Tutankham is a 1982 dungeon-crawling action-adventure game by Konami, licensed in the United States by Stern Electronics. Legend has it that the game was supposed to be titled 'Tutankhamun', but the last two letters didn't fit on the arcade cabinet.
The player explores a tomb to find hidden treasure, while fending off endless waves of enemies with a laser gun which can only fire horizontally. The treasures are a map, a sacred urn, a treasure chest, and King Tut's death mask.
Though not one of Konami's more popular arcade games, it was ported by Parker Brothers to many platforms, including the Atari 2600, VIC-20, Intellivision and Colecovision. Parker Brothers also made prototype versions for the Odyssey², Atari 8-Bit Computers and TI-99 that went unreleased due to The Great Video Game Crash of 1983 that removed them from the video game industry.
Tropes:
- Adventurer Archaeologist: The player character is obviously one of these.
- Cool Gate: Warp portals in several places allow the player easy passage between the top and bottom halves of the level.
- Denial of Vertical Attack: The player can only fire to the left or right.
- Endless Game: The game loops after 16 stages.
- Everything Is Trying to Kill You
- Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Keys are one-use, though the player can only carry one at a time.
- Level-Map Display: Shown at the top of the screen in the arcade version.
- Mook Maker: Enemies spawn in droves from alcoves in the walls.
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Nintendo Hard: Good luck getting past the 2nd level. - Reformulated Game: Because it wasn't capable of smooth horizontal scrolling, the Atari 2600 version's levels instead scroll vertically. This makes the game much harder, since it keeps the left/right-shooting limitation despite your progression not being oriented in those directions.
- Smart Bomb: "Flash bombs" can be used to take out all enemies on the screen.
