I'll start out by saying that no one has an excuse to miss out on Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. THQ and developer Eurocom went out of their way to make sure that people without a Zelda on their console had the ability to play something just about as good by releasing the game on PS2 and Xbox in addition to the GameCube. On initial release many critics enjoyed the game as evident with its 78-80% rating on GameRankings. Fortunately, the game did receive a nice run so tracking down a copy today shouldn't be that hard and should only cost you three to five bucks. I know what you're saying now. "So with a multiplatform release, good reviews, and a non-Sega-like printing run what went wrong?" Honestly, I don't know. Sphinx had every element it needed to succeed, but just didn't take off with a mass audience.

Taking place in a cartoon fantasty reimagining of ancient Egypt, Sphinx introduces the player to the game's world through two very different playable characters: first, a lion tailed demi-god named Sphinx and a slap stick depiction of Prince Tutankhamen. Through a few twists of fate, the pair meets each other across realms (realities?), find that they share a common goal and start an adventure that brings them face to face with Set, the desert god of storms and chaos.

Most of the game is played through the eyes of Sphinx. The easiest way to describe his functionality, controls and abilities is to compare him to Legend of Zelda's Link. He starts the game with simple weaponry and small set of abilities, then through a series of dungeons and temples gains new powers and tools that allow him to explore his world even further, also he doesn't really talk to a lot of people. Sounds familiar right? As "been there, done that" as it sounds, the game does a great job of keeping level design fresh while incorporating Egyptian themes you know will never show up in Zelda. I won't say that all of Sphinx's powers are totally unique, since many of them share the exact same use and functionalities as Link's counterparts, but I will say that the game's puzzles and progression should make any Zelda fan feel right at home.

Observant readers will have no doubt started to wonder why the game is called "Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy" when I haven't made a single mention of a Mummy yet. This is where the game's comic relief comes in: Prince Tutankhamen. On just another day during his relaxing reign, the Prince becomes the target of a dark sorcerer's spell. The curse drains his body of "life" and puts it into a series of vases. When the vases are transported into the world of the gods, it's up to Sphinx to find the vases and deliver them to the Prince through an inter-dimensional portal. With each bit of life returned to the Prince, his range of abilities is increased to perform tasks in his world to help Sphinx locate Set.

This is where the game really shines. While Sphinx's Link impersonation acts as a good entry into the game's story, the real appeal of the game quickly becomes the challenges that the Prince will face in trying to achieve his goals. Due to the Prince's Mummy nature, he can't exactly fight foes like Sphinx. Instead, his sequences are centered on puzzle and stealth gameplay done up with a hint of Tim Burton's macabre humor. Playfully toying with the concept of an undead hero, many of the solutions to the Prince's puzzles involve him suffering excruciatingly painful stunts. For example, in one dungeon the Prince is trapped at the bottom of the catacombs. A series large barred entrance stands between him and his goal but without a key he can't open the door. Nearby in a long hallway there's a trap that will cause the walls to come together and crush anything that steps on the booby trapped floor. No longer fearing death, the undead Prince steps on the booby trap and is flattened like a pancake for a short time, but long enough to run back to the gates and slip right between the bars of the catacomb's entrance. Other puzzles will have the Prince light himself on fire in order to transport fire (talk about flamers!), cut himself into bits, and electrocute himself to power machinery all in effort to solve a bunch of puzzles.

As I replayed the game recently, I realized that there are a few things that separate this game from the level of quality that one would expect from an entry in the Zelda series. There's a ton of dialog and it's rarely presented with voice over (not that a Zelda fan won't be used to that). The game also sports some rough models and frame rate issues on the PS2 version. None of the game's minor issues impact gameplay too much. But at the same time there are even a few things that are present in Sphinx that Nintendo and Capcom would attempt them in some form or another down the road. The shift in gameplay perspective is the most obvious one. Before Link would leap into the dark world with Midna and transform into a wolf, Sphinx had already played with the concept of using different types of playable characters to alter levels for each other (combat based vs. puzzle based player types), and in my mind presented this better than Twilight Princess. Unlike that game, Sphinx uses the player type to communicate the level's goal and gameplay focus before exploring the first room. When you enter a level as Sphinx, you know that it will be more action based. When the Prince appears, you're reminded of his abilities and don't have to be told to use more tactical methods.

Similar to Metal Arms, Sphinx ends on one of the most tantalizing cliffhangers ever. I won't spoil it, but it's one of those things that got me immediately pumped for a sequel that I now know that I will never see. I suppose I should just be happy that this game got released, but the cliffhanger opens the door to something that could have made this great game even better. Even though I doubt it will happen, I really hope that someday someone at THQ grasps just how close they were to developing a distinctly non-Nintendo Zelda franchise and revives the game like just like Sphinx's undead pal. So if you're waiting for Nintendo to release the next tid bit of information about another Zelda, give Sphinx a shot. It's not the absolute best that the genre has to offer, but it's so damn so close that it's easy to forget it's not.