Video Game / The Maze of the Kings

It's like House of the Dead, but with mummies!

The Maze of the Kings is a 2002 light-gun arcade game made by Sega. It notably uses the NAOMI system similar to SEGA's famous arcade shooter The House of the Dead. Despite being a light-gun on rail shooter, players actually use a staff control as the game's light gun.

It is set in Egypt where players have to blast mummies, Anubis skeletons, and other monsters on their way through pyramids and mazes.

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The Maze of the Kings provides the following tropes:

• Ancient Egypt: It takes place in modern times, but this gives way to a feeling of ancient Egypt since you fight in pyramids, mazes, and deserts.
• Attack Its Weak Point: During boss levels, hit marker rings show up for the players to shoot in order to cancel the boss' attacks. This system is similar to SEGA's arcade version of The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
• Bottomless Magazines: Rather, bottomless energy bolts coming from the staff, though players need to shoot offscreen to recharge the energy bolts.
• Dem Bones: Jackal-headed skeletons are a frequent enemy.
• Dragon Hoard: Each treasure is guarded by a gigantic boss creature, which the players have to defeat first before obtaining the treasure.
• Everything Is Trying to Kill You: As with all light gun games.
• Follow the Leader: Johnny Nero Action Hero by ICE was made to capitalize this game and its premise but mixes with elements from Namco's Time Crisis and SEGA's other game Virtua Cop.
• Gold Makes Everything Shiny
• Graceful Loser: The final boss acknowledges defeat from the two heroes once he is defeated the second time.
• Noble Demon: The final boss.
• Permanently Missable Content: Failing to grab the artifacts in a quick-time event means they're lost forever in-game.
• Randomly Generated Levels: The game's main gimmick. On every stage, aside from the boss and certain scripted moments, the rooms the player goes through are randomly selected, meaning no playthrough is quite the same as the last one.
• Shout-Out:
  • The giant floating pharaoh head boss is a direct nod to Konami's 1995 shooter Crypt Killer, in addition to the ancient Egypt theme of the game, due to SEGA and Konami being Friendly Fandoms.
  • Players sometimes may relate this game to The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, the latter only coming out in theaters the previous year.
• Raising the Steaks: Dangerous, undead animals serve as pesky enemies to the players.
• The Undead: Mummies and other undead creatures are encountered.