All these barriers, which were thoroughly worked upon, extended production more than was acceptable, so the project was put on hold indefinitely. But the story did not end up there, as Aric Wilmunder explains: “A few months later, we brought the project alive again using my design, but using live actors against blue screens to see if it was possible to replace much of the hand-drawn animations for close-ups and cut-scenes with live actors. We cast an actor for Indy, filmed for two days, but the footage was never integrated into a game. We did learn from this effort and used the approach for Rebel Assault”.

Finally, all the potential of Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix ended in a series of comic books published by Dark Horse in the collection of the famous archaeologist, in a collection with other Indy stories such as Fate of Atlantis.

Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny

When all that ended, the management of LucasArts felt unsatisfied and did not want to cease on their insistence on making another adventure game with Indiana Jones as the main character. Maybe that insistence was the origin of the disappointing Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine that was later released, or maybe it is true what rumours said back then that Aric Wilmunder wanted to finish an idea that he had been working on for a long time, Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny, in which both Jones (Henry Jones Senior and Henry Jones Junior) were again on the run to unravel another one of the greatest mysteries of Christianity: the whereabouts of the spear with which the back of Jesus Christ was pierced by the centurion Gaius Cassius Longinus, while he was lying on the Cross in Mount Golgotha. According to the legend every general in possess of the relic would be unrivaled in battle, and throughout centuries there have been lots of famous personalities whose victories were attributed to the possession of the spear: Charlemagne, Emperor Federico Barbarroja, Charles V, Philip II, Napoleon… Adolf Hitler…

What is true is that of Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny there is only a series of comic books also published by Dark Horse. The rest are just misunderstandings and rumours, at least that is what we can conclude as a result of our conversations with Wilmunder himself, responsible of the story, who does not mention that game and confirms that most of the events attributed to the development of The Spear of Destiny were actually related with The Iron Phoenix. We are talking of the year 1995, and time in these cases (and particularly in this case, where so much people was involved), far from clearing things up, only makes them cloudier. There is, then, a chance that, since there was also a plot base in the comic books, LucasArts left the door open for a future adaptation. However, the first-hand statements we gathered deny any trace of this adventure game in the projects ever approached by the main people of the company.

From all this we can come to a solid conclusion: as much as the famous fanfare by John Williams might be thundering the theatres again, as much as the heroic Dr. Jones’ hair is whiting in movie screens all around the world and the film is breaking the box-offices of Paramount, it is quite difficult, if not imposible, that we might use our mices again to control Indiana Jones in the form of an adventure game under the seal of LucasArts, even after the bad experiences of The Infernal Machine and The Tomb of the Emperor, especially when compared to Fate of Atlantis. For the moment, a new Indy game is under the works, and it is by the way suffering from similar difficulties as the adventure games mentioned in this article. But we all know that precise game will actually be released. The suits at LucasArts are famous for their ability to take decisions… the wrong ones.

Many thanks to Noah Falstein, Aric Wilmunder, Hal Barwood, Anson Jew, Bill Stoneham, The International House of Mojo and PC Games That Weren't.

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