Rick Dangerous - Memories

Back in the late 80's, Core Design were a brand new, small and unknown development company based in Derbyshire, England. Rick Dangerous was their first original game design, although they had also signed with Telecomsoft to also convert the Sega coin-op Action Fighter.

Within Telecomsoft, we all knew that Rick Dangerous was a good, fun game. It wasn't doing anything new but it was tongue-in-cheek and it was a game genre (arcade platform) that had faded from view in the years leading up to Rick D's release.

The Rick Dangerous character and scenario was obviously inspired by a certain movie series. It was also a small taste of greater things to come from Core Design. For what it's worth, my pet-theory is that Rick Dangerous is the real father of Tomb Raider, Lara Croft!

For a change, the Telecomsoft Marketing department had decided to keep Rick Dangerous under their hat. It was considered to be a secret weapon in Telecomsoft's software armoury. Unfortunately, the game wasn't released until after the sale to Microprose, and the new owner's Marketing department were more used to promoting military flight simulators than fun arcade platform games. It didn't affect sales of the game, but I'm sure the Telecomsoft approach would have been much more light-hearted and far less serious than the approach that was ultimately taken for the box artwork and box content. Having said that, they did produce some T-shirts that had Rick Dangerous on the front and This man is dangerous! on the back.

You can see the discrepancy in the approach by comparing the comic book and the box artwork to the instructions and then to the game itself. The game is quite jovial and cartoony, as are the instructions on the reverse of the poster. However, the comic book and the box artwork are far too serious in comparison.

The game received excellent coverage in the computer press, with a number of reviewers commenting on how much fun it was. The difficulty level was set just about right, and the micky-take approach was appreciated. There's no way you could keep a straight face when you heard the waaah! whenever a foe was defeated.

If left alone, the title screen would switch to the high score table and back again. One suggestion made by someone in the Development department (admittedly quite late in the day development-wise) was that once every so often, the title screen should return to show the aftermath of the dynamite having gone off! It would have been quite funny to see Rick with frizzled hair and burnt face!

A year later the inevitable sequel was published under the MicroStyle label, after the Firebird label had been retired by Microprose. The uninspiring title was Rick Dangerous 2. The sequel was obviously a lot 'flasher' then the original! ;-)