Dave Goes Nutz

The Good
Dave goes Nutz is the third episode of the Dangerous Dave series. Just when Dave safely rescued his little brother Delbert from Silas in the last episode, Delbert gets kidnapped again by the evil Dr. Nemesis and holds him captive not in his own haunted house, but a mental hospital.

He knows that Dave is going to destroy him and get Delbert back, so he releases an army of zombies onto him. The zombies range from trolleys with patients throwing knives at you to nurses who try to stick a syringe in you. To successfully rescue Delbert, he must kill all zombies that are scattered through nine areas and then terminate Nemesis. All Dave can use to bring down the zombies is his trusty shotgun, which might make it harder to knock them down in one shot. To do this, Dave can find special ammo that will equip him with triple shots. One good thing about the shotty is that Dave can repeatedly fire it without having to wait for it to reload. Like in Dangerous Dave 2, when you get too close to a zombie, you see how he is killed in a little window.

There are two modes: a “Wimp” mode and a “Stud” mode. The only differences between the two modes are the number of shots zombies can take before they go down. If Dave decides to go through all nine areas as a wimp, he doesn’t need to use a triple shots. On the other hand, if Dave goes through each area as a stud, it’ll be hard for him to take down Dr. Nemesis in the end. Either mode, when Dave stands still for two seconds, he huffs and puffs as some sort of monster is chasing him.

Some parts of an area may be too high for Dave to reach, so he must bounce on patients beds so that he will bounce up high, reaching the platform. Some parts of an area are guarded by one or more laser beams, so he must find a switch then pull it to deactivate the beam.

Dave exits an area by going through a door that looks a lot different to the other doors in the area, but sometimes he’ll encounter a security officer guarding an elevator. To get passed him, he must stab him with a syringe filled with green slime that he finds in that area.

At the start of the game, Dave gets four lives to start out with, and gets an extra life every time his score is up 20,000 points. He can easily achieve 20,000 by getting items in each area like pills, aspirins, poisons, bedpans, petroleum jellies, and of course, red hats. These items are visible or can remain hidden behind doors, or by smashing crates, barrels, or medicine cabinets.

The game can be saved whenever you fill like it. But by saving at the beginning of each area, and then loading the area in which you lost all your lives, will only take you back to the start of that area, just like the Apogee platform games from the early 90’s. The graphics have the same detail as Dangerous Dave 2, and the sound is almost the same as the previous game.

Adlib and Sound Blaster can be enabled from the sound options menu, but the added sound card support is nothing special. If you have a Sound Blaster, you hear Dave let out a cute “Phew!” whenever he starts at a different area. When Dave falls down from long heights, he doesn’t break his bones. Instead, he gets up and shakes his head. You don’t want to try this if a zombie is chasing you.

The Bad
I do not really have complaints about this game. Only that the screen jerks a bit when Dave moves along the screen. Also, I was disappointed at this game a bit by the fact that there is only one boss: Dr. Nemesis himself. Finally, one sound effect could have been added when Dave opens doors when playing with the Sound Blaster.

Other than this, great game. Dave goes Nutz may not work at all on a fast machine, so either run the game in Windows or disable the L1/L2 cache in the BIOS.

The Bottom Line
Remember this game is one of the games in the Dangerous Dave series. If you haven’t played Dangerous Dave 2 or the original Dangerous Dave, you should play them now. These games can get you started enjoying platform games. ***½