Pharaoh's Tomb came bundled with a 32 game collection of Apogee games called "3D Realms Anthology - Steam Edition" released back in 2015. The original game was released in December of 1990 for DOS (I never played it back then). I got the anthology on the winter sale for $9.99, that's 31 cents per game! That was such an awesome deal that I had to buy it, because there were some games in the anthology that I wanted anyway (Duke Nukem games, Shadow Warrior, and a few other FPS games). I didn't know it at the time, but this was a limited release for Steam. I don't think there's anyway to buy it now on Steam, but you can get it for free on 3DRealms website since March of 2009. So basically I paid 31 cents to have a free game integrated into Steam. I wish I could do that with any PC game that's not on Steam as there are quite a lot of them I'm interested in. Pharaoh's Tomb is the second oldest game that was part of the anthology and the second oldest game in my Steam library. There was no way to purchase it separately, which is odd because it has its own store page, forum, ect... This game feels like a sequel to Monuments of Mars because it practically plays the same way, although this game is more brutal.
This game runs through DOSBox and despite the store page saying that it only has partial Xbox 360 controller support, DOSBox allows you to map any key on the keyboard to the XBox 360 controller making it fully playable without a keyboard. By default the only things mapped on the controller are A for jumping, Left and Right on both the d-pad and left analogue stick to move left and right, Y for Yes, and Back for the Quit prompt. I mapped L3 for restoring a save prompt, R3 for saving prompt, X for attacking, and B for No. The game installation takes up 26.8MB in the steamapps\common folder, but the game itself is less than 1MB. The rest is just the manual and DOSBox. This game is available for both Windows and Mac, but not on SteamOS/Linux. Though I'm pretty sure you can use DOSBox in Linux and even Android. The system requirements are greatly exaggerated. If your PC or device can run DOSbox, you should be ale to play this game just fine.
It would be extremely unfair to rate this game by today's standards, because if I or most people did, they would call it a piece of crap made by some noob. However, because I know that it was made when PC gaming wasn't exactly as awesome as it is now, I'll give it a fair review. Oddly enough, even though this game was released in a time were home consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master system were around, Pharaoh's Tomb feels and looks like an early arcade game that was made and released before those two game consoles were even in existence (though it looks slightly better than Monuments of Mars). So for me the game feels even older than it actually is. I could never genuinely enjoy games from that era (mostly due to crap controls, not graphics) especially since I didn't grow up in that period. If you grew up playing this type of game maybe you can enjoy it. I don't find any game fun if the controls just plain suck. The farthest back I can go in terms of games and actually have fun is the NES and SMS, anything prior to that feels really ancient to me.
I've bought many games on Steam since I first opened my account and have never played the majority of them because I became obsessed with Left 4 Dead and ignored all my other games. Recently I've heard of some games being removed from Steam, but you could still play it if you already purchased it (Wolfenstein 2009 version is an example), and then I've read about a few cases where games have been removed from Steam entirely even if you purchased it and you can no longer play it (that's really sucks). Since you can't purchase the 3D Realms Anthology or Pharaoh's Tomb on Steam any longer, I decided to start playing all my games in my Steam Library while I still have them. I'm starting with the oldest to the newest because if I do it the other way around, I won't be able to stand most of the older games.
Pharaoh's Tomb has not aged well at all and it can't compare to many console games of the time or any game today. The controls are like Monuments of Mars but improved. The thing that makes this game even more difficult than Monuments of Mars is not even the controls, but the collision detection. Also that there are a lot of traps that once you are in them, you can't get out. You have to quit the game or load a save if you have one. If you couldn't save in this game and it had a traditional amount of lives and continues from games of this time, I don't think I would have had the patience to play the game in its entirety because sometimes the crappy collision detection and traps make this game down right evil. I know for a fact I would not have enjoyed this game back in the day unless it had fixed collision detection and controlled as smooth as an NES or SMS game of that time, which most DOS games that I have ever played do not. If you want an even more difficult challenge than Monument of Mars and want to test your patience/skills, then play this game. But just know that this game is downright unfair on purpose as it tries to simulate the types of things that may happen if you entered a room full of traps in tombs. Even collecting certain items are traps which you can't get out of! This type of game is certainly only for those who like that type of challenge.
The store page description about there being only 20 levels is not accurate. There's 4 chapters and each one has 20 levels for a total of 80 Each level consists of a single screen in which you walk, jump over obstacles, enemies, platform, traps, ect... Your only weapon is a spear, which you can only carry 5 at a time of (a significant downgrade of ammo compared to Monument of Mars). When you finish one chapter of 20 levels, you must quit and exit the game and relaunch it to load another chapter (or at least I didn't find a way to do that otherwise). I actually finished all 80 levels in 7 hours (the other 4 hours I have on record I spent revisiting each level that had traps to see if I could get certain items and there doesn't seem to be a way of doing so without dying, so it was a waste of time). It was not an easy game to finish and I have no plans on playing it ever again. This is one challenge I won't revisit unless there's a modern day remake with everything that needs fixing fixed.
So do I recommend it? Yes. Why? Because I want you to suffer like I did. Just kidding! It's a tough challenge but it's not impossible thanks to being able to save. Completing this game is a real achievement. It shows me that I'm much better than I thought I was at playing games (or I just have more patience than most people). You'll have to adjust to allow extra room between you and traps/enemies to avoid the lousy collision that will get you killed even though it should have not.
The next oldest game in the anthology is Dark Ages, but I'll be playing Arctic Adventure next instead because it's a sequel to Pharaoh's Tomb. I hope they made improvements in the controls/collision in the sequel.
