Every Indiana Jones game ranked from worst to best ahead of The Great Circle

Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is coming soon, so we're looking back at classic Indy games.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle / MachineGames/Bethesda

I have a confession to make: I haven’t played every Indiana Jones game, and after asking around the team members here, nobody else has either, and everyone was surprised at just how many games the adventurer has had in the last four decades.

Indiana Jones is one of Lucasfilm’s (formerly LucasArts) most valuable properties, and everyone is excited to get stuck into the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle from Machine Games, launching on December 6. But before we do that, we’re taking a look back at Indiana’s video game history. Indy’s games span back to the early ‘80s, and range from text adventures, to platformers, action games, puzzlers, and even LEGO crossovers. 

It’s tough to rank such a wide variety of games released across the decades, as a result we’ve mostly based this list on the reviews of the era (as aggregated by Wikipedia), and from gameplay footage we’ve looked at on YouTube. We’ve taken the critical reception into account, and weighed up the various pros and cons each reviewer outlines, in order to concoct our own definitive list of Indiana Jones games. Your personal opinion will sway how you feel about many of these games – and we won’t argue with you, honestly – but this is the best ranking you’ll see this side of the century. 

Read on for every Indiana Jones game ranked from worst to best.

Indiana Jones Adventure World (The Worst Indiana Jones Game)

Indiana Jones Adventure World / Zynga

Indiana Jones Adventure World is no longer playable in any form. It was once just a Zynga game called Adventure World, but Indiana Jones was quickly made the star. It was shut down in 2012, a little over a year after launch, so it can’t have performed too well. Honestly, this might not have been the worst Indiana Jones at the time, but it’s been shut down now for 12 times longer than it was available for, so nobody is going to argue with this game being at the bottom of the pile.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (NES)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (NES) / Tengen

It was tough to get a negative review for an NES game back in the day, but Temple of Doom got a few. Nobody much liked this game, saying it was too difficult and glitchy, with the only highlight being the music. This isn’t going to be on any list of essential NES games.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark / LucasArts

When I see an Atari 2600 game my eyes and brain start to hurt. I’m not sure how much money you’d need to pay me to make me play this.

Instruments of Chaos starring Young Indiana Jones

Instruments of Chaos starring Young Indiana Jones / LucasArts

The whip physics actually look really cool, allowing you to swing the whip in any direction you desire. A truly brilliant idea, and in a better game, it would’ve been great. Alas, Instruments of Chaos is not a good game.

Indiana Jones in the Lost Kingdom

Indiana Jones in the Lost Kingdom / LucasArta

This is a Commodore 64 game, so it’s not going to hold the attention of the modern player for long, but back in the day, you can see why it was reasonably popular, if a little difficult thanks to cryptic puzzles. It doesn’t look too bad, but we wouldn’t want to actually play it.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles / LucasArts

I can perfectly understand why you might have a good dose of nostalgia for this one. The music is a bit annoying and repetitive, and the difficulty is infamous, but it’s impossible to look at gameplay and not be at least be a bit intrigued. For someone out there, this is the real Castlevania. Not quite an NES hidden gem, but decent fun.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1985)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1985) / LucasArts

For this one you really had to be there — and as someone born in the ‘90s, I wasn’t there. The Temple of Doom in arcades boasted graphics that were a league ahead of any home system of the era, and while it might not blow your mind now, it would’ve made a great impression in the ‘80s. The ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, and Atari conversions weren’t quite as successful, mind.

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings / LucasArts

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings isn’t really the game that it was supposed to be. The real Staff of Kings was an Xbox 360 and PS3 game made by LucasArts, and it was cancelled, but not before an external studio had been hired to develop Wii, DS, PS2, and PSP versions. That’s the game we actually got, which includes most of the story of the headline scrapped title, but we’ll never know what the “real” Staff of Kings was like.

Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures

Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures / LucasArts

A reasonably simple 2D adventure featuring Indy whipping a selection of cultural stereotypes while solving puzzles. I bet this was amazing if you weren’t old enough to question the implications.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (NES)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (NES) / LucasArts

Not to be confused with Last Crusade: The Action Game by Ubisoft and US Gold, Taito’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has basically the same box cover art as Ubisoft’s game, but is an NES exclusive. It’s not terrible, but someone should’ve been fired for the nausea-inducing camera swings on the ship stage.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game / LucasArts

This is a game that appeared on dozens of platforms, with the most modern being on the Sega Genesis. It’s a pretty standard side-scrolling action game with some nice whip swings and attacks thrown in. A solid experience for the era, and a lot better than most licensed games. And, surprisingly, the NES and Game Boy versions are actually early Ubisoft games.

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine / LucasArts

This game appeared on both N64 and PC, and if you want to play it in the modern day, the PC is the place to do it. This game comes with all of the awkwardness that you’d expect from a '90s-era adventure and isn’t particularly inventive. Still, it’s one of the better Indy games, period.

Indiana Jones in Revenge of the Ancients

Indiana Jones in Revenge of the Ancients / LucasArts

This is a truly old-school text adventure, and is often listed as a top ten Indiana Jones game. After looking at the competition, I know what I’d rather play.

Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb

Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb / LucasArts

Unlike most of the games we’ve covered so far on this list, you can play this game on modern hardware thanks to backwards compatibility on Xbox Series X. It’s not the most impressive action game of the era, with a dodgy camera in tight spaces, but it manages to be one of the best Indiana Jones games of all time thanks to the acclaimed Xbox version.

Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures

Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures / LucasArts

It’s another side-scrolling action platformer where you use your whip to crack foes and swing from buildings, but it’s a bit more refined than its contemporaries. It’s certainly not a masterpiece, but it was one of the best early Indiana Jones games.

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures / LucasArts

The Lego games are family-friendly adventure platformers that are angled towards children, and this does everything you would expect it to.

Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues

Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues / LucasArts

Another Lego game, with more characters and stages than the last one. Boom, easy.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis / LucasArts

1992’s Fate of Atlantis is a point-and-click adventure game that is genuinely seen as one of the best in the genre, and up there with the other LucasArts classics. It was impressive for the era, with smart puzzles and all of the wit and charm that put LucasArts on the map.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (The Best Indiana Jones Game)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure / LucasArts

1989’s The Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure launched on MS-DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST, and it was seen as a revelation. This arguably just set the stage for what the team would achieve later with Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, but at launch Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure was genuinely seen as one of the greatest games of all time. Also, you can optionally punch Hitler. You get gunned down for it, but it might be worth it anyway. And that’s what makes it the best Indiana Jones game (adjusted for the era it launched in).