Ludography
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Critics1 review
Dynamite Dan cover

1985 · Platformer

Dynamite Dan

The game starts where Dan lands his airship on the top of the evil Dr Blitzen's hideout. The aim of the game is to find eight sticks of dynamite that are placed randomly around the playing area whilst avoiding the perils of the game such as moving monsters, drowning and falling from great heights. Once Dan has all eight sticks of dynamite, the player must make their way to the central safe to blow it open and steal the plans for the evil doctor's Death Ray and escape to his airship.

Released
1985
Platforms
Amstrad CPCCommodore 64Commodore C64/128/MAXMSXZX Spectrum
Genres
Platformer
Developers
—
Publishers
Mirrorsoft
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
Side view
Themes
Action
Country
United Kingdom
Languages
English

About

Dynamite Dan is a platform game written by Rod Bowkett for the ZX Spectrum and published by Mirrorsoft in 1985. It was ported to the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and MSX.

A sequel, Dynamite Dan II, was released the following year.

Keywords

  • robots
  • mad scientist
  • flip screen

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The game starts where Dan lands his airship on the top of the evil Dr Blitzen's hideout. The aim of the game is to find eight sticks of dynamite that are placed randomly around the playing area whilst avoiding the perils of the game such as moving monsters, drowning and falling from great heights. Once Dan has all eight sticks of dynamite, the player must make their way to the central safe to blow it open and steal the plans for the evil doctor's Death Ray and escape to his airship.

The playing area is one large building split up into multiple screens that wrap around a central elevator. Each screen contains a number of moving monsters that, once the player moves into them, are destroyed but take off a life in return. The only exception to being destroyed once walked into are Dr Blitzen and his assistant Donner (Donner and Blitzen) who are both located on the same screen as the safe. Other perils to Dan's life include running out of energy (caused by not collecting enough food, falling from heights and being hit by laser beams). If Dan should also fall into the underground river that flows beneath the building, the player will receive a game over unless Dan had picked up oxygen, in which case they will be sent back to the start of the game.

Reception

The readers of Crash magazine voted it the best platform game of the year. The ZX Spectrum version was voted the 24th best game of all time in a special issue of Your Sinclair magazine in 2004.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Amstrad CPC31 December 1985Europe
Commodore C64/128/MAX31 December 1985Europe
ZX Spectrum31 December 1985Europe
MSX31 December 1986Europe

Editions and related releases

Followed by
Dynamite Dan II

Games like this

Collections3 collections

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