Riddle of the Sphinx

About Riddle of the Sphinx

Riddle of the Sphinx (1982) is Bob Smith's Atari 2600 adventure for Imagic in which an Egyptian prince gathers offerings to lift Anubis's curse, a puzzle-driven game inspired by San Jose's Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum.

Riddle of the Sphinx in Depth

Played from a top-down, vertically scrolling view, it casts the player as an Ancient Egyptian prince appeasing the gods with offerings found across the map. Anubis has cursed the land, filling it with scorpions and thieves, which the prince fends off with a rock sling. He grows thirsty, moving slower and throwing rocks shorter distances, until he refills at an oasis. Items in his inventory are selected and used with the second controller, and his inner strength, elapsed time, thirst and wounds are displayed using combinations of the 2600's colour and difficulty switches.

Nomad traders buy and sell items, temples of Anubis and Isis can help or harm, and landmarks include a sphinx, a phoenix, a pyramid and the Temple of Ra. On higher difficulties, landmarks only grant passage when given particular items, and riddles in the manual hint at what each requires. Solving a final riddle allows the last offering at the Temple of Ra, ending the game.

Making Riddle of the Sphinx

Smith, who had made Video Pinball at Atari and worked on an unreleased Dungeons & Dragons 2600 game there, co-founded Imagic in 1981 with Rob Fulop and Dennis Koble. Riddle of the Sphinx was his second Imagic game after Star Voyager. He had written a kernel, the core code that feeds graphics to the 2600's TIA chip, that let enemies move down the screen while projectiles moved up, and built the game around it. It was released in the US in August 1982 alongside Fire Fighter, and in the UK before Christmas. Critics enjoyed its complexity and focus on puzzles over action: Electronic Games found the puzzles "challenging" though lacking replay value and gave it a certificate of merit for Best Adventure Videogame behind Pitfall!, The Space Gamer called it a "masterful" blend of strategy and arcade play, and JoyStik called it "one of the most elaborate quest/adventure games ever created". Vidiot, however, complained about its obtuse riddles.