Pyramids of Egypt

The Good
Pyramids of Egypt has retained a lot of popularity due to it being one of the earliest Apple II games by John Romero ported to the IBM PC. It is therefore one of the first Romero PC games overall, published on Softdisk's Big Blue Disk series in 1989.

As Mike T. Explorer, players explore ancient Egyptian pyramids, searching for gems and encountering snakes which can be avoided or temporarily scared away by lighting gasoline fires. That's already the whole game concept. Numerous levels with increasing difficulty are keeping up the interest, adding elements such as doors that open and close automatically, wet walls on which fires won't burn, or extra gas cans.

While it was Softdisk's policy at the time that all their PC games be compatible with CGA graphics modes, Romero was aware of a trick that allowed him to change the default CGA colours to others from the EGA palette, as long as the computer sported an EGA chip. So even though the game uses only 4 colours, you will barely notice because the red and yellow fit so well with the scenario. It is really nice to see what Romero has achieved visually with such limited means.

The Bad
The challenge is to see how many levels you can beat before you run out of Mikes. However, it is a game with an incredibly high level of frustration. You run into hopeless situations very often. A snake appears in front of you, a door blocks your escape route, and there is no place to light a fire - another life lost.

While I like a hard and challenging game, the problem with this particular title is how unforgiving it is in putting you back to square one every time you lose. There is no way to save your game, and you can't load a specific level either. While the Apple II version allowed players to skip up to 9 levels, there is no such function in the PC port, you will have to start over every time.

The Bottom Line
For a disk magazine offering, Pyramids of Egypt is a nice enough game. Designed by John Romero as a teenager, and cleanly ported to the PC two years later, nothing is really wrong with the gameplay itself and it can be quite fun for a while. Sure it's difficult, but the real problem is that one is always forced to repeat all the easier levels after one too many mistakes, instead of being given the chance to keep trying the harder ones. This will eventually also bore the more experienced players.