"9 months to finish the whole game": Years before The Great Circle, Indiana Jones was dropped on the Monkey Island creator when another studio "wasn't actually making the game"

Last year, Bethesda and MachineGames delivered a stellar new addition to the world of Indiana Jones with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the first console game for the franchise since Lego Indiana Jones 2 in 2009. Some players may remember, however, that prior to the Lego games, there had been a handful of desktop Indiana Jones point-and-click graphic adventure games, one of which was made in a mad dash 9-month period.

Ron Gilbert, creator of the long-running adventure game series Monkey Island, spoke to Retro Gamer magazine about how he and his team were suddenly tasked with producing an Indiana Jones game. "The Indiana Jones rights had been given to someone else, and they weren't performing," he explained. "They weren't actually making the game."

Lucasfilm Games – which would become LucasArts before becoming Lucasfilm Games once more – handed the rights over to Gilbert and two other employees well-versed in adventure games, Noah Falstein and David Fox.

A different unnamed studio had apparently been sitting on the rights for years, failing to deliver a game, until Lucasfilm lost their patience and pulled the plug.

"Lucasfilm pulled the rights back," Gilbert explained, "and David Fox, Noah Falstein and I had nine months to finish the whole game – start to finish."

That nine months of crunch time ended up producing the 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure. A virtual adaptation and expansion of the movie of the same name, the game received a favorable reception at the time.

Not long after its success, Lucasfilm Games published the first installment of Gilbert's Monkey Island series in 1990, with its latest installment having been in 2022, published by Devolver Digital.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a far cry from the 1989 point-and-click adventure. The newest game for the IP, a MachineGames-grade shooter adventure, brought in positive reviews across the board and earned numerous nominations and awards. It successfully brought new life to the franchise in the gaming world and sparked discussions of what could be next for Indy and his gang.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a "spiritual successor" to a 32-year-old adventure game, Fate of Atlantis