Retrospective: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Atari)

Though I've generally kept these Retrospective posts to looking back at roleplaying and boardgames that I thought worthy of discussion, I have occasionally turned the spotlight onto computer and video games as well. In the '80s, I never owned a "home computer," as we used to call them in those ancient days, but I did own the Atari Video Computer System (VCS), later dubbed the Atari 2600. I also had an enviable collection of game cartridges for it, two of which I think merit a post: Adventure, about which I've previously written, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

Released in 1982, Raiders of the Lost Ark was (obviously) a tie-in product for the action-adventure film of the same name released the year before. Historically, tie-in products like this tend to be mediocre at best, with most being little more than vehicles for making a quick buck by association with a popular book, TV show, or movie. By all rights, that's what one might reasonably expect of this game cartridge too – except that it's actually one of the more complex, imaginative, and enjoyably frustrating games Atari ever made for its first game console. 

It's that enjoyable frustration that's the main reason I still have such affection for the game. Strange though it might be for some to imagine, I actually enjoyed video and computer games whose difficulty – or at least perplexity – made me want to tear my hair out. Indeed, their difficulty was a big part of their appeal, because it suggested that, if I managed to beat them, I'd actually achieved something. It's similar to why, as kids, my friends and I enjoyed testing our wits against a Killer DM. Sure, it was tough and often downright unfair, but to win against such odds felt like an accomplishment and we cherished those moments way more than easy wins.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was not an easy win. Completing it successfully took a lot of thought and patience, not to mention above average hand-eye coordination, owing to its unusual control set-up and the finicky nature of said controls. In very broad strokes, the game recreated Indy's adventures in search of the Map Room that will lead him to the resting place of the fabled Lost Ark of the Covenant. The resting place of the Ark is randomly determined with each game reset, meaning that, should you fail, you can't necessarily carry over anything you've learned in your previous attempts to a new one. In addition, Indy requires the aid of certain items he can find hidden in various locations and these, too, are not always in the same location. 

This randomness is only one part of what made the game so frustrating to play. Another is that it required both joysticks to play. One was used in the expected way, allowing the player to control Indy's movement and actions on-screen. The other was used to control inventory. Unlike Adventure, which only allowed the player to possess a single item at a time, Raiders of the Lost Ark let you possess several, as if Indy had a backpack filled with gear. By moving a cursor among the items you possessed, the player could the one he wished Indy to use at any given time. This was very cool and quite innovative at the time, but it could also be demanding in play, especially if you had to quickly switch between items.

However, the main reason the game was so frustrating was the sparseness of its manual, which didn't tell the player much about how the goals of the game could be achieved. Instead, you were largely left to your own devices to figure out how all of the game's elements worked toward a successful conclusion. The manual includes descriptions of most of the locations and items found in the game, but not all of them. Likewise, it does include "helpful hints," but, again, these don't answer every question a player might have. "After all, what's an adventure game without surprises?" the manual asks. Consequently, even if you read the manual cover to cover, there are still very important aspects of play that you can only discover through play.

This is what made the game so enjoyably frustrating to me. To this day, more than forty years later, I can still recall the joy I felt when I first stumbled across an item not listed in the manual the possession of which was essential to finding the location of the Ark. Similarly, I remember when, in the midst of foolishly falling off a cliff to my doom – I wasn't quick enough in making use of the parachute in my inventory – I noticed something for the first time that I would later use to solve another mystery in the game. Neither of these discoveries were in the manual; I could only learn of them through trial and (much) error. 

By the standards of today, Raiders of the Lost Ark is unbelievably primitive. Heck, by the standards of games released just a year or two later, it's primitive. Yet, for all that, it remains one of my favorite video games of all time, because it challenged me just enough that I couldn't rack up an easy win but without so dispiriting me that I gave up completely. Not coincidentally, this is my ideal when it comes to dungeon design, too, so perhaps I was the perfect target audience for this game. This is a foundational game design for me and I suspect I've been chasing the high of enjoyable frustration I gave me ever since. 

Indy notices something as he falls to his pixelated doom