A Video Game Turned 'Indiana Jones' Into A Czech Protest Hero

Indiana Jones sure accomplished a lot in his fictional lifetime; from battling the Nazis, to fighting the Nazis again, to coming face-to-face with Hitler and not doing a goddamn thing for some reason. 

Oh, and he also met an alien-filled flying saucer and got thrown out of a donut shop for randomly assaulting a teenager. Then there was the time Indy fought the police alongside student protesters in 1980s Prague. If you don't remember that particular adventure, don't beat yourself up; it wasn't in a movie or even a TV show, but rather part of a bootleg Czechoslovakian text-based 8-bit video game.

The very practically-named game, The Adventures of Indiana Jones in Wenceslas Square in Prague on January 16, 1989, found Indy at the site of a student protest during the Velvet Revolution against the communist regime. Apparently, Dr. Jones became something of a folk hero amongst the Czech youth in the '80s, inspiring a young programmer to create the game which was "released anonymously" and "copied from one audio cassette to another."

You play as Indy, witnessing the brutality of the real-life protests firsthand; Indy sees police targeting "some woman with a baby carriage," and if you pick up a nearby ax and use it, you get the following message:

You drove your ax so deep inside his skull that it cannot be pulled out. You see a dead cop.

Other possible endings involve Indiana Jones dying various violent deaths and his murder being covered up by the government. It's actually a powerfully satiric work that just happens to star cinema's skeeziest archeologist. Ultimately the game was about empowering the protest movement through art -- and it was definitely better than that game where Indy whips a skeleton monster to death.

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Top Image: Lucasfilm