game spoiled nothing. I kept waiting for certain things from the game to happen. Considering I never made it as far as the map room, pretty much nothing I saw in this game happened in the movie.
I remember coming home from work in 1985 . my 6 year old Son would be waiting at the door , saying come on and play The Raiders game . He is now 43 years old and plays games on his computer , just military online games. I did finish the Raiders for him ,
U had to wait more than 2 minutes for the sun to come out!!! Whatta pain!! I recall playing this w/ my brother, him holding the right joystick, while I controlled Indy.
Cool video. I don't know how I figured this shit out as a kid. I never beat this game, but I did get to the last screen a couple times, but I'd always die and have to start over and be too frustrated.
Got the game at Christmas the year it came out. Beat it by new year's. 36 years after. Got a bunch of ColecoVision games to tackle, if you'll excuse me.
hahaha. Thankyou very much, Warshaw and James Kelly!! (playing Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -> looking for Sankara Stones -> I'm not playing the first Indiana -> I would like -> I can't understand xD)
I don’t know how but me & a friend of mine back in ‘83 would be on the phone as we were both playing & we figured it out! Was like winning the lottery!
I still remember how hard this game was. Busting your hump to figure out every puzzle only to die and have to start over. That parachute at the end wasnt easy either, needing to aim it just right to catch on the branch. i remember beating it and never wanted to put myself through it again
Nice vid man! I was jacking around in the kitchen, doing chores, and this movie was on TV. It reminded me of my childhood and actually figuring out how to beat this game as a kid, hard as shit! I was maybe 6 years old (around 1985) but an Atari addict. The most memorable part was that parachute jump. I mean, you took all that time (for Atari) to get that far and if you messed that up..... bummer. Anyway, thanks for the playthrough, back to chores.
I don't think I discovered anything by myself. Everything I found was in the manual as a kid, or when I was an adult: on the internet. I almost finished it as a kid, but didn't know how to dig on the pile. Was there anywhere else to use the shovel? Also, it hinted there was a Yar near the middle mesa, but I didn't find it, or the initials.
That's so sad. I never asked if I could return Atari games, but I would have done those three. I think at Zayre kids were using the store as a rental, buying then exchanging 3rd-party games like Imagic. Because there was a bin of game boxes that were taped back together. Though none of my friends ever said they did that.
ATARI 2600 RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK GAME... ONLY TIME I EVER SHOPLIFTED...was booklet instructions to this game (we lost ours) from NEWBURYS, Torrance Ca. I employed my younger by 3 years cousin Diana in my crime as lookout while I the master criminal age 11 fumbled opening the box and swiftly placed the sacred document into my pocket. Then with the elegance of an elephant in a peanut factory and swiftness of a DOG Burglar sealed the cardboard container WITH game cartridge still present ..(we only need the instructions) .. and somehow made it out of there with Newbury Employees.. (MORE IMPORTANTLY our Grandmother).. none the wiser.
They said this sold over a million copies. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is considered the one which people returned out of disappointment and frustration, but I have to think this one was returned too. And of course Swordquest: Earthworld was probably the worst, though the few people who understood it had to pretend they loved it to compete in the contest.
Not sure how you could figure out how to go right without falling without hints. Then you'd need another hint to show that time was passing and you had to wait for the sunrise.
@@silverwings21 Oh, I never knew I needed a 2nd controller for that game. But because I don't have the console, which keyboard button to activate the 2nd controller ?
Man is this game obtuse as all hell. As kids, a lot of the times we traded our cartridges around with friends, and rarely had the instructions. Wasn't until years later that I knew you even used the 2nd controller. Ambitious, but wow, thick as pea soup fog.
How about one of those few games where you had to switch the lever from color to B/W to do something? I think they didn't even have those switches in the late '80s models.
The fact that you need to controllers to play this game, goes to show that, whoever made this game tried to make the most of what Was Invented At The Time.
Serious question...After weeks of game play on this back in the day, my friends and I finally "beat" this game. However, it still bugs me all these years later that although we "beat" the game, we never did so with the elevated Indiana Jones at the end at full elevation. What else did you have to do besides find the Ark to get a 100% completion?
+Robert Fobian As far as I know you can't get to the top and touch the Ark. I believe when I get the HSW2 initials at the end of the video, that's the highest you go. Points are earned by succeeding in certain tasks, and are taken away when you fail. I believe there are 82 points total in the game. I don't have the list on me that tells you: doing what, gets you how many points.
I was playing Indiana Jones and the emperors tomb and my dad wanted to try. After like 10 minutes he said he would be right back and he brought his old Atari 2600 and this game and told me to give it a shot I sat there for like a hour having no idea how to play and my dad laughing at me and I felt like a dumbass and I gave the controller to him and he beat the game flawlessly.
Yeah, he probably used all the hints in the manual, then sent away to Atari for the complete walkthrough before he beat it. Or just looked it up online when he was grown. The scoring system is so obscure (counting dots in the pedestal) that it's not a good way of showing you've progressed even for those attempting this without the manual.
@@silverwings21 I just mean that the developers made a game that is impossible to intuitively play. You literally need an instruction manual to even understand what anything is or what’s happening.
Of-course if Indy (you) happens to miss with his grappling hook while upon the mesa he falls into the bog (a green mesa) where he is promptly chased by the black sheikh. Has anyone ever heard that if you are armed with the pistol that you can shoot him dead? I remember hearing somewhere that you could do that but I never tried it myself as I was always just too concerned with getting away from him as a kid and keeping him from stealing all my stuff. I am just merely curious whether or not that was true since I never seen that happen. Otherwise, "Raiders" here for the 2600 was a rather complex game for that system in its moment that required some inventiveness and imagination and some non-linear thought to be played successfully. It was certainly different from other games like, say, "Beserk", that were more straightforward A = B affairs. But hey, I enjoyed them games too so no complaints!
You could use the gun and the whip to make the robbers flee in the other direction. I don't think anything affected the guy in the bog area though. I think I even tried the extra grenade I got from the black market on that guy once. Nothing...
The black guy in the "Valley of Poison" was believed to be Arnold Toht (the Gestapo agent from the movie). He also had a gun and a shot could kill you. If he touched you, he would steal your items one at a time; however, if you managed to shoot him, he would flee and you'd get all your stuff back (an almost impossible thing to do with those tse tse flies paralyzing you all the time).
+Dan East I did an annotation commentary that explained everything, but not too long ago RUclips got rid of them on all videos. I did screencapture the video with all the annotations. I just haven't uploaded it yet.
@@silverwings21 :( Well I wasn't dissing on your video, but mainly referring to the game itself. It was one of the games I somehow never got around to owning / playing on the 2600, so it's totally foreign to me. And doesn't make sense to watch.
@@daneast Yeah, it's one of the more complex games for the 2600, usually 2600 games are just a single screen, where the object is just getting the high score. Here you definitely need the manual to know what's going on, same for the other Howard Scott Warshaw game, E.T.
Both this and ET get bad wraps from people who I'm sure we not around to play them back then. Playing thien is a totally different experience. One of the first games with a story of sorts , with multiple rooms , with a goal to reach "ending" instead of just points. That alone made it amazing to me , both games. And although they were hard the were not unplayable as today's reviewers make it seem. All you had to do was read the manual! Imagine that.
They should have made them action games, with E.T. being a bicycle game like Paperboy and Raiders being a horse chasing a truck game like Wild Western chases the train.
I find it weird that at no point do you ever need to go to the Valley of Poison, which is probably the most interesting place in the game for me. The black figure (Called the black cloaked Thief in the manual) is always speculated to be Toht which I believe, so it's odd that such a strong direct tie to the movie is completely pointless to the game's plot.
Ah. I remember reading how to beat this game in some video game magazine years ago and thinking to my 13 year old self, "How in the world would anyone know to do all that?". On the other hand, if it was plain as day on what you had to do, you could finish the game less than 30 minutes after you got it, which would feel like a rip-off. Ah, good times though. Ever play "Dragonstomper" on the Arcadia Supercharger? That one blew my mind as a kid. I believe it is credited as being the first RPG. JW3HH
For all the confusion and graphics that left you wondering what things were, I immediately knew what the medallion was. How to use it, on the other hand, required outside help.
@@silverwings21 Ah. Explains. Atari had only 6 weeks to do ET. Revelation finding out after 2 and a half decades WHY that game i played was so BAD haha.
The creator of this game is now a psychotherapist - he's trying to help all the people with PTSD caused by trying to figure this game out when they were 8 years old.
Lol
Ha ha this made me laugh! Yes I remember those hours and DAYS trying to figure this game out.
That damn tree limb is what screwed me up for the longest time until my buddy’s cousin showed us.
Yes it was crazy, very frustrating experience!
I'm here 35 years later trying to figure it out
This is a good reminder of how fast gaming evolved in the 80's. The Legend of Zelda was released just four years after this thing.
It's been 40 years and I had anxiety just watching this! Never could figure it out!
I was like 9 years old, and sunk so, so, SO many hours into this game, just trying to grasp the freaking mechanics of it. My older brothers were better at it, and watching them helped me a little, but man....Watching this unlocked a flood of recognition, all the screens, all the sounds, but it was frankly amazing to see it all unfold in under ten minutes.
I remember trying to play this game and thought it was so dumb until I read the manual and it helped out...was such a great moment when I beat it my family thought I was a genius and took a Polaroid pic lol
Your story gave me goosebumps when I got to the end and you brought back my memories of the Polaroid camera.
Great Times man and I loved this game as a little kid in the 80s.
Game was like living in Chicago either you get robbed or killed, or both.
This has been one of my favourite games to play on the Atari 2600. I liked the puzzle solving, the complex gameplay and I didn't mind the trial and error due to it being pretty short. Read the instruction manual and this game is beatable.
I came for the solution, but I stayed for the flute solo.
Why does ET get such a bad rap when this game is nearly impossible to understand?
Both games are just fine if you have the instruction manuals, if not, well then they are difficult to just "figure out" I think both games are good games for the system from a creative standpoint. Hard and cryptic yes, some poor hit detection in ET, sure, but both a puzzle solving games ahead of their time I think.
Nunya bizness I think everyone who gives ET a bad rap has never actually played it. Especially never played it back when it was new. I got it for xmas that year and loved it as it was one of few (this one included) that you could actually beat. ET is actually quite a good 2600 game for the time. Never could figure out how to beat Ark, but watching this video, I think I got close...
I believe, too, that a lot of the contemporary hatred for ET really comes from the younger gamers and the critics that probably never actually played it. I think that the AVGN has really had a hand in swaying a lot of this modern feeling. As a long-running and popular RUclips game reviewer his thoughts and opinions about whatever games have carried a great impressionable weight. After one of his videos goes up about a particular game or otherwise, views of related videos about it increase dramatically. One of his longest-running gags was that he would never review ET because it was "so bad", and people watching him bought into it as truth. There were much-worse Atari 2600 games out there then this one, but ET was his chosen target for comedic purposes though.
I had both ET and this game as a kid. ET was so much more fun. I could actually beat ET. Raiders was just so frustrating. I think I got stuck, because I didn't know you had to wait for the sun to come up in the map room. (Either that or I didn't know you were supposed to jump off at the right spot afterward. Can't remember which.)
@@thejunkman I beat ET lots with no manual. I was 5
Howard Scott Warshaw should be in the video game designers hall of fame in my opinion
Never could figure this game out. When I FINALLY figured out how to get to the black market area I felt like I’ve accomplished a LOT. The Mesa part was the most confusing ever.
Once I got to the room where you dig, I panicked and didn't delete my parachute fast enough and one of those running dudes touched me and took my shovel. ***rage
I didn't know you were supposed to dig on that dirt pile on the bottom, so didn't win it as a kid. I don't think there are any dirt piles or other places to dig for practice.
@@sandal_thong8631 In fairness it didn't look anything like a dirt pile. There was nothing to indicate we should dig there. Everything was so crazy random.
@@dewey70 Yeah, a normal game would have had other places to dig to practice and to give you stuff.
And why have a game with grenades and bullets if you're not supposed to use them? I can understand if they were to set them up as a "cheat," so you'd win easier and then you could go back and win a game without them. But as is, it's like being punished if you use the sword to kill a dragon in Adventure.
This so awesome ! I always thought I had to bribe the regular market person with coins to enter the “black market” but you simply got there after the sun rose and you made your way through the thieves .
I remember when I was little kid in the 80s figuring this game out with my friends.
Always fun beating this game once you learned how.
Loved parachuting into the Well of Souls.
Similar to my experience. I borrowed this game from a friend after he had figured it out and also got help from my cousin. Someone definitely spent a lot of time with the instruction book.
This is mind blowing. It has literally been 41 years ago almost to the day that I got this for Christmas. I couldn’t figure it out for months but once a friend gave me some pointers, I found the ark quite a few times. I loved the problem solving and the challenge. I kept the game on while in school until the sun lined up 😂😂
I really don't mind the graphics or sound- but how in the f did they expect us to figure any of this out??!
THIS
@@Anubis22774 but THIS didn't exist back then. The solution was published some time after release in I think Atari Age magazine. Also there were sometimes hints in a comic book which came with the game. But yes without the walkthru in Atari Age, I would never have gotten it.
The parachute under the branch was a major pain and if you didn't get in the cave you had to repeat everything from the beginning to get back there...but I won the game which was the first video game I every completed. Only took 2 years on and off of playing, asking around from other people and many frustrating attempts to finish.
when you won this game, you can win any game in life :-)
Much like the Journey Escape cartridge, I have no idea what just happened.
Remember when I finally figured this game out & then I'd play it over & over, trying to do it faster each time. Wish I had timed myself. Loved this game, because it was the first game I remember where you had to figure shit out.
Best game I’ve ever beat as a kid
I never cpocpould beat this game. After 30+ years I finally seen it ha
I FINALLY GET CLOSURE!!!!!!
At like 10 for christmas got this game ,from cover thought it would be best game ever ,NOT ,think i made it to black market but learned lesson to this day ,dont believe what you see on tv
I remember hiring this game, did it blow our minds. We nearly went insane trying to solving it. Up all night with a friend plying it. We had to take it back the following day, unfinished. We later bought a game cartridge. Time moved on, we never finish it. Our Atari 2600 has long since gone. Pity really, this was a forerunner to many puzzle solving games of today. For old times sake, I'd love to play this game again.
I beat this game a dozen times as a kid, and with that ending I always thought my game was glitching. I had no idea I was speed running the game.
It all makes so much sense now.
With the Ankh, you don't need to go all the way to the mesa field. Wherever you are, hold the Ankh, press the joystick button that uses (not drops) an item, and you will be transported there.
Interestingly enough, I won this game when I was a kid and didn't even realize that I had won it because it never said "the end". You never actually touch the Ark either.
Same here!!!
I got this game when I was 8 years old and me and my neighborhood friends and siblings tried to play it without reading the manual and had no idea what was going on. Usually you could easily figure out games back then.
I then read the manual by myself and understood what I was supposed to do, but still didn't get why. I also recall that the manual said if you got the Ark you would rise up on a pedestal to meet it at the end. However, my Indy didn't rise up that far, so I also didn't think I'd won.
The first time I found the Ark my friend Chris and I just stared in surprise that the game just ended after I dug through that dirt pile. He said, "I think you missed some step somewhere in the game so at the end when you dug through that dirt you fell through a hole in the ground and died." It made as much sense as anything in that game and I thought he was right. Took me a while to realize I'd actually solved the game without knowing it. Evidently how high your pedestal rises up towards the Ark is supposed to indicate how many points you got out of the maximum possible. Who knew?
E.T. has the rep as the worst video game ever, but Raiders was designed by the same guy, was also based on a Spielberg blockbuster, and I think has more confusing game play. Worst video game I ever owned.
Amazing! I can barely tell what's happening, but I somehow know you're solving the puzzles.
I made it to the map room I think. The game was just so vague I couldn’t figure it out.
Like the Angry Video Game Nerd said, it would probably be easier to find the actual Ark in real life. Well done.
I played this game countless times before seeing the movie. I can honestly say this game spoiled nothing. I kept waiting for certain things from the game to happen. Considering I never made it as far as the map room, pretty much nothing I saw in this game happened in the movie.
Thanks.
Perhaps they should have made it a truck chase game like _Wild Western_ where you chase a train on horseback and fight train robbers.
I remember coming home from work in 1985 . my 6 year old Son would be waiting at the door , saying come on and play The Raiders game . He is now 43 years old and plays games on his computer , just military online games. I did finish the Raiders for him ,
Cute.
This is a blast from the past. I could beat it but it was tough.
U had to wait more than 2 minutes for the sun to come out!!! Whatta pain!! I recall playing this w/ my brother, him holding the right joystick, while I controlled Indy.
48 here and I still have dreams about this game
Cool video. I don't know how I figured this shit out as a kid. I never beat this game, but I did get to the last screen a couple times, but I'd always die and have to start over and be too frustrated.
Thanks.
I was so happy when I beat this for the first time at 11 - Visiting the black market was my favorite part -
You beat it?!?
@@mhildack Yes - Why does this come off as a surprise to you?
Got the game at Christmas the year it came out. Beat it by new year's. 36 years after. Got a bunch of ColecoVision games to tackle, if you'll excuse me.
Thank you so much for this! I loved this game as a kid!
Nathan McCartney You're welcome.
That's the Yar? A little underwhelming. But thank you for finding it and sharing!
+licoricewhip
Yup, that's Yars.
You're welcome.
thiefs???
i always thought they were sheeps or lambs
xD
hahaha. Thankyou very much, Warshaw and James Kelly!!
(playing Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -> looking for Sankara Stones -> I'm not playing the first Indiana -> I would like -> I can't understand xD)
I don’t know how but me & a friend of mine back in ‘83 would be on the phone as we were both playing & we figured it out! Was like winning the lottery!
I still remember how hard this game was. Busting your hump to figure out every puzzle only to die and have to start over. That parachute at the end wasnt easy either, needing to aim it just right to catch on the branch. i remember beating it and never wanted to put myself through it again
I remember that parachute jump. I never finished this game, but a friend of mine showed me how to beat it, and I don't know how he figured it out.
In 1982 we bought a Walk through (yes they had them back then) and beat the game.
This video inspired me how to make good youtube videos. Thank you sir you opened my mind.
+Dictator gamer You're welcome.
Nice vid man! I was jacking around in the kitchen, doing chores, and this movie was on TV. It reminded me of my childhood and actually figuring out how to beat this game as a kid, hard as shit! I was maybe 6 years old (around 1985) but an Atari addict. The most memorable part was that parachute jump. I mean, you took all that time (for Atari) to get that far and if you messed that up..... bummer. Anyway, thanks for the playthrough, back to chores.
+john crapper Thanks.
+silverwings21 Nice video man and thanks for the flashback!I subscribe right now!
Thanks.
I finished this game with the help of a magazine "Game Tips"!
I remember this game! I finished it when I was a kid. (Said nobody....ever)
Exactly!
I don't think I discovered anything by myself. Everything I found was in the manual as a kid, or when I was an adult: on the internet. I almost finished it as a kid, but didn't know how to dig on the pile. Was there anywhere else to use the shovel? Also, it hinted there was a Yar near the middle mesa, but I didn't find it, or the initials.
Annotations are much better than voice-overs! Thanks!
+Antonio Salazar You're welcome.
I RTFM, a good friend pointed me in the direction of wall breakers, after that it was pretty logical if you watched the movie.
I've read a few comments where people beat this game back in the day. The only thing I figured out was how to buy the flute from the black shiek
Love the Easter egg at the end. Tip of the hat to Yars Revenge.
I remember that "raving lunatic" in the market. If you cross over to his area, you die (he kills you). That never made sense to me as a kid. LOL
thank you i never finished this one thank you
You're welcome.
I remember clearing his game back in 1986 or 87 the ending didn’t make sense
First game I ever beat... took me a WHILE to figure it out without the manual.
I hate snakes.
Looking back, i can't believe i finished this game at 9 or 10 years old..haha....i probably couldn't finish it today.....
I could never figure this game out as a kid and now I know why! It makes no sense! I was also glad to finally read that the manual was "incomplete."
When I was 9,
Santa brought me: a brand new Atari 2600.
Satan brought me: Raiders Of The Lost Ark, E.T. and Sword Quest/Earth World.
My dear bagel, there are two things wrong with your comment...I'll let you guess first.
That's so sad. I never asked if I could return Atari games, but I would have done those three. I think at Zayre kids were using the store as a rental, buying then exchanging 3rd-party games like Imagic. Because there was a bin of game boxes that were taped back together. Though none of my friends ever said they did that.
One of the first winnable games in video game history but so hard to figure out
ATARI 2600 RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK GAME...
ONLY TIME I EVER SHOPLIFTED...was booklet instructions to this game (we lost ours) from NEWBURYS, Torrance Ca. I employed my younger by 3 years cousin Diana in my crime as lookout while I the master criminal age 11 fumbled opening the box and swiftly placed the sacred document into my pocket. Then with the elegance of an elephant in a peanut factory and swiftness of a DOG Burglar sealed the cardboard container WITH game cartridge still present ..(we only need the instructions) .. and somehow made it out of there with Newbury Employees.. (MORE IMPORTANTLY our Grandmother).. none the wiser.
graphics does not look far away from ps4 lol
Dude, are you on crack-cocaine or something?
thank you for not talking on the video, unlike some other videos that ruin .....rant rant...rave...rant....
+John Phelan
You're welcome.
Very nice video. Mystery solve!.
thedrummerboycr Thanks.
I was so jealous when my brother got this game and I got sea quest. Then I played it and i was so glad I got sea quest.
They said this sold over a million copies. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is considered the one which people returned out of disappointment and frustration, but I have to think this one was returned too. And of course Swordquest: Earthworld was probably the worst, though the few people who understood it had to pretend they loved it to compete in the contest.
2:27 this part of the game was so inventive
Not sure how you could figure out how to go right without falling without hints. Then you'd need another hint to show that time was passing and you had to wait for the sunrise.
36 years ago I played this game 4 ever, trying to figure out how to complete it......Now I can rest, it was a thorn in my ass as a child!
Nobody could possibly win that game by intuition. Nobody
Has anyone out there?
This video was so rewarding because this game was harder than Chinese algebra!!
It didn't let me start the game for some reasons so I couldn't get to play it but I liked the intro music.
Try using the 2nd player controller port; this game requires both controllers to play.
@@silverwings21 Oh, I never knew I needed a 2nd controller for that game. But because I don't have the console, which keyboard button to activate the 2nd controller ?
@@oosha2000 I'm not sure, check in the settings and see if you can change the button inputs.
@@silverwings21 I don't have the game currently but I'll download it and find out the settings. Thanks for the response
@@oosha2000 You're welcome.
Great Graphics’s! Is this a new Xbox One game? 😂
"It's not the years, it's the mileage."
Man is this game obtuse as all hell. As kids, a lot of the times we traded our cartridges around with friends, and rarely had the instructions. Wasn't until years later that I knew you even used the 2nd controller. Ambitious, but wow, thick as pea soup fog.
How about one of those few games where you had to switch the lever from color to B/W to do something? I think they didn't even have those switches in the late '80s models.
The fact that you need to controllers to play this game, goes to show that, whoever made this game tried to make the most of what Was Invented At The Time.
Serious question...After weeks of game play on this back in the day, my friends and I finally "beat" this game. However, it still bugs me all these years later that although we "beat" the game, we never did so with the elevated Indiana Jones at the end at full elevation. What else did you have to do besides find the Ark to get a 100% completion?
+Robert Fobian
As far as I know you can't get to the top and touch the Ark. I believe when I get the HSW2 initials at the end of the video, that's the highest you go.
Points are earned by succeeding in certain tasks, and are taken away when you
fail. I believe there are 82 points total in the game. I don't have the list on me that tells you: doing what, gets you how many points.
I was playing Indiana Jones and the emperors tomb and my dad wanted to try. After like 10 minutes he said he would be right back and he brought his old Atari 2600 and this game and told me to give it a shot I sat there for like a hour having no idea how to play and my dad laughing at me and I felt like a dumbass and I gave the controller to him and he beat the game flawlessly.
Yeah, he probably used all the hints in the manual, then sent away to Atari for the complete walkthrough before he beat it. Or just looked it up online when he was grown. The scoring system is so obscure (counting dots in the pedestal) that it's not a good way of showing you've progressed even for those attempting this without the manual.
Man, i never got to ghe shovel part! This fame frustrated the mess outta me!
Well done. Now im trying find some homebrew of this game
I remember this. Hard to believe i ever figured out how to beat it.
You beat it?!?!
@@mhildack yup. It's difficult but, doable.
When you watch this gameplay you literally have no idea what the fuck is actually going on.
This had annotations explaining things, until RUclips got rid of the annotations.
@@silverwings21 I just mean that the developers made a game that is impossible to intuitively play. You literally need an instruction manual to even understand what anything is or what’s happening.
Of-course if Indy (you) happens to miss with his grappling hook while upon the mesa he falls into the bog (a green mesa) where he is promptly chased by the black sheikh. Has anyone ever heard that if you are armed with the pistol that you can shoot him dead? I remember hearing somewhere that you could do that but I never tried it myself as I was always just too concerned with getting away from him as a kid and keeping him from stealing all my stuff. I am just merely curious whether or not that was true since I never seen that happen. Otherwise, "Raiders" here for the 2600 was a rather complex game for that system in its moment that required some inventiveness and imagination and some non-linear thought to be played successfully. It was certainly different from other games like, say, "Beserk", that were more straightforward A = B affairs. But hey, I enjoyed them games too so no complaints!
You could use the gun and the whip to make the robbers flee in the other direction. I don't think anything affected the guy in the bog area though. I think I even tried the extra grenade I got from the black
market on that guy once. Nothing...
The black guy in the "Valley of Poison" was believed to be Arnold Toht (the Gestapo agent from the movie). He also had a gun and a shot could kill you. If he touched you, he would steal your items one at a time; however, if you managed to shoot him, he would flee and you'd get all your stuff back (an almost impossible thing to do with those tse tse flies paralyzing you all the time).
im 56 yo, I rem this game !
AVGN brought me here
me too
fuck him
Wow this game makes no sense to watch. The part where he stood still for over 2 minutes straight was pretty exciting too.
+Dan East
I did an annotation commentary that explained everything, but not too long ago RUclips got rid of them on all videos. I did screencapture the video with all the annotations. I just haven't uploaded it yet.
+Dan East
I just uploaded the video of what it should have looked like with the annotation commentary here:
ruclips.net/video/3dQ9ugU4yXo/видео.html
@@silverwings21 :( Well I wasn't dissing on your video, but mainly referring to the game itself. It was one of the games I somehow never got around to owning / playing on the 2600, so it's totally foreign to me. And doesn't make sense to watch.
@@daneast Yeah, it's one of the more complex games for the 2600, usually 2600 games are just a single screen, where the object is just getting the high score. Here you definitely need the manual to know what's going on, same for the other Howard Scott Warshaw game, E.T.
My dad and his friend played the shit out of this when I was a toddler. The music is deeply ingrained in my brain. 🤣
...... what the hell is all this?!?!?! No wonder I was lost as a kid, I can't figure out what anything is
Both this and ET get bad wraps from people who I'm sure we not around to play them back then.
Playing thien is a totally different experience.
One of the first games with a story of sorts , with multiple rooms , with a goal to reach "ending" instead of just points. That alone made it amazing to me , both games.
And although they were hard the were not unplayable as today's reviewers make it seem. All you had to do was read the manual! Imagine that.
If Zelda 1 gets so much praise, a game that half the time is really cryptic even with the instruction manual, why not the same for Raiders and E.T?
They should have made them action games, with E.T. being a bicycle game like Paperboy and Raiders being a horse chasing a truck game like Wild Western chases the train.
This is the most involved 2600 game ive ever seen, seriously.
They didn't even get the theme right.
what is the name of the flute song in: 0:10
From what I could find, it's called: "The Snake Charmer" .
OK! Thanxs!
This game was the shit!!!
-the
I find it weird that at no point do you ever need to go to the Valley of Poison, which is probably the most interesting place in the game for me. The black figure (Called the black cloaked Thief in the manual) is always speculated to be Toht which I believe, so it's odd that such a strong direct tie to the movie is completely pointless to the game's plot.
I think there's another deadly room (the spider room with flies) that you don't need to go to either.
I don't remember how I managed it, but I beat this game back in the 80s when I was 7 or 8 years old.
I was 11
I figured it out. Jeez guys.
Did the German spy ever come after you? I must have missed it. That guy was always chasing me when I played...
JW3HH
The German spy does chase you, but in this playthrough I didn't fall into the Valley Of Poison, where he is at.
Ah. I remember reading how to beat this game in some video game magazine years ago and thinking to my 13 year old self, "How in the world would anyone know to do all that?". On the other hand, if it was plain as day on what you had to do, you could finish the game less than 30 minutes after you got it, which would feel like a rip-off.
Ah, good times though.
Ever play "Dragonstomper" on the Arcadia Supercharger? That one blew my mind as a kid. I believe it is credited as being the first RPG.
JW3HH
I never played Dragonstomper.
For all the confusion and graphics that left you wondering what things were, I immediately knew what the medallion was.
How to use it, on the other hand, required outside help.
This so resembles ET, right down to the info on the lower screen.
It was made by the same guy: Howard Scott Warshaw.
@@silverwings21 Ah. Explains. Atari had only 6 weeks to do ET. Revelation finding out after 2 and a half decades WHY that game i played was so BAD haha.
This game still has me confused!!
What happens if the ladder takes you to the top of the ark?
Nothing, it's just to show your score; the higher you are, the better you are. (I don't think you can even get to the top.)
So the intro is the ending? 🙂
Yes, but in the ending, how high up on the lift you are, is your score.