Believe it or not, I've had a cartridge of this game forever. I somehow accidentally inherited it during one of many moves from someone who also had Genesis games, part of me believes they planted it in one of our boxes since the game was probably cursed. I only vaguely recall booting it up, and I assume I just never played it since I have next to zero interest in Indiana Jones. A call to arms was issued, and I couldn't resist. It's been too long.....bad games.....

Little did I know that within this game is some of the most preposterously mean-spirited boring stage design straight out of shit like Bart vs. The World on NES. You're armed with an incredibly bad whip that animates quite nicely, but at the expense of the game commonly chugging as if Protoss Carriers are swarming a nearby base in a Texas Instruments calculator. It's hitbox also seems to be only on the tip of the whip itself, but even that is only a guess on my part, as I still find it commonly going through enemies and grapple points. You also have a limited supply of grenades and bullets for your pistol, with the number apparently dictated by the level of difficulty you select. Which means the difficulty select isn't actually a difficulty select, and you should just set it to easy to save yourself a migraine.

As I mentioned, the stage design is very boring and the developers recently played Ninja Gaiden and thought the birds were the best part of the game. As I stated about the whip earlier, it's hitboxes are mystifying and it seems to be very poorly coded as Young Indiana commonly teleports to random areas upon trying to use grapple points, and you can very easily drop through platforms. Now imagine trying to use your horrifically inept arsenal in areas that demand you go up 20 floors of the most dull clock tower climb you can think of, and at the end is some asshole boss in a trench coat who can apparently fly and tank twenty pistol shots to the chest. Why do the Germans need to bother stealing plans when their intel agents are jumping fifty stories into the air and eating hand grenades for breakfast? I'd imagine the actual foot soldiers are german suplexing elephants and shooting fire out of their asses.

The first stage of Egypt is woeful, easily the worst part of the game. It's just a flat stretch, like a crappy joke stage designed by someone who thinks Sonic is hold right to win. The catch here is that a sandstorm temporarily whips up to push you backwards into little trenches. Enemies respawn in this game and will juggle your ass like Kazuya Mishima, you combine both of these and you get one of the most annoying stages in recent memory. I actually got past this, but I couldn't figure out how to progress in the second section and made the mistake of resetting instead of consulting a guide and cheating with save states on my everdrive.

Funny Note: Using save states on the everdrive tends to fuck up the music selection, so I often got the typewriter music while I was cheating going through the England stage

I toughed it out for about an hour and a half, and with some more patience I could potentially bully my way through and read a guide, but I found myself tapping out to the very idea of trying to slog my way through the first Egypt stage again after I completed England and Tibet. Some of the ways Indy dies in this game are very funny to imagine, especially 15 years after the infamous refrigerator scene in Crystal Skull. Indy could survive that, but oh man, fish jumping out of an icey river in Tibet? He can't handle them!

Belgium intelligence are disheartened to report that Young Indiana Jones has died from losing their footing on Tower Bridge due to a rogue construction crew operating jackhammers. What a dork.