Pyramid (lost arcade game; 1979)

Manual photo taken of the screen.

Status: Lost

Pyramid (aka ピラミッドー, Piramiddo, T.S. Pyramid) was an arcade game developed and released in Japan somewhere around 1979 by the company "Sankyo". It was apparently a sequel to their previous block-breaking game Castle Take released a year prior. The game appears to be a clone of Atari's Breakout with an Egyptian theme, and that it had both upright and cocktail model cabinets.

The gaming magazine Game Machine had an article about the game's announcement in issue No. 129 on page 21, dated October 15, 1979. The magazine Weekly Famitsu issue No. 215, released January 29th 1993 wrote an extensive article on the game on page 108 in their "Arcade Maniac" section, detailing the gameplay as well as the hardware it ran on. The Japanese TV show titled Game Center CX showcased the game where the host briefly plays it until they get a game over. There was apparently a YouTube video of gameplay but has since been made private. In 2014, a user on Nicozon uploaded footage from a camcorder of the game, but unfortunately, they only recorded the game's attract mode.

The company Sankyo later shifted focus to making Pachinko machines, their website documents the history of their Pachinko machines, but nothing regarding any of their block-breaking games.

Gameplay

As previously mentioned, this title is a breakout clone with some variations. These include both horizontal and vertical blocks the player must destroy, snake-like objects that appear between the blocks and the colorful bust of King Tutankhamun, and what appears to be hieroglyphics that can only be assumed to act as an extra bumper for the ball to bounce off of. The instruction sheet shows different stages featuring graphics of birds and a stage that bricks are lined up to look like a pyramid.

Availability

While released in 1979, it is unclear how many units were produced and how common the game was in arcades, without any information it's assumed that the game was not popular enough to have a home release on any systems like the Nintendo Famicom, or any home computers that would come later. It's unknown whether the game was actually exclusive to Japan or if it had an international release, the art on the marquee appears to have been made with a western audience in mind, resembling American comic books from the 1960's and 70's.