Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom (Nintendo Entertainment System) - Reception

Reception

Although hyped up in Nintendo Power's "Video Shorts" section as an upcoming release, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom met with generally negative reception. Aside from the difficulty level of the game, the official reviewer for the Indiana Jones fan community TheRaider.net noted that Jones' new jumping ability is glitchy, causing him to leap downwards no matter which direction he is facing, unless the player is holding down the button for the particular direction in which they want to jump. Also cited as flaws are poor controls, unappealing graphics, the amount of enemies, and the text-only ending screen. The reviewer admitted, however, that the game's "respectable attempt to preserve John Williams' musical score" was one of its only highlights. The original arcade version was the first Atari System 1 game to talk to the players using speech capability, a feature lacking in the console version due to the limitations of the hardware. The arcade game, like the console adaptation, obtained its theme music (as well as sound effects that were absent on the NES version) from the film itself.

Skyler Miller, a reviewer at Allgame who compared the console adaptation to the original game, admitted that the graphics are "recognizable," but claims that the version is "missing the much of the original's detail and character." Miller's final judgment is to call it "a passable effort" and to compare unfavourably to the arcade version. Edward J. Semrad, a contemporary technical writer and computer specialist with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel included the game in his list of games that were "watered-down versions of what we see in the arcades" and praised the PC version for its superiority.