Pyramid Adventures Episode 1: Treasures of the Lost Pyramid

Pyramid Adventures Episode 1: Treasures of the Lost Pyramid
Developer: Animation Magic Publisher: Compact Disc Incorporated Platforms: CD-i, CD-i Digital Video Cartridge Released in US: 1996 This game has a hidden developer message. This game has hidden developer credits. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused cinematics. This game has unused sounds.

In the first (and only) installment of Pyramid Adventures, cool kid Dash Daniels is spending his Summer vacation in Egypt, exploring the Lost Pyramid with his cat Mozart and his aunt Olivia Pitt. Suddenly, Olivia is captured by the evil pharaoh Antu! It's up to Dash to free his aunt and stop Antu, as well as learning about nutrition and how to eat healthy along the way.

This game was made by Animation Magic, the same people as those CD-i Zelda games, and was probably made alongside them given the game's copyright date of 1993 and the fact that Dash and Link share the exact same VA and voice. It's also extremely rare, as it was a promotional giveaway by the National Cancer Institute.

Due to its rarity, the game went widely unnoticed (and believed to have been unreleased) until November 28, 2019, when YouTube user Dopply uploaded a captured video of the game's opening cutscene. Of course, because of the team behind the game, Pyramid Adventures memes and YTPs sprang forth.

Alternate Intro

Used	Unused

In the final version of Pyramid Adventures, the intro cutscene is a MPEG video file that's played via the Digital Video Cartridge expansion. Hidden within the CD data, though, is an earlier version of the intro that's stored in the same format as most of Animation Magic's cutscenes. As a result, this early version has no compression whatsoever and doesn't need the DVC to play, and was most likely the original intro before it was decided to have the game require the accessory.

On the downside, this early intro features several animation errors and missing things that were addressed in the final version:

• The early intro's background stays stationary, but somewhat makes up for it with a border. The final moves the background around when the camera changes, at the cost of the border.
• The color palette was tweaked. Things like Yam's dress and Dash's overalls were lightened up considerably for the final game, and Tofu's pink usekh was changed to be more purple.
• One of the yellows in the early intro's palette is an erroneous purple. This affects things such as Mozart's eyes and Yam's jewelry. In addition, one of the pinkish-purples is a orange, which affects Antu's lip highlights.
• In the early intro, Dash's hair and hat change color to orange and purple when he first sees Yam. This was fixed in the final cutscene, mostly - Dash's hat still changes color for a single frame.

(Source: LuigiBlood)

Unused Sounds

The accompanying audio for the early intro cutscene is also in the CD data. Compared to the final version, it's split into multiple chunks, lacks sound effects and music, and has a lower sample rate.

Dash saying "Bogus, I don't have enough gold!". This line is said by a completely different voice actor, which might have been the reason why it wasn't used.

Development Text

A list of debug and error strings can be found at 0x1E980 in the file pyrgame:

No next action after phase list end!
No action to initiate for actor %d
Predicate (%d) not checked
Effect (%d) not performed
Can't allocate soundmap number %d

!!! AC_ERROR
!!!SM_OUT ERROR

BEGIN init_fmv_video
error on open ma_path %s
error on create ma_map_id
error on open mv_path
error on create mv_map_id
error on mv_selstrm
error on mv_borcol
error on mv_org
show_picture: mv_pos failed
show_picture: mv_window failed
show_picture: mv_pos failed
show_picture: mv_window failed
END init_fmv_video

START PLAY ANIMATION %d
Could not open %s  errno = %d
Try playing %s

dc_wrfct(A) failed
dc_wrfct(B) failed
error on mv_trigger
error on ma_trigger
mv_cdplay failed   error %d
ma_cdplay failed   error %d

seek failed
ss_play failed
dc_wrfct(A) failed
dc_wrfct(B) failed
DONE PLAY ANIMATION %d
error on mv_trigger reset in show_picture
error %d on ma_trigger
MPEGA SIGNAL $%x
UNKNOWN SIGNAL $%x
x1 %d  y1 %d  x2 %d  y2 %d   size %d x %d
could not display window, mv_show failed
NIL IMAGE!!!

Food '%s' does not exist!
Picture for food #% does not exist!
Picture for food '%s' does not exist!
Food '%s' does not exist!

There is no behaviour for enemy "%s"

Plane A memory
Plane B memory
System RAM memory
VRAM memory
Video memory for plane A
Video memory for plane B
System RAM memory
VRAM memory
Rest of plane A memory
Rest of plane B memory

ERROR %d: lack of %s

out of memory allocating %s
out of memory allocating file %s
%d: can't open file %s
%d: can't open directory %s
file %s has invalid label

ERROR %d: out of %s allocating %s
out of %s allocating %s
lack memory for file %s %d bytes long
invalid ID %d for file %s

Lisa Simpson?

In addition, located at 0x21A6A is a file path that has an unusual name for its root directory and/or hard drive, which repeats multiple times in a row:

LISA_SIMPSON:PYRAMID:SRC:maze.c
null.
f:%s, l:%d

A similar, shorter list for another source code script can be found at 0x227B9:

LISA_SIMPSON:PYRAMID:SRC:phases.c
null.
f:%s, l:%d

Copyright/Bibliographic Text

			Treasures of the Lost Pyramid

Producer 			-- Dale DeSharone
Script				-- Jack Sughrue
Programmers 		-- Igor Babaev
					--
					--
Graphic Design 		-- 
Video Production 	-- Animation Magic, Inc.
Audio Production 	-- 
Music   			-- 

An unfinished list of people who worked on the game is stored in the file "BIBLIOGRAPHIC".

Treasures of the Lost Pyramid 
Copyright (c) 1994 
Philips Interactive Media of America
All rights reserved.

No part of this disc may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.

This copyright message can be found in the file "COPYRIGHT".