Ludography
Dangerous Dave cover

1988 · John Romero · Platformer

Dangerous Dave

The object of the game was to collect gold cups to move on to the next level. Since the original 1988 publishing of Dangerous Dave on UpTime, there have been three sequels and three ports of the original to other platforms.

Released
1988
Platforms
Apple IIMS-DOS
Genres
Platformer
Developers
John Romero
Publishers
Softdisk
Series
Dangerous Dave
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
Side view
Country
United States

About

Dangerous Dave is a 1988 platform game by John Romero. It was developed for the Apple II and MS-DOS as an example game to accompany his article about his GraBASIC, an Applesoft BASIC add-on, for the UpTime disk magazine.

Keywords

  • pixel art
  • digital distribution
  • cga graphics
  • leaderboard
  • trophies
  • on-site procurement
  • warp zone
  • male protagonist

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The object of the game is to collect gold trophies to move on to the next level. Since the original 1988 publishing of Dangerous Dave on UpTime, there have been three sequels and three ports of the original to other platforms.

The idea for Dangerous Dave came to John Romero under the influence of Super Mario. There are similarities between the two games, such as the secret levels, the level design, the monsters, and the jumping. According to Romero, he was "on purpose trying to make a Mario game". The mission is to guide Dave through ten levels, collecting trophies in the hideout of his enemy, Clyde. Romero says that among all Dangerous Dave sequels Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion is "the best Dave ever created".

Reception

Dangerous Dave's Risky Rescue was reviewed in 1993 in Dragon #200 by Sandy Petersen in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Petersen gave the game 2 out of 5 stars.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Apple II1 October 1988Worldwide
MS-DOS31 December 1990Worldwide

Editions and related releases

Included in
Dangerous Dave Champion's Edition
Ported as
Dangerous Dave GS

Games like this

Collections1 collection

Platform libraries

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.