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  Do you like Zelda? Even just a tiny bit? Want another Zeldagame to play that isn't Zelda? It seems that Eurocomwas complaining about the lack of Zelda in 2003 somuch that they sat down and made a Zelda game themselves.Yes, I'm not even joking: Sphinx and the Cursed Mummyis a very obvious Zelda clone. It's a drat good clone, though,and it's very much worthy of your attention. It's got a lot ofinteresting gimmicks that make it both stand out and be fun toplay. It didn't sell very well, though, and although fans havebeen asking for a sequel, both THQ and Eurocom were shutdown in late 2012. I'm going to show off everything this game has to offer. Yes,that means I'm going full-on completionist with this. All ofthe Golden Ankhs (heart pieces), all of the sidequeusts, allof the minigames... everything.Also! Grat and I know nothing about ancient Egypt, and yes, thatdoes mean we are extremely well-equipped to LP this game! Do youknow literally anything about ancient Egypt? It'd be pretty coolto actually learn something in the thread, so I welcome all sortsof interesting ancient Egypt knowledge!                          Suspicious Dish fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Dec 27, 2014 |
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Nov 5, 2013 02:56
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First!
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Nov 5, 2013 02:56
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Does this game have voice acting? I remember there was a pretty cool, if short, CGI commercial. It made me wanna check this game out since the lines reminded me of LucasArts games before LucasArts fired all its talent. I never got the chance to though.
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Nov 5, 2013 04:46
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Oh poo poo, I had this game, I loved the hell out of it, for as schlocky and cheap as it was. The Pokemon Ripoff Sidequest was a giant pain in the dick, there are a few monsters you can miss forever if you don't get on 'em the instant you see 'em. I'll save you guys some headaches about the names of poo poo: every important name in the game is lifted from Egyptian mythology (except for Sphinx, which isn't actually a name) but they pretty much just picked up a book about Egyptian mythology and wrote down everything that had a capital letter and used it wherever, so its use in the game is completely irrelevant, so you don't need to think about it very hard. I'm pretty sure the only exceptions are Anubis is roughly correct and I think bird dude was Horus, who was a bird head dude in mythology too, like a sun god or something. I'm not sure where he fits in with Ra. I think there were a bunch of different gods that sort of overlapped in their fields.
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Nov 5, 2013 05:10
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I actually owned this game as a kid and never managed to actually beat it but it was basically "What if Zelda got thrown in a blender with Egyptian mythology" and somethings do in fact make a return from the tutorial but not very often from what i remember. If you don't mind i can break out my big book of Egyptian mythology i bought in middle school and do a bit of an overlook on the important stuff from mythology they used for the game.
Smornstein fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 05:13
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I'm sure someone will go into more detail, but briefly: Sphinx is the name of a mythological creature - a great cat with the head of a human. You may be familiar with the big stone one near the Great Pyramids. Egyptian sphinxes were seen as protectors, and should not be confused with the Greek sphinx, who liked telling riddles and eating people. Our bird-headed friend Horus is named after the Egyptian sun god. He's the son of Osiris and Isis, and he is indeed usually depicted as a man with a falcon's head. Pharoahs were supposed to be the embodiment of Horus. Ra is... also the Egyptian sun god! Egyptian mythology was around for a pretty long time, and some of the deities were split off or merged for various reasons. (I mean, they didn't do the fusion dance or something. The religion itself split and recombined at various points, and the different branches came up with variations that had to be reconciled later on.) The Eye of Ra is probably a reference to a story where Horus lost an eye in a fight with his uncle Set, and got it replaced with a magical eye. If you've ever seen an "Egyptian" eye symbol, that's the Eye of Horus. Osiris was the original sun god, but then he got murdered. His younger brother As for Imhotep, he's not a god at all, but a famous engineer and doctor (possibly the first on record in Ancient Egypt). I guess if you need a "wise man" archetype, he's as good as any. I have no idea what he's supposed to be. Maybe a monkey of some kind? Did they have monkeys in ancient Egypt? Suspicious described Tutankhamen pretty well, and Nefertiti was a fairly famous Queen of Egypt. Nefertiti's husband was named... Akhenaten. Hmmm. Oh, and this is what an ankh is supposed to look like.  It represents life, death and rebirth. I.e. Osiris's shtick. Death and the afterlife were a big deal in Egyptian tradition, so the ankh was a very important symbol.
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Nov 5, 2013 07:10
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I've heard stories of Imhotep basically being such a great healer that the gods themselves said "hey you're a cool dude come be a god with us" and as far as i know this is literally the only instance where someone becomes a demigod in Egyptian mythology since they were pretty dead set on dying and either chilling in the underworld and being reborn or having your soul being eaten by a crocodile monster if you were evil.
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Nov 5, 2013 07:25
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Wasn't this game also on the PS2? I remember renting it for the PS2. I know you're playing the Gamecube version because of the button prompts.
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Nov 5, 2013 07:39
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Imhotep was deified after he died and became somewhat associated with Thoth, a god of wisdom who is sometimes depicted as a baboon.
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Nov 5, 2013 09:00
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I remember liking this game as a kid but I don't think I got too far because I got stuck on a mummy puzzle I could never work out. It'll be interesting looking at this game again because just from the videos it gives the impression of being a game you like as a kid since you have nothing else to play but when you go back to it years later you find out it's terrible.
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Nov 5, 2013 10:25
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Is he really a catperson? Cuz given that his name is Sphinx he's probably a Sphinx. 
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Nov 5, 2013 12:07
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I used to own this game on PS2, and I always chose the pink outfit... but I don't remember ever being forbidden from wearing it. Nintendo's Evil PR strikes again, perhaps?
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Nov 5, 2013 14:03
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Pyrovile posted:I remember liking this game as a kid but I don't think I got too far because I got stuck on a mummy puzzle I could never work out. Was it a puzzle or was it the saveroom glitch? ShadowCatboy posted:Is he really a catperson? Cuz given that his name is Sphinx he's probably a Sphinx. Well, you'd be the expert.
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Nov 5, 2013 20:01
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Oh hey, it's a Tuesday afternoon. Looks like that's going to be my weekly update time. Where are we? Who is this guy? How did he manage to screw up that badly gifting his wife a present? WILL THESE QUESTIONS BE ANSWERED IN THE VIDEO? 
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Nov 5, 2013 21:34
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ShadowCatboy posted:Is he really a catperson? Cuz given that his name is Sphinx he's probably a Sphinx. Probably! IAmTheRad posted:Wasn't this game also on the PS2? I remember renting it for the PS2. It was a cross-platform GC, PS2, and Xbox title. Pyrovile posted:I remember liking this game as a kid but I don't think I got too far because I got stuck on a mummy puzzle I could never work out. I didn't actually have this game as a kid. I was poking around for various games to play, and this one was recommended to me. I first played through it earlier this year in February or so. It does have plenty of faults, but I quite enjoyed it, and so there's no nostalgia glasses here. SSNeoman posted:Does this game have voice acting? I remember there was a pretty cool, if short, CGI commercial. It made me wanna check this game out since the lines reminded me of LucasArts games before LucasArts fired all its talent. I never got the chance to though. Unless the Xbox version magically got a voice cast, "no". As I said above, I haven't really seen any commercials for this game, so if it's on YouTube, feel free to link it! There's only one video in here I want to post myself, and that's the incredible "Making Of" video that's included in the game itself. Alien Arcana posted:Cool ancient Egypt facts! This is awesome. Anybody and everybody is free to post more Cool ancient Egypt facts!
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Nov 5, 2013 21:34
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How about moveable?
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Nov 5, 2013 21:42
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Okay, I think you've already exceeded your bigotry allowance.  This game does look kinda charming even if it does have that 'do the same puzzle multiple times' problem, and the animations are pretty great.  Spot on about the Disney villains thing, too. If this wasn't a budget title and had actual voice acting, I could totally see Tut's brother being voiced by Tim Curry.
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Nov 6, 2013 06:37
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I'm a little discomfited that we seem to be playing a dude with a permanent Dreamworks face.
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Nov 9, 2013 21:40
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Oh man, I remember this game. It gets a little weird towards the end but for the most part it's actually pretty good.
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Nov 9, 2013 21:45
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrgVxENivQ4 This is the one I meant. "There's a little guy I'll take him!" is probably my favourite line.
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Nov 9, 2013 22:03
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Oh poo poo, I saw that'n back in the day, I think. Interesting observation: In the actual game Sphinx and Tutankhamen never interact until the very absolute end of the game, and they're only dubiously aware of the other's involvement for most of it. I'd be kind of interested how the respective playstyles of Sphinx Vs. Mummy would actually work if they spent more of the game together. Sending one off at a time based on the nature of the puzzle? Or maybe a co-op kind of thing. Hmm...
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Nov 10, 2013 04:15
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I'm going to try and answer a couple of the questions/comments brought up in your last video. I'm not an egyptologist by any stretch of the term, so anyone who knows better can correct me. It's important to note that Ancient Egypt as a civilization lasted for thousands of years, and so anything I say about it is a generalization that's partially out of ignorance. If a more knowledgable goon can give a good overview of the Old / Middle / New / Late Kingdom periods in egyptian history that would be really cool. Q "Is that his mom?" "No! That's his girlfriend…" A Funny you bring that up, because the Egyptian Pharaohs, imitating the gods Osiris and Isis, had brother-sister marriages… yeah. This was something that I believe only the Pharaoh did. While you may think that this would cause severe cases of inbreeding in all the Egyptian dynasties, you should remember that the Pharaoh also had multiple secondary wives which weren't related to him. This tradition continued all the way to the Ptolemaic Greek dynasty, which ended with the de facto annexation of Egypt as the personal property of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor. Having sacred incestuous marriages only for the ruler was also common in Zoroastrian Persia as well as in the Incan Empire. People are weird. Q "That's a little bit morbid though... Did the Egyptian Pharaohs build pyramids before they were gonna die?" A Yes! The vast majority of egyptian pharaohs started the construction of their pyramids (at least during the early and middle kingdoms) during their lifetime. Egyptian religion and culture were fixated on the afterlife and all the things you had to do to get to paradise. Unlike most modern religions where living a moral life alone was enough to get you there, Egyptians considered there to be a whole shitload of magical rituals that you needed to do before and after you die. One of the most important was mummification, because to get to the afterlife you had to have a whole body. And if you're a god-king, what better place to put your body and riches than a giant kickass stone pyramid?* Pyramids take a long time to build with just manual labor and bronze age technology. If you want to make sure that your pyramid is finished on time and is well-built, then you have to start designing and building it sometime during your reign. Typically a Pharaoh would die near the end of its completion, leaving only a few more seasons of work to complete the mausoleum. It's theorized that the pyramids were used by the nobility as a good way to keep the peasants busy and obeying the Pharaoh's might in the off seasons when there's no farming to do, but there's obviously a religious aspect to it as well. Q Ancient Egyptian Batteries A I looked this up online and the earliest recorded batteries are the Baghdad Batteries which are generally dated back to Sassanid Mesopotamia, well over a thousand years after the end of classical Egypt. You're probably referring to the Dendera Light Reliefs, which are purported to show a collection of religious symbols that indicate a battery's structure. It probably doesn't. The Ancient Egyptians are currently not considered by any credible archaeologists to have had any knowledge of batteries. *This never became a serious problem during periods of social anarchy in the Old/Middle Kingdom Period and these pyramids were never looted, which did not cause the New Kingdom Pharaohs to hide their bodies and valuables in secluded tombs rather than giant monuments.
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Nov 10, 2013 06:32
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Spiderfist Island posted:Q Ancient Egyptian Batteries That'll teach me to run my mouth about things I only vaguely remember from Mythbusters 
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Nov 11, 2013 12:12
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Sorry for the wait. I'll try to stick to a two-updates-a-week schedule from now on. This time, we arrive at Heliopolis, where we find ourselves in an unfortunate predicament. Several of them.
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Nov 13, 2013 00:23
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Air is lava! posted:How about moveable? Please PM me your address and I will mail you a can of soda. It's quite delicious. No charge for shipping, either! Glazius posted:I'm a little discomfited that we seem to be playing a dude with a permanent Dreamworks face. I don't think "discomfited" is the right word, bucko. Spiderfist Island posted:Cool ancient Egypt facts! I'm glad that this game is both educational and fun! I'm learning a lot here, folks. Keep 'em coming!
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Nov 13, 2013 00:23
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It would probably help this LP if the commentators actually paid attention to the cutscenes. Seriously though... Those two villains were indeed sucked into the 'magical device' when it exploded. The main dude literally says "It's sucking us in! No!!!" I'm also not sure why you think Sphinx was teleported through time, not just space like with all the other teleporters. 
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Nov 13, 2013 14:29
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My contribution: Heliopolis is actually a Greek name for an ancient Egyptian city, meaning "City of the Sun." "Helio" refers to Helios, an ancient Greek sun god, and "polis" means city. The ruins of Heliopolis are located close to Cairo. Uruk is also a real place -- an ancient city in Sumer, later Babylonia. It's famous as the capital of Gilgamesh, the hero of the first epic. (We're talking 4000 BCE here.) You guys... I don't think they removed the nose. It's just that the nose has no bones in it. When the skin shriveled up, so did the nose (and the ears, I imagine).
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Nov 13, 2013 19:22
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Yapping Eevee posted:I'm also not sure why you think Sphinx was teleported through time, not just space like with all the other teleporters. Don't you know about Pyramid Power? Pyramids gently caress up the flow of time. When you teleport from inside one you time travel. God man, it's like you never went through third grade.
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Nov 13, 2013 23:11
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Anubis (stress on the second syllable) is not a war god at all, but rather another god of death. Specifically, while Osiris is the god of the afterlife, Anubis holds authority over those seeking to enter the afterlife. He is the patron mummification and burial rites. He's also sort of the Underworld bouncer - when you show up at the gates, he weighs your heart against the truth as symbolized by an ostrich feather. If the scales tip in your favor, you get to go on and see Osiris. If your heart is too heavy, you instead get to meet Ammit, the Devourer of the Dead. Bas-Ket is probably a play on Bastet, a.k.a. Bast, the cat-headed goddess of war. Also I forgot to mention this after last episode, but canopic jars were not used to hold a mummy's life force, but rather his internal organs. They tended to get in the way of mummification, you see, so they had to come out, but the pharaoh would still need them in the afterlife, so they had to be stored close at hand. I assume they were dessicated somehow. So when Bas-Ket says Tut is "mostly dead," what he actually means is "mostly eviscerated."
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Nov 14, 2013 02:25
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I feel like that's giving the writing team too much credit. Like I enjoyed the game but I'm not about to excuse lazy bullshit when I see it. The process was probably more like "Hey we gotta name this dude, he's like a living basket or something." "I donno...what if we put a hyphen in it? Bas-Ket. That sounds kind of Egyptish, doesn't it?" "gently caress it. I want my lunch break. Sure."
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Nov 14, 2013 02:56
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There is literally no-one in this thread who is less qualified to talk about this game than me
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Nov 14, 2013 03:04
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Alien Arcana posted:Also I forgot to mention this after last episode, but canopic jars were not used to hold a mummy's life force, but rather his internal organs. They tended to get in the way of mummification, you see, so they had to come out, but the pharaoh would still need them in the afterlife, so they had to be stored close at hand. I assume they were dessicated somehow. So when Bas-Ket says Tut is "mostly dead," what he actually means is "mostly eviscerated." I dunno if this has come up, but there are supposed to be 4 canopic jars, for the stomach, intestines, lungs, and liver, with jackal, baboon, human and falcon heads. The heart was left inside the mummy. The brain was thrown out. I am all set to talk about this game! I watched The Mummy (remake) and it's sequel, and Yu-Gi-Oh too. (Shh, don't judge me.) Incidentally, collecting the canopic jars... and the life force of the dudes that stole them... was how the cursed mummy in The Mummy restored himself. His name was Imhotep too.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:11
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I will always remember this game. My mother expressed interest in it so I saved up my thirteen-year old level allowance and bought if for her for Christmas. And then she never touched it.
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Nov 15, 2013 00:07
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 If you think the developers don't know anything about Egypt, wait until you see how badly they mess up planets. (I'm trying something new with the audio in this episode. Tell me if it's better or unlistenable.) — Instant Grat posted:There is literally no-one in this thread who is less qualified to talk about this game than me I can think of one counter-example... Yapping Eevee posted:Seriously though... Those two villains were indeed sucked into the 'magical device' when it exploded. The main dude literally says "It's sucking us in! No!!!" But how did they end up back in the castle unharmed? Maybe their backup teleport in the other room behind that force field was programmed to suck them in case of emergencies? Ever think of that?? Yapping Eevee posted:I'm also not sure why you think Sphinx was teleported through time, not just space like with all the other teleporters. Because we did teleport through time.
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Nov 16, 2013 03:45
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That actually looks kind of fun. It's amazing what you can do when you throw away the laws of physics.
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Nov 16, 2013 06:34
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I love the mummy's animations when he's on fire. So hilarious. Also: I notice a lack of that music you promised to link. Also also: it's pronounced "eye-biss". It's a kind of bird that actually exists and is a pretty big deal in Egyptian mythology.
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Nov 16, 2013 08:50
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Dr. Buttass posted:Also: I notice a lack of that music you promised to link. It's a game asset, so it awkwardly cuts off where the engine would loop or transition to another audio file, but here you go! 
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Nov 16, 2013 13:51
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The mummy reminds me of nothing so much as the later Wario Land games.
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Nov 17, 2013 02:52
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I had this game on PS2 and I thought it was great. I'm disappointed that they never ported it to the PS3 because I would love to play it again. It had some really amazing design.
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Nov 17, 2013 03:31
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I like the art style and animations for this game. I am confused on why some of the population are humans while others are manimals. In Egypt, the gods had animal heads so I'm not sure if there's some lore or whatever in the game specifying that or if it's because vidya games.Suspicious Dish posted:It's a game asset, so it awkwardly cuts off where the engine would loop or transition to another audio file, but here you go! That song reminds me of the Istanbul song.
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Nov 27, 2013 01:21
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