We all know that the Philips Videopac was not the most popular of the video game systems back in the early Eighties. Due to that fact, there were no games from third party manufacturers in the first years of the system’s lifespan. It was in late 1983 when there suddenly appeared adverts that Imagic and Parker both will release games for the G7000. Those were in fact sensational news for us Videopac owners. Too long we had to look at the Atari 2600, Intellivision or Colecovision owners who played third party games on their systems – and those third party games were often the best games on those systems.
But now, Imagic and Parker! Imagic presented their mega hits Demon Attack and Atlantis (Fathom and Moonsweeper were announced for a later release). Parker presented Frogger, Super Cobra, Q*bert and Popeye for the Videopac. The Parker releases were even bigger sensations for us, as they would make it possible to play Arcade Games on our system! And they did well! Frogger with its perfectly converted gameplay! Super Cobra with the first „scrolling“ in a Videopac game! Q*bert with its great-drawn and animated characters! Popeye with the charm of its love story! Those were the games we were waiting for so long! I can remember how excited I was when my dad brought Q*bert home. The games were worth their ridiculous price of approximately 1300 Austrian Schillings (circa 95 Euros – back in the early Eighties!).
What would still be out there? Fascinating games would come to our system within the next months and years! … we thought at least. Because at the time when Imagic and Parker jumped onto the Videopac system, the coming crash was already visible at the horizon – at least in the USA. In Europe the first big video game hype was still at its peak. We didn’t ever expect that those six games were the first and last third party games for the Videopac system.
In the 1/1984 issue of the German video games magazine „TeleMatch“ was an advert of a video games dealer that I saw, but found to be an error in it. It showed Tutankham for the Philips Videopac – another arcade game for „our“ system? I had the Parker Brothers Videopac folder that had the four above mentioned games in it. Tutankham was out for 2600, Intellivision and Colecovision, but there was no Tutankham for Videopac. This ad didn’t show the 2600 version, so probably they just printed it in the wrong column, I thought.
The dealer advert in TeleMatch 1/1984 that shows Tutankham for Philips Videopac
Fast forward to the year 2003. The Philips Videopac is still not the most popular system. There are way more Atari 2600, Intellivision and Colecovision collectors out there than Videopac collectors. But there are Videopac collectors that search for each single bit of information on the world wide web. One of them, a Dutch collector, is faced with a sensation one day: Tutankham for the Philips Videopac exists! The game was finished back then, even the boxes were printed – but just at that time Parker pulled the plug of their video games division, so the Videopac version never saw the light of day. The boxes and any other stuff that might have existed for the game are lost.
I was really amazed when I heard that Tutankham for the Videopac exists! I know that many collectors believed in that dealer advert. They thought that probably Parker announced the game to dealers (they never announced it to customers). I never believed that, I just thought it was an error of that specific dealer, because the Videopac Tutankham was never announced in any other dealer ads, only in that specific one. Today we cannot say if it was an error or if this dealer had info about the development of Tutankham for Philips Videopac.
Some day the Dutch collector sent me the BIN file of Tutankham. First I couldn’t believe my eyes, then I started O2EM, then the game pulled me in a world that was there for 20 years, but noone ever had entered in the last two decades. It was an experience that I can’t describe. Never has a game fascinated me so much since I played The Seven Cities Of Gold on my 8-bit Atari in the Eighties. Tutankham is simply the best Videopac game that I ever played!
Now order a copy of our cart release and play it on your Videopac Computer, or download the game and play it on your Odyssey/Videopac emulator, and make the same experience. It’s a blast!