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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Sep 07, 2016 8:07 pm

One of the best games ever put to pixel on the Amiga is LucasArts’ 1992 masterpiece Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (FOA). It’s not typically rated as quite as highly as the Monkey Island series, but it is always quite close. In my view it is as good if not better.

Part point and click, part puzzle, part “choose your own adventure” (although it is fairly linear), and part arcade-action, FOA is often referred to by Indy aficionados (as well as LucasArts, see photos of the U.S. box below) as the fourth Indiana Jones. That's right - this video game is respected at the same level as the movies. It is also referred by some adventure fans as one of the best installments of the series. There was a 4-issue comic book written by Hal Barwood, who designed and directed the game of the same title, but apparently the comics didn't follow the game to the letter (or vice versa, the comics were published a year earlier in 1991).

As a result of all of this respect for the game, the price of an original boxed copy is often astronomical on Ebay, especially for the Amiga platform. Finding a complete, NTSC (original June 1992 release by LucasArts, not U.S. Gold or Rainbow Arts, although those ask insanely high prices, too), and fully working copy can find prices north of $175. I’ve even seen prices as high as $230. And some of these are even the 3rd-party published European versions (probably still in NTSC mode, but regardless).

The box included 11 (yes, eleven) disks, a very important manual for bypassing the rather interesting copy protection, and a quick-reference card. I’ve seen some auctions come with a thin, folded “poster” about the size of a regular sheet of paper, or a page from a magazine.

Mine doesn’t have a poster, but it has everything else (if it was supposed to have a poster, I’m not entirely sure). And the disks all installed silky smooth to HD.

And I got it for $40.

Forty bucks is less than original retail price in 1992! I couldn't believe my luck.

As soon as I installed it, I played it to the point where I made it to Iceland.

Then I put everything (except the manual) back in its box, and set the box into a nice comfy wooden crate. Amongst my hundreds of other crates. In my endless warehouse. Where it shall sit, but not be forgotten.
Attachments
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Front cover

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Box contents

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Indy IV. Looks like all of the boxes were printed as "IBM" and Amiga owners got a sticker and updated bar code to set things straight. Grumble grumble...

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Back cover

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Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, title screen. All 11 (!!) disks installed flawlessly.

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Indy falls

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Indy falls, #2

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Indy falls, #3

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Indy falls, #4

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A copper bead

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Indy's past

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The theatre

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The Atlantis presentation

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The medallion around Sophia Hapgood's neck as she deposits a bead.


User avatar
Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Wed Sep 07, 2016 9:50 pm

I love this game. I still haven't bothered to put it on my Amiga thanks to the 12 disks... Man... So many disks. But it goes to show you much more important storage space was to graphics than colors. Just like with Monkey Island 2 we have a port that looks every single bit as good as the 256 color VGA original. It's simply amazing, and most certainly (at 12 disks) put out there with the American Amiga user in mind, because they had hard drives. I need to install it and give it a go myself, it's so damn impressive... But until now the DOS CD version has been my go to, since it features a surprisingly good voice cast, although, very sadly, not Harrison Ford. It's too bad they stuck the Amiga stickers on top of the DOS ones, but I'd still rather see what you have than that damn fake ass U.S, Gold label any day!

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Sep 07, 2016 10:06 pm

Mine has 11 disks, not 12. Although if you don't install to HD and save to floppy, I suppose that's where your 12 disks come from?

Intall to HD, press F5 at any time and, boom! Good to go and safely saved for next time. I can't imagine playing this beast off of floppies.

Awesome game. Simply gorgeous and a lot of fun. Really, really well done.

User avatar
Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Wed Sep 07, 2016 10:15 pm

Whoops, oh well, what's one more disk added to that massive number? haha. I kind of wish Wing Commander would have come out on that many disks, too. I've always been pissed that Wing Commander featured only 16 colors in the CUT SCENES! There's no excuse for that. Yes, in order to speed up the game I understand the need to cut it down to 16 very well dithered colors in combat... But 16 color cut scenes? No, the Amiga 500 could have handled 32 or even 64 color cut scenes. I would imagine it was all about disk space though, they were really wanting to cut that thing down to size to cut out disk swapping. Although speaking as an Amiga 500 user without a hard drive at the time, it still had plenty of disk swapping! The game made you turn off external floppy drives to save memory. I suppose it was not "too" bad though. Disk 1 was just for loading the game, disk 2 was for all "ship" based stuff like the cut scenes, and disk 3 was for combat. So you were pretty much just going from disk 2 to 3 and back to 2. An adventure game would really depend all on how much of the game is accessible to you at all times. Monkey Island 2? Quite a bit of the game is accessible from the start, thus, lots of swapping I would imagine. I think this one might be a little better but I have no idea... I'd be damn sure to put it on my hard drive these days!

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Sep 19, 2016 6:38 pm

To enhance this experience (and compare the differences, which are vast) I picked up the complete set of comics for The Fate of Atlantis, a four-issue -set from 1991 by Dark Horse. The comics are loosely adapted from the game, which came first. Interestingly, Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein are given credit as part of Lucasfilm Games inside the cover. This adaptation, however, was written by William (Bill) Messner-Loebs, a writer and artist from Michigan.

A PDF scan of issue #1 can be found here, for those that are curious.

The comics themselves are not considered nearly as valuable as the game itself. I got the set in very good condition - all 4 - for only $5. Quite a steal, really.
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The comics themselves weren't very well-received by fans at the time, and probably for valid reasons. But still, worth a look I think. The cover art alone is pretty iconic.

User avatar
PhilsComputerLab

Posted Mon Oct 03, 2016 2:14 pm

You should try setting up a Classic Workbench with WHDLoad. That solves the "many disks" issue. I got this going on the Mist FPGA machine and it really is a game changer.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Oct 03, 2016 7:58 pm

Indiana Jones installs to HDD flawlessly from floppy, but you do have to do it once to transfer it all. . . if you actually own the disks, that is.

But yeah, I really should do that at some stage. I haven't had a huge need for it yet, but I know I probably will eventually.

User avatar
Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Tue Oct 04, 2016 5:58 am

I looked into it several times, and "looking into it" does not begin to describe what you'll need to do. It's a little science project, write down your notes and prepare. Setting up a hard drive in emulation is a thousand times easier to explain to most people, yet virtually no Amiga emulation user (or real user for that matter) is even aware there's options for hard drives because the Amiga acted like a console and booted straight from the floppy in most cases. If a game had that many disks then it most likely came from America, and people writing for the Amiga in America understood part of the Amiga's appeal was multitasking, some people had hard drives (including those making the game which always matters) and I'm sure any game with even 3 disks was going to be reviewed bad by the American magazines for not having an install program with a game so big.

What I'm saying is most games where disk loading/swapping is of concern are games that in fact you are able to install to a hard drive. The ones that are on one or two disks are almost fast enough for me, thus I don't care that I can't install them....and well, I kind of like the sound of the Amiga's disk drive, it's the most unique floppy drive sound I've ever heard.

You can setup a hard drive and workbench much more easily than WHDLoad. You can also use the Amiga's floppy drive emulation speeds to speed up installing those games. It's not that hard, so much easier than WHDLoad, and I don't understand why more people don't go that route. I mean WHDLoad will give you a nice list I suppose, has a few options (is true NTSC on that list?) but it also takes you a bit away from the real hardware. I look at that stuff as "emulation like". It's in fact working on the real hardware and using it, so it's not emulation... But it's a program made well after the Amiga's prime to do something the Amiga could not do with that game. You're looking at a list, similar to many emulators, and you're launching the game from that list... That's enough for me to disconnect it from the feeling of the real thing, and just speaking as someone who had one back in the day, I simply don't recommend anyone waste their time with it. I've done far more complicated things than what it wants me to do, but nothing it offered gave me any reason to "want" to figure it out. It's also pretty spec heavy in terms of the Amiga (as in the most popular Amiga's can't run it) so it's a big no no for many with the real machines. I recommend looking into WHDLoad, and then looking into a hard drive... But actually you've already set up your hard drive if you're even considering WHDLoad, right? So look into WHDLoad, give up most likely, and then install your large games onto a hard drive. Put the small games on disks (still being made quite cheap) if you have the real deal or just make your own list in the emulator so you can click the games name, hit load, and it goes. I know Phil is from the PC background so WHDLoad might really be of benefit to him, caring more about just the games. But I would caution people... Never-mind, I do recommend everyone look into setting it up yourself, there's no words that need to be spoken, most people won't bother.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Oct 04, 2016 9:18 am

I tend to agree with Shot on this, to be honest about it. I've seen so much about WHDLoad online, and several well-meaning folks have pointed me towards it on multiple occasions (including Phil!) :). The few times I've looked at it, it really did seem to be a hugely helpful tool for emulation.

It can work on classic hardware, of course. But most of the people I saw using it were using emulation. The times I was the most tempted was when I was looking for particular games that just couldn't be found (until I later found some vast databases that have nearly everything ever made on planet Earth for the Amiga).

But, there are still a few games out there that I wish didn't require quite so much disk swapping and did not come with a HDD install originally. I don't mind disk swapping if the interruptions seem to go with the flow of the game - they are usually logical places. One key example - for me - is Bard's Tale I. This game is only 1 disk, but it requires a character disk, too, and the game needs to swap between the two fairly regularly.

My solution? I got an external disk drive. I plan on posting it to Conquests (I've been meaning to) but I hesitated as I wondered if some might find it a tad ridiculous, eccentric and pointless. Well... not for me. :)

I do have a 4GB CF card HDD on my 1200, and if a game like Indy has a built-in HDD installer, I don't hesitate to move it over. It's a no-brainer for me. Space is cheap (now). And then the disks go back into storage.

But if it's a single floppy, or maybe two, I just roll with it classic-style.

Hence my hesitation to drop into WHDLoad.

Plus, there are already so many potential variables involved when I try to install or simply run software on the 1200. Is the disk bad? Is the computer not compatible (i.e. was the software written for 500s only, a sad but common fact of life)? Is it a floppy-drive issue? etc. If I went through the hassle of installing WHDLoad, and a game didn't fire up, yet one more variable.

I realize I'm being a bit picky here, and maybe lazy is a better word. Until I hit a hard roadblock, though... I dunno.

Lastly, whenever I do run games in emulation and there are several disks, my emulator lets me load up to four floppies (or is it 5?) at the same time in virtual external drives. That covers quite a lot of titles right there. And even though you have to watch and wait for the disks to read, it's pretty danged quick when everything is said and done. I am confident there are ways to install WHDLoad on my PC where my emulator runs, and if I ever do install it I'll probably install it there, rather than the Amiga. I guess I've just been really, really lazy as I've seen quite a bit of moaning and groaning around the topic, too - especially save disks.

Seriously, Phil - there's a video idea for you if you're ever needing one: "How to install WHDLoad" this way, and that way. With your attention to detail, I'd bet it would be well-received.

User avatar
Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Tue Oct 04, 2016 9:48 am

Yes. Speaking as a guy who is NO STRANGER to detailed guide videos and I eat up all kinds of do it yourself projects... I just have no interest in working with what they give you. However, yes, Phil, if you want to make your own instructions in video form, I KNOW it will be better than the official source.

-Oh, and you're allowed a total of 4 floppy drives in emulation. Just like the Amiga, the emulators offer 1 built in drive and up to 3 external drives. Good luck with the 3 external ones on a real machine though, those things eat up memory...





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