The Maya were the authors of some of the most artistic and intellectual works of pre-Columbian America. Developing out of the fertile culture of the Olmecs, a people that spread across the Mexican highlands and along the Pacific coast as far as Guatemala during the first millennium B.C., the Mayan civilization reached its peak between 250 and 950 A.D. Through military conquest, the Maya created an enviable empire with a centralized form of government that eventually controlled a vast area of central America including what is today Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador plus parts of southern Mexico. Their mathematical and astronomical skills were equal to , or exceeded, that of European cultures during the same period and they remained a significant cultural force in the new world until the Spanish, under Hernando Cortez, arrived in 1526.

Legend states that of all the Mayan cities constructed during their golden age, the finest was El Dorado. It was in El Dorado that the artistic and architectural grandeur of the Maya reached its zenith. So grand a treasure was this city that the Maya endeavored to conceal its location; preserving it from all foreign eyes forever. Our monarch Richard sets forth on a journey to a strange and foreign land, the land of the Maya, to search for El Dorado, the Lost City of Gold.