• LucasArts was supposed to do the game in conjunction with a Canadian company. This company apparently wasn't very skilled at programming or creating art, which damaged the project.
• Aric Wilmunder, normally a programmer who worked with the SCUMM engine, was one of the project leaders, but he later dropped out. Wilmunder helped write the story, along with Bill Stoneham (another project leader), Joe Pinney, and Hal Barwood (the man responsible for Fate of Atlantis).
• Anson Jew was the lead character animator; his character designs were stylized in an Art Deco manner, similar to the 1990's Batman animated TV series. However, Bill Stoneham (who was also the lead artist) was making the game's background art in a realistic style, and the two methods clashed.
• Some team members, including Stoneham, disdained the Art Deco animation style, and wanted to use live-action video in Iron Phoenix instead. So the company shot test footage to see if the idea would work. Given that FMV tends to be rather cheesy, it probably didn't, especially because Harrison Ford wasn't involved.
• The final blow came when company president Jack Sorensen learned from LEC distributors in Germany that the game could not be sold there. German censorship laws prohibited the sale of any toys (including PC games) which explicitly portrayed Nazis. Earlier Indy games got away with being sold there by removing all swastikas and all references to Hitler. But since resurrected Nazi soldiers were an integral part of Iron Phoenix's story, it would have to be banned outright instead of being censored and sold.
• Because Germany was and is a major piece of the market for adventure games, the impossibility of sales there doomed Iron Phoenix. The company only found this out after fifteen months of production, when they showed off some of the game at ECTS (a European games show, like the modern E3). Unfortunately, we don't have any idea what the parts of the game shown were like.

(However, a lot of the details of the game, including the location of the Nazis' secret base in South America and the use of Hitler himself as a villain, were changed in the comic. Apparently the guys at Lucasfilm felt the story needed to be "toned-down" for comics.)

Here's a detailed summary of the Dark Horse series' storyline. Some of the game's puzzles seem to have shown up in the comics.

On the floor he finds an old alchemist's bench, broken into four pieces. Strangely, it has four holes carved into it in a triangular design (three at the shape's corners, one in its center). When Indy reassembles the pieces, a secret compartment in the wall opens, containing a small scroll. Indiana pockets it, but suddenly police sirens wail outside.

Our hero runs out of the monastery only to find the area swarming with Soviet troops; though Indiana tries to escape on a Red Army motorbike, the Russians block the road with a truck and catch him. Their leader is a female Major with chin-length blonde hair and green eyes, who sports the typical Soviet uniform (a long gray coat with red buttons, thick boots, and a gray fur cap with a red star). She denounces Indy as a "Nazi thief," confiscates the scroll, and hauls him into prison, since she claims the artifact he took to be Russian government property.

The Soviet officers bring Indiana inside a small jail. "Comrade Major Legs," as Jones nicknames the woman, hands the scroll to her deputy, a burly, mustachioed man called Misha. When she does, the inmate in the cell adjacent to Indy's notices the parchment and declares it to be the "Clavicula Salomonis." Major Legs accuses the prisoner, whose name is Dunkelvolk, of having been sent to find that scroll by someone named "Dr. J?ger," and orders her guards to interrogate him.

Later, Dunkelvolk is returned to his cell and Indy presses him for information. The prisoner replies that he is "J?ger's most trusted aide" and mentions something about "de Groot's margins" being "the key to the Key," but refuses to explain further. (Dunkelvolk is an odd-looking fellow: he is tall and thin, has long, greasy auburn hair with a bald spot and several days' stubble, and always wears glasses, a weather-beaten tan fedora, a ratty green tweed jacket, and blue jeans.)

The next morning, Indiana pretends to be sick, gains the prison guard's attention, and knocks him out by pulling his head into the cell bars. After unlocking the cell and stealing the soldier's uniform (but leaving Dunkelvolk behind), Jones recovers the parchment from the jail's vault, then rides a Soviet motorcycle over a barbed-wire fence to safety in the American zone of Berlin.

That afternoon, Indy reunites with Marcus Brody, who is in Berlin in order to catalog the many items of antiquity collected by the Nazis. Marcus tells him that the scroll is the "Key of Solomon the King," an ancient document describing the design of the Philosophers' Stone, which has the power to turn base metals to gold and bring inanimate objects to life. The Stone is made up of three pieces - two are the halves of a hollow rock sphere, and the third is a small, brilliant blue crystal.

In the margins of the scroll are words in da Vinci-style mirror writing, penned by one Albert de Groot, a.k.a. Albertus Magnus, a 13th-century Dominican priest, bishop of Regensburg, Germany, and alchemist. According to legend, Magnus used the Philosophers' Stone to create a living Golem, an act that moved his horrified disciple St. Thomas Aquinas to destroy the creature.

The Bishop's writing reveals that though he repented creating the Homunculus, he could not bring himself to destroy the Stone, instead sending its three pieces to three far-off churches - which Brody's research has determined to be, respectively, a Kiev cathedral, an abbey near an Irish coastal town, and a monastery in Tibet. Indy quickly packs his bags and sets off for Kiev, but the female Soviet Major telephones Marcus and tricks him into revealing Jones' destination.

At a cold, dilapidated church in Kiev, Indy meets the caretaker, an old crone named Babuskaya, and fakes agreement with her command not to touch anything. Behind a faded tapestry Dr. Jones locates the stairs to the basement. After descending, he knocks down a loose brick wall and finds a statue depicting Bishop Magnus and a demon. Following clues from the scroll's margins, Indiana tilts the stone demon's head upward toward heaven three times, and unlocks the entrance to a dark corridor.

The passageway opens into an amazing frozen wasteland, coated in luminous phosphorus. To reach his goal Indiana must cross a cold river, but the bridge of ice above it is broken. So, noticing a large bell overhead, Indy secures his whip to the bell's cord and swings across the gap. On the other side he finds a door, but it's got a "water lock" on it. Jones uses his fedora to carry water from the river to the lock and pours several hatfuls in, opening the door.

Through the doorway, our hero finds a room full of furnishings, all turned to gold, as well as a golden monk who holds one-third of the Stone. Jones goes for the Stone piece, but upon touching it, he freezes in place for two hours before it drops from his hand - if he'd held it for long enough, he'd have become solid gold, like the monk! Indiana dons his gloves and takes the piece (one of the rock-sphere halves). In order to cross the freezing river again, Indy pushes the golden furniture into the water as stepping-stones, and barely makes it to the other side.

Upon reentering the church, Indy finds the Soviets, led by Comrade Major Legs, searching the place for him. He hides his satchel in an alcove, then lets himself be captured; he tells the Russians the carrysack was buried under bricks when a wall caved in, so they'll be busy digging for it in the wrong place. The Major - whose name, it turns out, is Nadia Kirov - states again that Indy is a Nazi agent, believing he freed Dunkelvolk and killed a Soviet guard. When Indy exclaims he wasn't responsible for that, Kirov wonders if he might be telling the truth - after all, his records indicate he was an avid opponent of the Third Reich in the 1930's.

The Major informs Dr. Jones that since he's interfering with her unit's job of obtaining priceless artifacts, he will have to be deported. Her plan (which she explains to Misha, who asks why she lets the American live) is to let Jones go so he can lead her to Dr. J?ger, the mysterious Nazi who wants the scroll and the Stone. Kirov assigns two guards to escort Indy back to Berlin, but he distracts them and escapes before they can even take him outdoors. Indy hides out of sight for a few moments, then runs back to the alcove where he left his satchel - only to find it gone! Nearby, the old woman who maintains the cathedral has found the satchel and is frozen after having touched the Stone piece. Indiana takes his inventory back, leaves the church, and arranges transport to Ireland.

It's a cold night on the Irish coast when Dr. Jones arrives by boat, and he stumbles into a tavern named The Thirsty Hog. Indy meets a middle-aged, balding, talkative man named Peter Paul Costello, who's happy to provide directions to the abbey. The Irishman recounts how the church burned down ten years ago, a story that the rest of the bar's patrons would rather he not tell. At that moment a strange woman bursts in and threatens a Liam Feeney with some unstated horrible fate if he doesn't repair her sheep pen right now, before leaving just as quickly. Peter identifies her as Collette Godson, noting she claims to be a Druid priestess, and he tells Indiana how she holds the town under her thumb with threats of hexes.

Costello blames Godson for the death of his friend, Constable Michael O'Leary. In exchange for guiding Indiana to the abbey's remains, he asks our hero to help him prove the Druid cult's malevolent nature to the county authorities. Though many townsfolk warn them not to, Jones and his new Irish friend set off for the ruined church. The site is deserted, but there are lights in the woods nearby. Eager to avenge O'Leary, Peter runs toward the forest, with Indy in pursuit. But green-robed Druids holding guns emerge from the trees, and capture them both.

Priestess Godson, a short, formidable woman with red hair, prepares to sacrifice Costello to the spirits of the land; her acolytes lay him onto a stone slab. Chanting ominously, she pours water into a small rock bowl - actually another piece of the Philosophers' Stone - and it turns green. In turn she pours that liquid onto Costello's chest. Instantly several tree roots sprout out of his body, killing him in a bloody mess (very much like the sprouting deaths seen in Grim Fandango). Indy protests that Godson is corrupting the Stone's power, and she remarks that he's not the first foreigner who's come looking for it. Dr. Jones immediately suspects Dunkelvolk is nearby.

As the Druids place Indiana on the slab to sacrifice him, Indy kicks the liquid-filled Stone piece out of Godson's hands, splashing the green substance on her and turning her into a tree. Indiana takes the Stone piece from her root-pierced hand (being careful to touch it only with gloves), runs out of the forest, and flees on a horse from a nearby stable. Dunkelvolk, who had been investigating the abbey, pursues him in a truck. Indy jumps on the back of another truck and throws the tools and crates he finds there at Dunkelvolk's vehicle, causing the Nazi to break off the chase.

Safe in an Eastern harbor, Indiana phones Marcus and tells him to be more tight-lipped in the future, since both Major Kirov and Dunkelvolk learned of Indy's destinations. Brody then mentions that Dr. Matthias J?ger is known as "The Monster of Minsk" and is notable for his attempts to reanimate dead tissue in order to create an army of zombies. Indy now realizes why J?ger wants the Stone.

Once in Tibet, Indy is having trouble finding a Sherpa guide who is willing to go to the Monastery of the Butterflies. Fortunately, an old man named Zhaba - very cryptic with his speech - shows up and agrees to take Indiana there. He tells Dr. Jones that time at the Monastery circles endlessly, like the Ouroboros, a mythical snake which eats its own tail.

After days crossing the Himalayas, Indy reaches the Monastery entrance, but just as he enters, Zhaba disappears. A Tibetan monk escorts Indiana inside and serves him tea. Upon drinking it our hero's vision grows hazy, and he finds himself in a strange, surreal dream-world version of the Monastery. As Indy wanders through the bizarre realm's passageways, he encounters several tests of his fitness to bear the Stone pieces.

First, Jones is tempted by a room filled with priceless valuables, but his determination to find the final part of the Stone prevents him from being overcome with greed. Next, Indiana stumbles upon a guardian creature made of precious metal and jewels, who attacks him with a sword. He calmly pulls the carpet out from under the guardian's feet, knocking it over and shattering it to bits.

Moving on, Indy finds a room with a fiery floor, containing both a sleeping monk and the Stone piece he wants. Using his whip to swing above the flames, Indy makes the choice to rescue the monk first, but after he does so both monk and stone disappear, replaced by a set of steps. They lead to a rickety rope bridge over a deep river canyon. Dr. Jones makes his way across the bridge and into the Monastery's inner sanctum, where a wizened old priest greets him warmly.

Indy has passed the priest's tests and proven himself worthy to take the Stone piece kept there. The old fellow tells him that the Philosophers' Stone is even more powerful than he thought: it can not only raise the dead, but can also send them back to their rightful place. He warns Indiana to move quickly so that "the Phoenix will perish" and balance will be restored.

The priest's appearance suddenly fluctuates between himself, Zhaba, the guardian, and the monk - then he vanishes, leaving behind the third Stone piece. Indy picks up the blue gem with a shred of tapestry, and finds himself standing outside in the mountain snows again. Now at last, Dr. Jones heads back to Berlin in order to give Marcus the three parts of the Stone; on his way there, he wonders if Bishop Magnus created a way to neutralize its power.

When Indy returns, Brody has been bound and gagged, and Nadia Kirov and her agents lie in wait. Informing Jones that she had monitored his telegrams to Marcus, she makes him give up the Stone pieces. Indiana tries to warn her about their dangerous nature, but Kirov refuses to listen. By using the artifacts as bait, she hopes to lure J?ger out of hiding.

The Major sends her officers, carrying the three pieces, out of the room; then she raises her gun and fires! But instead of killing Indy, she shoots off Marcus' gag, and decides to spare their lives, in violation of her orders. Major Kirov advises the two to leave Berlin, thanking them for their "help" in tracking down Dr. J?ger.

Unfortunately, Dunkelvolk and his thugs ambush the Major and her soldiers on the street, stealing the Stone pieces and leaving only her alive. Among those killed is Misha, Kirov's assistant and good friend; she mounts a motorbike and chases after the Nazis, seeking vengeance for her fallen comrade. At the same time, Indy and Marcus learn from a dying Nazi who was left behind that Dunkelvolk is headed for the Bahnhof am Zoo railway station, hoping to catch the 11:00 PM train to Koblenz. Indiana decides he has to follow Kirov and make sure she isn't harmed by the Stone's powers.

That evening, when he arrives at the station, Indy investigates the luggage stacked near the train. Using his pocketknife, he picks the lock of a large case belonging to one "Fr?ulein Nadia Friedrich," removes a radio he finds inside, and stows away. At dawn, Nadia Kirov, who is disguised as an old widow transporting her husband's body, opens the case, only to release Dr. Jones. She orders him to stay in her compartment, to avoid his being recognized by Dunkelvolk. Her plan was to radio for troops upon finding J?ger and arrest him for possessing stolen Soviet property (that is, the scroll); but now that Indy's gotten rid of the radio, the plan can't work. She wonders if she should have killed him back in Marcus' office.

Nadia reveals that Dunkelvolk once attempted the theft of Adolf Hitler's ashes for his master, a discovery that shocks Indiana into telling her the entire tale of the Philosophers' Stone, including how it can revive the dead. Hardly knowing whether to believe it, she locks Indy in the case again, promising to let him out when they near Koblenz. Our hero uses a dinner fork he'd picked up earlier to break free, and begins searching the train for the three Stone parts. Unknown to him, Nadia has been swayed by his story, and is looking for the pieces as well, so she can steal the center crystal to thwart J?ger's plans.

As the train speeds up, Indy locates crates of munitions - J?ger is plotting to create and equip an army of the undead. Meanwhile, Nadia finds the Stone's pieces, but Dunkelvolk captures her before she can escape with the blue gem. The train pulls into Koblenz ahead of schedule, on J?ger's orders. When it's stopped, Indiana blows up the Nazis' two boxcars full of weapons with a grenade he took from one of those cars.

Dunkelvolk, along with Nadia and the Stone parts, travels in a truck to J?ger's stronghold; Indy hitches a ride on the vehicle's backside. During the journey Dr. Jones overpowers the porter in the rear and steals his outfit. The truck arrives at a townhouse with iron gates, where Dunkelvolk escorts Nadia into J?ger's office.

Indy infiltrates the building, ditches the disguise, and steps outside onto a window ledge. Securing his whip to a protruding carving, our hero climbs down it to the story below, where he spies Dr. J?ger through a window. The man's skin is a pale gray; his face is hideously scarred and almost corpse-like; his hair is similar to Hitler's, but without the mustache; he wears a blue ascot and a red smoking jacket with several medals attached.

J?ger slaps Nadia and denounces her as "filthy Slav scum," blaming her for the destruction of his weapons cache. He says she can be useful in the "Iron Phoenix" ceremony. Once the doctor's Nazi guards exit with Nadia in tow, he congratulates Dunkelvolk on getting the Stone. J?ger reveals to his aide that their long-awaited ritual will be held tonight, at a large tower in Bitburg, which the local residents believe is a medieval museum (and of which the supposed curator is actually an SS general).

After they're gone, Dr. Jones swings through the glass into J?ger's office. Indy searches the room and finds a white knight on a chessboard, placed conspicuously among a row of golden pieces. He pushes the knight, opening a secret drawer that contains several documents, detailing exactly what J?ger plans to do with the Philosophers' Stone. Namely, resurrect dead Nazis all over Germany, create gold in order to finance his zombie army, and even make uranium for atom-bombs! (Indiana muses that if the Stone can make gold, why not uranium?) Outside the office Indy hears J?ger's men say they're about to leave for the tower, so he exits via the window and drops to the ground.

Indy steals a motorcycle and follows J?ger's car to the site of the tower, along the way blowing up a truck full of soldiers with a second grenade. He gets there just in time to see J?ger, Nadia, Dunkelvolk, and the SS general go inside. Indiana tries the tower door, but it's locked. Around the base of the building, Dr. Jones finds a military graveyard. He also notices a demon statue similar to the one in Kiev, and tilts its head skyward three times in order to open a secret passageway.

Entering the tower, Indiana hurries up the stairs, only to find Dunkelvolk, armed with a pistol. Indy whips it away, and the Nazi grabs a wall-mounted axe, but Indy throws him off a balcony. Dunkelvolk falls several stories, eventually being impaled on a pointed golden cross held by a stone statue of Magnus. Jones hears screams coming from behind another door, but he can't open it. He rushes out the window, climbs up the side of the building to the top floor of the tower, and enters another window. What he finds inside is an extremely horrifying sight.

J?ger's accomplice, a skinheaded, monocled General named Heinrich, has Nadia at gunpoint, while J?ger himself is dressed in an ornate yellow-and-red robe, and holds the pieces of the Philosophers' Stone. A circle inscribed with arcane symbols is written on the floor, while several rows of fully-uniformed Nazi corpses in open coffins stand at the back of the room.

Indy tries to talk the doctor out of the ritual, but to no avail. J?ger puts the three pieces of the Stone into three slots in a medieval alchemist's bench, which form the corners of a triangle - exactly like the bench in the Berlin monastery. As he finishes chanting a Latin spell, an eerie blue glow fills the room. The Nazi dead step out of their coffins, stand at attention, and give the "Sieg Heil" salute to J?ger and Heinrich.

Since the doctor is too engrossed in his moment of triumph to notice, Indy removes the blue crystal from its socket in the triangle's bottom corner, dropping it instead in the shape's central hole. The Stone's glowing pieces rise from the bench and start to come together, the gem being enclosed by the two rock halves. J?ger makes a mad lunge for the pieces, but he dies when his body is consumed by sudden fire, and the three parts unite to form a harmless spherical rock. The Stone has been unmade.

Indiana hears the voice of the Tibetan priest congratulate him for restoring balance to the world. Suddenly the tower begins collapsing, the Nazi undead burst into flames and are destroyed, and General Heinrich is killed in the chaos. Indy and Nadia quickly flee down the disintegrating staircase and out through a broken wall. In the surrounding cemetery, legions of Nazi zombies, which had also been resurrected by the Stone's power, now helplessly stagger and fall as the cleansing fire kills them. Lost for words, our hero and his companion simply watch from a distance while the tower burns to the ground.

A few days later, in the Bahnhof am Zoo train station, an American military officer congratulates Indy and Nadia on getting rid of the mad doctor. As Dr. Jones and his female companion sit down in their compartment, they begin to discuss their relationship. During the conversation, Nadia says that her uniform is not made for wooing. In response, Indy takes off his jacket, and as the train passes under a tunnel, what happens next is left entirely to our imaginations...

Also of interest is that Indy dons several different variations on his regular IndyWear outfit throughout the Iron Phoenix comics. While in Kiev, Indiana wears a dark blue turtleneck under his jacket, in place of his normal white shirt. In Tibet he sports a maroon woolen scarf around his neck, as well as thick fur-lined boots. (Although during the Monastery dream sequence, his outfit returns to normal.) And when Indy arrives at the Bahnhof am Zoo train station, he wears a long brown overcoat on top of his leather jacket, as a means of disguise.

Despite the fact that the Iron Phoenix graphic adventure never saw the light of day, some of its plot ideas, such as the 1947 setting, Indy having to deal with the Soviets, Indy exploring a Tibetan monastery, and strange guardian beings watching over parts of an ancient device, were recycled in Hal Barwood's action-adventure game Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine.

They say: What is it? Concept art exists, for sure.