Fans of games such as Lode Runner may have been familiar with a particular title released by Magic Disk, called "Golden Pyramids" – created by Harold Klink and Martijn Althuizen back in 1990/91. This was their first proper commercial release (although Dying High – their other game – just missed out from a Zzap 64 covermount), and it did quite well and had a good reception.
It was almost by default that a sequel would start to emerge, though it wasn’t really common knowledge to anyone in the gaming world. This was done pretty much underwraps by the developers in the hope that they would sell the game like the first.
Golden Pyramids 2 was to feature much of the first game, but with new levels and various visual and playability enhancements throughout. It was also considered briefly about including a level editor with the game, which would have been quite nice.
Sadly interest with the game’s development was lost and it fell by the way-side as Harold and Martijn moved away from the C64. Both guys had however done a fair amount of work, including a few levels and some of the playability. Martijn did also a great deal of graphical work for introductions and end sequences.
All of this was left to gather dust, until in 2006, GTW got in touch with developers regarding Dying High. This also led to other titles which never saw the light of day, including all the disks in relation to the Golden Pyramids 2 project. With kind permission from Harold and Martijn, as well as a complete collection of what we found on the work disks – we also include the source disks incase anyone wants to examine and maybe do something with the code.
So GTW is proud to present another game once lost and now found. A big thanks to Skeletor for piecing together the remains for GTW. Enjoy and check out what could have been a nifty sequel.
One tomb that has been exhumed and opened…
Contributions: Harold Klink, Martijn Althuizen, Jazzcat, Skeletor
