"Indy IV" (game)

The subject of this article was cancelled.

This article covers an Indiana Jones medium that was cancelled or replaced by another product. Cancelled material is not usually canon; however, aspects of such material sometimes find their way into later products and thus become canon.

VIDEO GAME
"Indy IV"
Publisher	Lucasfilm Games
Released	N/A
Timeline	1925 / 1935

"Indy IV" was a proposed Indiana Jones video game by Lucasfilm Games staffer Aric Wilmunder around the mid to late 1980s.

Behind the scenes

A design document was compiled during the development of the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade movie which pitched the idea of Indiana Jones, circa 1935, looking into the mystery of what sustained the dominating reigns of the ancient Chinese emperors with the MacGuffin being a supernatural relic which gave command over the Terracotta Army. The Japanese featured as antagonists. The game also included a prologue set in Japan in 1925 where a twist revealed that the fedora-wearing player character for the sequence was actually Jones' archaeologist mentor Abner Ravenwood, and Marion Ravenwood and Short Round were involved in the game narrative.

Indiana Jones with the diamond in Temple of Doom.

"Indy IV" would lead into the prologue of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with the ghost of Nurhachi permitting Indiana Jones to trade his remains for a large diamond which is actually the eye of the emperor's beloved terracotta dragon.

Lucasfilm Ltd. researcher Deborah Fine provided Aric Wilmunder with some of the background material from Indiana Jones and the Monkey King, a screenplay considered for the third movie which drew on Chinese mythology but was ultimately rejected in favor of the final Holy Grail storyline.

In the end, Wilmunder's pitch didn't gain traction, in part because Last Crusade closed off certain avenues that the game wanted to explore, such as revealing that Jones acquired his fedora from Abner Ravenwood and a closing gag set in the present day where local archaeologists dig the hat up as they uncover the Terracotta Army.

The Monkey King script would influence the conception of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, another video game which ambitiously positioned itself as "Indy IV". A Temple of Doom video game prequel involving the terracotta soldiers and other Chinese elements did see a release as Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb. It too had considered Abner Ravenwood as a playable character who dressed similarly to Indiana Jones.

The idea of the Temple of Doom diamond being a piece from a statue found its way into the 2008 Temple of Doom novelization when the jewel was retconned into being the Peacock's Eye, the elusive artifact from "Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye" once owned by Alexander the Great.

Appearances

Characters

• Indiana Jones
• Nurhachi (Ghost)
• Abner Ravenwood
• Marion Ravenwood
• Short Round

Artifacts

• Nurhachi's ashes
• Peacock's Eye

Creatures

• Dragon

Locations

• China
  • Shanghai
    • Club Obi Wan
• Japan
  • Mount Fuji

Organizations and titles

• Terracotta Army

See also

• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
• Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix game
• Indiana Jones and the Monkey King