A 1997 Saturn tech demo of Knowledge Adventure’s edutainment title Pyramid: Challenge of the Pharaoh’s Dream was identified, preserved, and traced back to developer Alexander Ehrath.
Key Takeaways
The CD-R disc, undocumented on Sega Retro’s 300+ unreleased Saturn game pages, survived intact and booted cleanly after 29 years.
Developer was identified via a hand-signature on the disc matched to MobyGames, then confirmed through Ehrath’s own YouTube dev history series.
The demo is a partial port: D-pad pointer, Z-button object pickup, L/R scrolling, and A-button voice clips work, but the cistern interaction is unimplemented.
Ehrath confirmed a publisher was exploring console ports of edutainment titles; tools he built for Pyramid were shopped to other publishers but never shipped.
Two files on disc: main executable 0 dated 1997-03-24 and custom archive TEST.MME dated 1997-03-23; Ghidra decompilation exposed the primary game loop and control code.
