Raiders of the Lost Ark

This game was released in November 1982 and programmed by the same person that later made E.T.  This one, however, was much better received and made quite a hit for Atari.  This is a little bit surprising because it's one of the more arcane and arbitrary games out there.

You play as Indy and follow, roughly, the same path as the film. You begin at the start screen where you get your whip, then to the market to gather more items.  Later you visit the temple to gather some useful treasures then to the map room to find where the ark is located.  Finally you head to the well of the souls to uncover the ark itself.

The first confusing thing about this game is that it uses two controllers.  Controller one moves your character around the screen while controller two is for inventory management.  Confusion between the two controllers was responsible for a lot of lost time as I would accidentally drop items or use things I hadn't meant to.  The second confusing thing about this game is that it's just plain arcane.  As an example, look at the image below showing the marketplace.  You are supposed to buy items by standing on top of them and "dropping" a bag of money.  If you're touching the merchant while trying this you will lose your money and get nothing.  There are also three baskets on the screen each with an item.  Once you get the normal item from the basket about 15 seconds later another item, the medallion, might spawn in one of them.  None of this is mentioned in the manual.  It does make the game a bit more of a puzzle that you have to just try everything to progress, but it's also quite frustrating.

If you are able to complete the game and perform one extra little easter egg on the way you will get a good score along with the creators initials at the bottom of the screen.  The score is represented by the height of your pedestal on the screen.  The easter egg is achieved by dropping the "chi" item while falling off a cliff.  This unlocks the "Yar" which is a reference to the programmers first game, Yar's Revenge.  I took this as my challenge to "beat" the game.  It took a few tries, but I eventually managed to get the Yar with no deaths, no items stolen and found the ark.  It really wasn't that hard, except navigating the parachute into the hole in the cliff.  That took some effort.

Overall, the game is good, but not really exceptional.  There is a small amount of replay value due to the random location of the ark, but everything else is exactly the same from game to game.  I recommend playing this game, but it probably won't make a long-term addition to your game library.

The mysterious marketplace	Pursued by a thief
The map room showing the ark's location	The ending, with easter egg unlocked