I still remember the dusty afternoon in 2017 when I first stumbled upon what would become my obsession for the next three years. I was digging through a forgotten storage room at the University of Mexico's archaeology department, helping my professor organize decades of field notes, when my fingers brushed against a leather-bound journal tucked behind crumbling cardboard boxes. The cover had no title, just faint embossed patterns that reminded me of Aztec stone carvings. Little did I know this accidental discovery would lead me to uncover the lost PG-treasures of Aztec - artifacts so meticulously documented yet completely missing from modern archaeological databases.

That journal became my constant companion through countless library visits and field trips. Its pages contained detailed sketches of artifacts labeled with codes I'd never seen in any official catalog - "PG-12," "PG-34," "PG-78." The author, a researcher from the 1970s named Dr. Mendoza, had apparently developed his own classification system for these finds. Reading his notes felt like playing an archaeological version of those early roguelike games, where each page turn could reveal new treasures or dead ends. This was an uncommon approach in 2006 and feels even stranger today, given how popular roguelites have become. Just like in those games, every time I thought I'd hit a wall in my research, I'd restart from the beginning of Mendoza's journal and discover some clue I'd previously overlooked.

I'll never forget the morning I found the first physical evidence. Following Mendoza's cryptic directions to a site about 80 kilometers northeast of Mexico City, my team and I uncovered a stone box containing three perfectly preserved artifacts matching his "PG" classifications. The excitement was electric - we'd found what amounted to archaeological easter eggs, hidden away from mainstream scholarship for nearly half a century. Over the next two years, we would locate 47 more of these PG-classified items, though Mendoza's journal suggested there were originally at least 127 documented.

What fascinates me most about these PG-treasures isn't just their beauty or historical significance, but how they represent a different era of archaeological practice. The modern approach would either digitize everything immediately or create elaborate tracking systems, but Mendoza's method had this charmingly stubborn quality. Dead Rising doesn't do much with this one aspect of the genre, and though it's very helpful to restart the story once you think you've hit your limit at your current level, it's easy to imagine how a modern take on this game would either remove this system completely or make it more robust and interesting. Similarly, contemporary archaeology would never use such an idiosyncratic classification system today - we'd have QR codes and blockchain tracking for every artifact.

My personal favorite among the discoveries is PG-23, a jade pendant depicting Quetzalcoatl with emerald eyes that still catch the light after all these centuries. Holding it for the first time, I understood why Mendoza had become so obsessed with these particular artifacts. They weren't just historically important - they possessed an almost magical quality that made you feel connected across centuries to the artisans who created them. I've shown photos of PG-23 to at least two dozen colleagues, and every single one has had the same awestruck reaction.

The search hasn't been without its frustrations. There were months where we found nothing, following leads that went cold, spending what felt like wasted weekends digging in the wrong locations. I estimate we've invested over 2,800 hours in this project since 2017, with about 60% of that time yielding no tangible results. But much like those early gaming experiences where persistence eventually pays off, every dead end taught us something that eventually led to a breakthrough.

What keeps me going is the knowledge that we've probably only found about 40% of the complete collection Mendoza documented. Somewhere out there, buried in forgotten archives or still hidden beneath the Mexican soil, are the remaining PG-treasures of Aztec waiting to be rediscovered. And if my calculations are correct based on Mendoza's notes and our recovery rate so far, there could be as many as 73 artifacts still missing. Each represents not just an archaeological find, but a story waiting to be told - a piece of history that connects us to a civilization whose secrets we're still unraveling today.