Dangerous Dave in the Deserted Pirate's Hideout!

The Good
In the late 80s, a group of programmers got together and formed a company called Softdisk. Their aim was to make good quality shareware titles that could sell the most copies than any other title. Three years later, one programmer named John Romero wrote a game for them under the title of Dangerous Dave.

In Dangerous Dave, you control a guy named Dave, a person who looks like a pizza delivery guy, who is held in a dungeon consisting of ten sections. Your mission is to collect the ten trophies and get out alive. Once you get each trophy, you can exit through the wooden door. You can't exit through the door if you haven't got the trophy already. You can tell whether you have it if it says "Go thru the door" and a trophy appears on each side of it. Some trophies appear out of reach, and to help you get them, you can pick up jetpacks that allows you to fly to them. The funny thing about getting the trophy is when it is located at the edge of the screen, I go back and forth locations just to make the sound distorted.

You have four lives and an extra life is awarded every 20,000 points. To help you get that extra life, you can grab the gems, rings, and crowns that are scattered through several levels. There is also four warp zones that you have to find yourself that contain some goodies. Whether or not you find these warp zones, the game will tell you about them when you get to the end.

Enemies such as red suns, UFOs, WeirdWeeds, FearsomeFire, and WickedWater, appear in some levels. The UFOs and red suns rotate in a circle, try to stop you from reaching a trophy, and shoot yellow comets at you. Fortunately enough, you can use a gun found in the level to shoot the bastards, and your gun has unlimited bullets. The rest of the enemies you can't shoot, in which case you have to either jump over them or use your jetpack if there are groups of them. There are also invisible platforms in the later levels that can land you in trouble. The best way to know whether which platform, or parts of a platform, are invisible is to do some trial-and-error yourself so you get the idea about the platforms you jump over.

While the jetpack is handy for getting across many obstacles, you only have a limited supply of fuel. So make sure you can jump to your destination area before using the jetpack. This is the first game in the Dangerous Dave Series, and this game is not like the four games that follow it. This game does not have you kill zombies unlike the future games.

The Bad
This game is very difficult to get around, but with a little bit of practice and enough knowledge of each level, and you have no worries getting through all of the 10 levels. To prove this, you cannot use cheats and you cannot save the game.

Also, it's very likely that you'll accidentally lose a life by doing something stupid. For example, crashing into an enemy or jumping when there is a yellow comet flying straight at you. I remember using a jetpack for long periods of time since you have to in some levels, and then falling because I ran out of fuel. I suggest you do have as many lives as possible when you get to later levels in case you most likely to make a mistake. The maximum number of lives you can get is four, no more.

Another thing that annoyed me is that in level five, you have to use a jetpack to get over some dangerous areas. Sometimes, when I get to level five later, the jetpack does not appear where it should be, so I had to rely on my perfect jumping skills to get through this level. This did not happen in later levels though.

Although the game feature basic VGA graphics for its time, it doesn't feature Sound Blaster support, like some games that were released in its time.

It took me days, possibly weeks, to get through all levels without making a mistake. And when I did, I was very proud of myself.

The Bottom Line
So in conclusion, no access to cheats or save feature make this game indeed quite a challenge. Expect to make a few mistakes here and there but try not to avoid losing lives too much. ***

The Good
Well, it's fun! It's got cool gameplay and weird secret levels, and it's one of the first games I ever played on my XT.

The Bad
The graphics are very simplistic, the sound effects can drive you mad not to mention the extreme difficulty of actually completing the game.

The Bottom Line
A cool game you probably won't like.

The Good
The sound was totally rad. I never knew my machine could make those noises! Every time I jumped there would be a weird noise coming out of the computer. I never knew people could make noises by jumping. Then again, I never saw a person jump ten feet straight up in the air. Or giant rupies floating in the... ah, nevermind.

The Bad
I wasn't foolish enough to try and get those gems floating next to the water. I don't know anybody that would, as it would mean instant death. Or would it?

The Bottom Line
It's like Super Mario with guns and stuff.

The Good
It's just so much fun to play. And there's the option to change the graphics from o.k. VGA graphics to annoying EGA graphics to the weird CGA graphics (all of them have their own charm!). Easy controls, really easy controls.

The Bad
The EXTREME difficulty of actually finishing the game. Annoying sound.

The Bottom Line
Neat little game to play but not actually win! I can't belive I'm doing this, but anyway, 5/5 for Softdisk's cool 72 kb platform game.