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PlayStation Basement #75 - Cleopatra's Fortune

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on February 1st, 2020.
I hope that you are having a good weekend. Welcome back to the PlayStation Basement, a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasize the review itself. Now, let’s go!

After all of those futuristic games last month, I’ve decided to explore the past for a bit this February. Today’s game is Cleopatra’s Fortune, an arcade puzzle game from Natsume and Taito. Originally released to Japanese arcades in 1996 as Cleopatra Fortune, the game came to the Japanese Saturn in 1997 and the Japanese PlayStation in 2001. Cleopatra’s Fortune finally reached American shores in 2003 under the budget publisher, Mud Duck, handling the port by Altron. The game was also included on Taito Legends 2 for PS2, Xbox, and PC in 2007, but we’re looking further into the past than that.


The cover art for this unburied gem sure is weird in North America. Mud Duck, with all of their amazing budget and stellar graphic design, used their mighty strength to create… an incredibly generic piece of art. Showing the golden mask of Tutankhamun in front of a wall of hieroglyphics above the pyramids of Giza, this cover looks like someone found the most obvious public domain images related to Ancient Egypt and pasted them together. I really don’t get it, especially considering that the Japanese version utilized some very cute artwork showing the main character, Patoraco. Even this version has some flaws: it’s very plain and blindingly bright. At least it shows something somewhat unique though. It’s no wonder that I got this game confused with the similarly titled gambling game, Caesar’s Palace, when I was younger.

The graphics of Cleopatra’s Fortune use the cute stylings of the Japanese art with some more stock photos. The former is used for Patoraco and any other character she interacts with. Cleopatra’s Fortune is a chibi-world. The backgrounds during the actual arcade action are created through what appear to be stock photos of pyramids, palm trees, and ruins. The colors used make these backgrounds look pretty decent, at least during gameplay. You won’t exactly be staring at these images while juggling puzzle pieces. Finally, the pieces themselves are kind of in between the chibi and the realistic. Utilizing a textural look unlike the clean (perhaps overly so) sprites of Patoraco and others, blocks include stone bricks, mummies, and jewels. I kind of like how the mummies look, simultaneously cute and creepy, but none of these objects look particularly great.

As for the sound, Cleopatra’s Fortune has some good elements and some bad elements. The musick is nice; the compositions have a cool pop feel. The problem is that they basically just repeat over and over, and there’s a clear fade out and fade in. The sound effects have some good sounds: the thud when dropping a block, the little chime, and the voice of Patoraco. Overall, the sound is pretty good; I just really wish the musick didn’t plainly loop so much.


So the gameplay here is very similar to other arcade puzzle games. It is basically Tetris with a few differences. You clear lines of blocks in the same way, but there are two other block types as well. In addition to stone, which comes in single or double-slabs and in a few combinations of each, there are treasures (sarcophagi and gemstones) and mummies. Both are cleared by burying them under stone. By “bury”, I mean that you need to encircle these with stone or the edge of the screen. Mummies need to have treasures buried with them to clear. This all works pretty well and keeps with the Egyptian theme.
There’s one small problem here: when you nearly fill up the screen, the blocks seem to get stuck in place more quickly than when the board is mostly clear. Usually, you have some time to scoot things around, but I noticed that I would get screwed over while I was already losing. Other reviews I have read have mentioned this as well.
In addition to the main Arcade Mode, there is a Mystery Mode akin to things you find in a lot of other Tetris-style puzzle games. You have to accomplish an objective in a limited number of moves. Objectives can be clearing everything, clearing all gems, getting so many chains, or something similar. These start really easy but become pretty tough. There are 50 stages in total.

Cleopatra’s Fortune isn’t the most original game out there, but it really isn’t bad either. It has that small issue with the blocks but otherwise plays well, and there is a decent amount of fun to be had here. 99 levels of Arcade Mode, 50 levels of Mystery Mode, Time Attack Mode, and Versus Mode offer up a treasure-trove of things to do. I do wish that the game felt more polished in terms of localization; the dialogue in Mystery Mode is so blunt and oddly phrased. Also, the American cover art might be some of the worst ever based on what they had to work with. My friend Tyler and I both thought this was a casino game as mentioned earlier; it’s just so bland looking. I’ll take something comically weird over this cut-and-paste tour of Egypt any day. That’s really the main issue here: Cleopatra’s Fortune is more of the same. There’s nothing that really makes me want to play this over Tetris or Taito’s other puzzler, the excellent Builder’s Block. Cleopatra’s Fortune isn’t worthless, but it doesn’t amount to what the real queen’s riches may be valued at, should they ever be uncovered.

Cleopatra’s Fortune receives a Neutral.

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Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA

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