Before Indiana Jones and the Great Circle swung onto the scene, LucasArts' Fate of Atlanti s was widely hailed as the best Indiana Jones game ever made. Indeed, Fate of Atlantis ' popularity is so great that many fans still mourn its cancelled sequel today, more than 30 years after its release.
Sure, Lucasfilm has greenlighted plenty of Indy-headlined games post- Fate of Atlantis . Aside from The Great Circle , there's The Infernal Machine , The Emperor's Tomb , Staff of Kings , and two Lego-themed outings. But none of these games is a continuation of Fate of Atlantis ' story or design philosophy;他們是獨立的Indy冒險。不過，這並不總是計劃。 As alluded to above, LucasArts did commission a direct follow-up to Fate of Atlantis : Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix .然而，它最終從未實現。我們得到的最好的是《黑馬漫畫改編》。
為什麼？ As is often the case when a game gets axed, there are a bunch of reasons why Fate of Atlantis ' sequel didn't happen;您需要一份帶著聖杯日記的文檔來跟踪所有文件。 But three major factors in particular – personnel problems, technical troubles, and censorship struggles – conspired to derail Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix .
Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix was an ambitious project.被取消的續集的60頁設計文檔可在線獲得，因此我們對生產共同領導Aric Wilmunder和Bill Stoneham對其故事和遊戲玩法的願景有一個很好的主意。它將在1947年舉行，並要求玩家防止傳說中的哲學家的石頭落入納粹逃犯的手中，以使希特勒復活。將會有很多環球旅行（在南美達到頂峰），以及與印地納粹狩獵蘇聯伴侶納迪亞·基洛夫（Nadia Kirov）浪漫的可能性。 In short, it had all the ingredients for another thrilling Indiana Jones epic.
The Iron Phoenix team wasn't focused solely on living up to Fate of Atlantis ' story, though.他們也渴望超越遊戲的水平設計和遊戲機制。 The Iron Phoenix was meant to break new ground for LucasArt's point-and-click adventure-oriented SCUMM engine.房間將利用滾動技術擴大其維度。動作序列也將變得更大，更動態。 For example, in The International House of Mojo's exhaustive Iron Phoenix post-mortem, lead animator Anson Jew describes a blockbuster brawl in a plane's cockpit.
In light of the above, Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix clearly had the potential to do justice to its predecessor. Even its riskiest move – dropping the original game's replayability-boosting tri-path design – was seemingly offset with a well-considered substitute (adding Monkey Island 2 -style quest flexibility).但是，即使是印第安人本人也無法克服使續集擺脫行動的障礙。
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The first sign that Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix 's development wouldn't run smoothly came early. Months (at most) into the Fate of Atlantis sequel's production, original project lead Joe Pinney exited (the exact reasons for his departure remain unclear). LucasArts quickly replaced Pinney with Wilmunder and Stoneham, but this back-of-house dysfunction was a bad omen for Iron Phoenix 's future. Further down the line, LucasArts would force Wilmunder to split his time between Iron Phoenix and another of the studio's titles, The Dig .更重要的是，也堅持認為加拿大的第三方服裝的權力應對大部分工作。
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This proved a miscalculation on par with Walter Donovan's Holy Grail selection in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade .加拿大工作室沒有開發點擊遊戲的經驗。毫不奇怪，它們的輸出緩慢且基本上無法使用。 In the International House of Mojo piece, Wilmunder complains about the Canadian studio's inadequate headcount and expertise, and theorizes that the test animation that won them the Iron Phoenix gig was actually produced by a one-off freelancer. Whatever the truth of the matter, LucasArts eventually severed ties with Iron Phoenix 's international development crew – but not before a lot of time and money was wasted.
Meanwhile, Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix 's in-house team was grappling with the technical limitations of the SCUMM engine. With the release of 1993's Day of the Tentacle , LucasArts pivoted away from the small character sprites employed by Fate of Atlantis towards larger sprites more than twice their size. This worked great for Day of the Tentacle 's cartoony aesthetic, but for the more realistic Indiana Jones franchise?不多。更糟糕的是，Scumm引擎調色板的性質意味著任何用於字符模型的顏色都不能用於背景（反之亦然）。 So, Jew had to come up with a more stylized look for Iron Phoenix that he was never fully happy with.
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威爾蒙德（Wilmunder）和斯通漢（Stoneham）顯然也沒有以這種方法出售。 As production rolled on, the duo experimented with digitizing live-action actors for Iron Phoenix 's sprites.根據威爾蒙德（Wilmunder）的說法，這種混合技術從未比幾個簡短的，據稱是壯觀的測試鏡頭夾的進步。 But spectacular or not, the fact that Iron Phoenix didn't have a locked-in aesthetic (much less any completed animation or gameplay sequences) further underscores the sequel's technical and artistic strife. At the same time, as with the outsourcing dramas, these issues weren't the Mola Ram heart-ripper that eventually put paid to Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix .
Instead, what ultimately killed Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis ' sequel was something far less exciting: censorship.事實證明，威爾蒙德，斯通漢和球隊並未考慮德國的法律，禁止在（除其他）視頻遊戲中使用納粹圖像。 Other Indiana Jones games before and since have sidestepped this restriction by tweaking dialogue and artwork to remove explicit nods to Nazism. This wouldn't fly in Iron Phoenix , though.希特勒本人最終出現了，因此低估了第三帝國是一個啟動者。
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Once LucasArts realized that Iron Phoenix was essentially unsellable in one of its key European markets, whatever enthusiasm studio bosses had for the sequel evaporated. By early 1995, The Iron Phoenix was quietly shelved. Development on another Indiana Jones game, The Infernal Machine , kicked off a few years later, however, by then industry trends (and gamers' tastes) had shifted. 2D點擊冒險出了； Tomb Raider -type 3D action platformers were in. That's the nature of the medium: the old makes way for the new.但這真是一個恥辱。 Indiana Jones ' best game deserved a great sequel – and The Iron Phoenix seemed destined to be just that.
印第安納·瓊斯（Indiana Jones）和亞特蘭蒂斯（Atlantis）的命運可在Steam上獲得。
