Egypt: The Gaming Battleground

How many of us, when playing a genuinely great game, stop to think about where it’s set? Sometimes, granted, it’s obvious. There are no prizes for guessing the intended geography of ‘Prince of Persia’, and if you’ve enjoyed the most recent ‘Spider-Man’ console game you’d have definitely noticed that you were swinging around a stunningly detailed depiction of New York City. But what about games where the action is more important than the location? Where you notice that the surroundings look pretty, but you’re not instantly able to place them?

Would it surprise you to know that a lot of them are actually set in Egypt?

When you take a moment to think about it, it’s actually a land that lends itself very well to fantasy. Something about Egypt – and especially ancient Egypt – appeals to the history student in all of us. The grand fixtures and fittings of the old world, with the Pyramids, the Pharaohs entombed within them, and all the grand temples creates a sense of wonder that’s been used again and again in entertainment. Ever since Howard Carter opened the tomb of Tutankhamen back in the 1920s, we’ve been excited by the thought of buried treasure, and the curse of the mummy.

Ancient Egypt has been used as the window dressing for a number of genres and mediums. The creators of ‘Stargate’ borrowed from it heavily to make their science fiction TV series. Indiana Jones visited it in the ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ movie. Another form of gaming – specifically gambling – uses Egypt as the setting for a whole slot games website featuring a variety of games based on the icons and legends of the land. There are titles based on Tutankhamen himself, Cleopatra, the Eye of Horus and many more. Not all of the video games that have used Egypt as a backdrop do it as directly as Egypt Slots does, but they still chose this land of magic and wonder as their setting.

Here are four big name video games that you might not remember were actually set in Egypt.

Assassin’s Creed Origins

Any time a new game gets released in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, it’s a big deal. The well-established series of games has been adapted and re-imagined as a movie, which is always a sign that things are going well. The movie may have been set in Spain, but the ‘Origins’ entry in the video game series chose Egypt.

If you’d somehow missed that you were in Egypt during this game, you must have been playing it wrong. It’s completely integral to the entire plot, and it’s beautifully realized; one of the joys of the game is exploring the faithfully recreated Ancient Egyptian open world on horseback. Set at a time of conflict between the Empires of Rome and Egypt, the role of the titular Assassin is to defend the crumbling Egyptian hierarchy against the incursions from the Romans, whilst developing and establishing a Brotherhood of Assassins both at home and abroad. There’s a lot to do, if you can persuade yourself to stop admiring the scenery and get on with the game!

Duke Nukem 3D

Who remembers this classic first person shooter from 1996? It was a definitive classic on the first ever PlayStation, and such is the enduring popularity of the game that it’s still getting ported and patched up now. A version for the XBox 360 was made available in 2008, it became playable in the iPhone in 2009, and a 20th anniversary ‘World Tour’ edition was released for the PS4 in 2016. The ‘World Tour’ features a whole new fifth level for the game, written by the creators of the original, and in all the excitement of playing it you might have been forgiven for forgetting where you were.

That’s right, Duke pays a visit to Egypt during his World Tour. As it turns out, the aliens managed to make it all the way to the land of the Sphinx, as any good tourist would. They’ve found their way to the Great Pyramid of Giza, and Duke’s got to get them out of there before they do anything nasty with it. Not blowing it up in the process is a bonus, too.

Tomb Raider (almost all of them)

It goes without saying that if you’re going to make a video game about an archaeologist who raids tombs, that archaeologist is going to visit Egypt at some point. Where else would all the best tombs be, after all? Only the most dedicated fans of the series, though, are likely to notice just how many times Lara Croft went back there.

The final level of the original game takes place in Egypt. Beyond that, she’s back in Egypt in ‘Tomb Raider: Gold’, ‘Tomb Raider: Shadow of the Cat’, ‘Tomb Raider: Anniversary’ and ‘Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation’. If it turns out there’s no fresh buried treasure to be discovered or tombs to be excavated in Egypt, it’s because Lara Croft finally got around to all of them!

Double Dragon 3

Anybody who played the Sega Genesis, or visited a game arcade in the late 80s or early 90s, will be familiar with the ‘Double Dragon’ franchise of side-scrolling beat-em up games. This was the era of ‘Final Fight’, ‘Streets of Rage’ and many derivatives, but ‘Double Dragon’ was the original and, arguably, the best of its type.

Strangely, American brothers Billy and Jimmy – the title characters of the game – seem to expand their knowledge and interest base quite a lot as the franchise progresses. In the beginning, it was all about saving Billy’s girlfriend Marian from the Black Warriors gang. By the third game, they’re in Egypt trying to track down some sacred stones, which will enable them to become the world’s greatest fighters. This is despite the fact that the most precious of all the stones is specifically named as the Rosetta stone, which was mostly used to aid translation. Maybe becoming bilingual will improve the fighting prospects of Billy and Jimmy? Who knows.

There are other games out there which make use of Egypt, including several entries in the ‘Call of Duty’ series, ‘Overwatch’, ‘OutRunners’, ‘Timelapse’, ‘Strider’ and several more. So next time you’re engrossed in your favorite game, pause for a moment and look at the skyline of your virtual world, to see if you can spot a Pyramid. You might have found yet another entry in the list!