Indiana Jones and The Great Circle's trailer got me thinking: has there ever been a great Indy game?

Like a lot of people, I suspect, I watched the trailer for Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, Bethesda's new game and pondered: what's the best Indy game we've gotten so far? I remember that NaturalMotion game from a while back which never came out - I've spoken over the years to people who played bits of it and said it was wonderful. It's harmonious, really: a game that has become a bit of a myth, buried by the sands of time.

But what about games we actually got? This is a tricky question with something like Indiana Jones, I reckon, because Indy's been game-adjacent since the days of Pitfall! in 1982. Just as Raiders of the Lost Ark was inspired by the pulps and serials its creators grew up watching, Indy himself has given a lot to games without really being in them as such.

So it's tempting for me to say something like Spelunky is the best Indy game ever. You certainly have the iconography - the hat, the whip, the idols, the traps. Spelunky would look very different if the opening fifteen minutes of Raiders didn't exist. But the more I think about it the more that doesn't seem fair to Indy or Spelunky. Spelunky is an Indiana Jones game, perhaps, in the same way that Super Mario Bros is an Alice in Wonderland game - there's a jumping-off point there, but the unexpected richness that emerges makes each game its own thing.

I would argue that the same is true for Tomb Raider. I definitely love Tomb Raider with the same bit of my brain that loves Indy: I'm a sucker for ancient mechanisms and waterfalls that split open to reveal temples behind them. But while Tomb Raider might have started as an attempt to recapture the excitement of Indy, I feel that probably changed somewhat the moment Lara got her own house. Croft Manor is such a brilliant location, and it shines such a light on Lara herself, that it makes me feel Tomb Raider's broken away from its influences and become something new.

What Tomb Raider gets absolutely right about Indiana Jones, though, is that the core of the character is not just found in the action. Tomb Raider, like Indy, has the mix: action one moment and puzzling the next. More importantly, and marking it out again as its own thing, Tomb Raider has those beautiful moments of isolation: silent exploration somewhere hard to get to and removed from the rest of the world. I'd love an Indy film that captured a bit of that.

Weirdly, after not being able to sleep most of last night thinking about this, I've come to the conclusion that the best Indy game is actually an Indy game. It's Fate of Atlantis, the Lucasarts point and click. Fate of Atlantis is a classic, so this might feel like an obvious place to end my search, for which I apologise. But just as Red Rackham's Treasure - spoiler I guess - secretly lurks back at Marlinspike Hall where the adventure began (not super surprising that Spielberg made Indy and a decent Tintin movie) the secret is hidden in plain sight.

But Fate of Atlantis captures Indiana Jones for interesting reasons at least. When I was a kid when I first saw these films - I think I was probably seven or eight when I properly got into Indy - I approached them as a kid did, which means that the films on the screen were only a part of it. I spent hours thinking about the world of Indiana Jones, what he did when he wasn't being chased by boulders and all that jazz. One of my favourite moments in Raiders is the part back at the college, where you see the hero in glasses and with a stick of chalk in his hand. I love the bit in The Last Crusade when he sneaks out of his office window. And Atlantis covers all of that stuff too: it has an opening, if I remember correctly, set at the college, and the adventure, while it has a lot of fighting and action - you can choose different paths, I think - also has a lot of classic Lucasarts moments that just fit. Moments when you, as Indy, try to reason with baddies or confuse them with words. Jokes. Running jokes. Moments of silliness and character moments.

Looking again at the trailer for the new Indy, I see lots of things that would please the seven-year-old Indy fan I was. Marcus Brody! Puzzling! Moments where Indy zones out in pure wonder at the ancient world. They're on the right track, hopefully. And hopefully they also remember that X never marks the spot.