newcoleco plays Tutankham

Exploring an Egyptian tomb...what's not to love about this?

In Tutankham, you play an archaeologist who stumbles upon an Egyptian tomb, goes inside and hunts for treasure while trying to avoid the numerous mythical beasts that come out of the dead ends with the purple walls and try to kill him.

You can move in four directions and go anywhere you want, but you can only shoot left or right with the side buttons. Along the way, you'll find warp fields you can walk between to enter the other side of the area (just walk between them and you'll teleport to the other set that's directly across from them).

In every level, you'll find a key. You'll need the key to unlock the door at the exit and continue to the next level. You'll also find treasure along the way that will give you points.

In the second area (as well as others), there are black areas where the enemies seem to come out randomly, and if you stand in these spots at the wrong time, you'll lose a life from an enemy you won't even see coming.

Being able to fire only left and right at first isn't that bad when you're in narrow corridors, but when you're in open areas where both you and the monsters can move around freely, it's a very painful experience as the enemies can get you from the top or bottom and there's nothing you can do. The only way to get rid of them is either with the magic lamps, which act as screen-clearing flash bombs and can only be collected when you finish a level, or by being killed, which removes all onscreen enemies. I prefer the first one simply because you don't die.

In later levels, you have to find two keys. While I wouldn't normally have a problem with this, the game makes it harder by forcing you to grab one key and unlock one of the doors, then grab the other. In other words, you can only hold one key at a time. Not only does this mean more leg work where you could die at any time, but you can only fire in two directions and you have a time limit. When the timer hits zero, you can't fire anymore until you reach the next level. If that's not cheap, I don't know what is.

Despite having Stern's name on it in the US, the game was developed by Konami. If there was ever a starting point for Konami's games being difficult and requiring using your brain to get past them, this is probably it.

Is the game worth it? Despite the gripes I had with the game being cheap at times as well as being able only to fire in two directions (yes, I know they had to do that to make the game harder, but it's still annoying), it still isn't a bad idea to give this one a go.