Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade |
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Year: 1989 Country: United States Format: 5.25″ Box condition: EX What’s in my box: |
TRIVIA
- Technical specs according to the label: PC, XT, AT, PS/2™, TANDY®. VGA, EGA, CGA, MCGA,TANDY. 16-Color. Joystick and mouse optional. Supports optional AdLib2™ sound card. Comes with 5.25″ disks. 384K RAM.
IBM DOS v1 version |
- Essentially the same box also came out for IBM DOS v2 (special VGA version), Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari ST (with different spec labels).
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Beige “swirl paint” background.
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The front cover features a “The Graphic Adventure” label, probably to avoid a mix-up with “The Action Game” (and still your mum got it wrong for Christmas 1989).
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Action game box1 |
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The designers made the odd choice to have a huge “INDY” logo and minimize the game's real title (the title of the film). But this strangely applied only to the front cover, not the back cover or the spines.
Logo on the cover |
- Speaking of the logo. Lucasfilm had a perfectly fine logo for the film but they decided to give the “and the Last Crusade” part a bulky makeover for the box.
Logo for the film (also used in-game) |
Logo for the box |
- The front features the only non original cover art in this whole Scumm games series. But instead of going for the obvious, the legendary film poster, they picked a photo taken on the set (and a terrible one considering it has Han Solo and James Bond in one picture).
What could have been: official film poster (1989) painted by Drew Struzan2 |
What we got: photo taken by Eva Sereny3 |
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The back cover’s background shows the Holy Grail, the Grail Diary and Indy’s reading glasses. The diary pages shown were apparently exclusively prepared for the box and are not part of the game or the diary that comes with the game or even the film.4
Grail Diary with “exclusive” pages |
Left page, top: |
- The objects are flanked by still shots from the movie. The choice to include these in a 40’s photo format with white borders is a bit off to say the least. Did Indy have a personal photographer following him to take souvenir pictures during his adventures?
Indy and Henry Sr. in Schloss Brunwald |
Indy and Henry Sr. (hidden behind Indy) in the zeppelin |
Vogel and Elsa (this scene is not part of the game at all) |
- On the back, there is a reference to the I.Q. ("Indy Quotient"): a new quotient point system that allows the player to overcome puzzles in several ways and be rewarded accordingly.
- “Comes with Henry Jones’ clue- packed [sic] Grail Diary”: the extra space is a typo but the diary is, as a matter of fact, one of the coolest Lucasfilm Games feelies ever!
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The screenshots are from IBM DOS v1 (EGA). Here they are as GIFs:
Screenshot 1: Indy in the catacombs | Screenshot 2: Indy fighting a Nazi guard in Schloss Brunwald |
Screenshot 3: Indy boarding a “giant” Zeppelin |
- The screenshot 1 is subtitled “Play cat and mouse in the catacombs of Venice!” But: There is no pursuer and no pursued in this section of the game. It’s pure exploring.
- Screenshots 1 and 3 from the box cannot be exactly recreated as they feature the verb “Fight” which is not available in these situations. Furthermore, in screenshot 1 Indy’s inventory is far too thinned out lacking vital objects to get to this point.
- “Fight your way through the eerie Schloss Brunwald!”: As a matter of fact, you can avoid fighting and outsmart (nearly) every single guard in the castle.
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Boxes in others countries (Germany, Spain, Portugal) feature different screenshots.5
References:
(1) https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/indiana-jones-and-the-last-crusade-the-graphic-adventure/cover-art. 2020/03/01.
(2) https://vistapointe.net/indiana-jones-and-the-last-crusade.html. 2020/03/02.
(3) https://www.evasereny.com/photo20057741.html. 2020/03/02.
(4) http://zenseeker.net/GrailDiary/indygear-UnofficialPages.htm. 2020/03/05.
(5) https://www.mobygames.com/game/indiana-jones-and-the-last-crusade-the-graphic-adventure/cover-art,
(5) http://lucasarts.vintagegaming.org. 2020/03/02.