And I've been doing it ever since. My dad bought me this in the spring of 2000. To cut to the chase, this game is about building cities in ancient Egypt. In my opinion, the fun in playing games is about doing things that you can't do in real life, and city-building in ancient Egypt is a good example of one of those things. You will start by building some humble cottages and maybe even a well for your people. You will have to provide food, water, entertainment, health care etc., and as you do so, your city will evolve. If you need more money, you can build a tax collectors office. You decide how much tax the people are going to pay. Low tax will make you poor but popular (at least for a while), and high tax will make you richer but less popular. But then again, money is needed to make the city better. As your city gets bigger and better, you might even consider building the ultimate construction in the game: The Pyramid(!) If you're not interested in history now, I almost guarantee you will be after playing this game. I can't think of a game that has given me more hours of fun than this. Oh wait, the other games in Sierra's City Building series actually have: "Caesar", "Caesar II", "Caesar III", "Caesar IV", "Master of Olympus - Zeus", "Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom" are all made with this same great city-building-recipe as Pharaoh. All highly recommended (including expansions). The other games I listed are set in Rome (Roman Empire), Greece and China respectively.