Previous Next

Well this it a first! Al, the office girlie, it about to embark on a journey through her very first games review. I'm absolutely crap at games playing, I get all excited one minute and muck it all up or I get angry when my man gets shot or blown up.

But fear not, this time I've managed to leave the games den in one piece after playing Firebird's latest release, Rick Dangerous. I first saw this game on the Atari ST and it looked great. And you can smack my legs if the Speccy version isn't just at good. Rick Dangerous looks ruddy marvellous.

So what's it all about then? Rick looks like a midget version of Indiana Jones and level one starts just after Rick has crashed his plane in the Amazon Jungle. Spotted by a bunch of raving mad tribesmen Rick ducks into a nearby temple to escape them, but the wiley wildmen are close on his tail.

Armed with a stick, a gun and some dynamite, Rick runs around the corridors of the temple fighting off the baddies. To shoot his gun you have to hold the fire button down and push the joystick up, no problem. But when it comes to using your stick (pushing joystick down and moving left or right) you have to poke the baddie at least twenty times before he falls over, a bit tedious though it serves at a useful lesson not to waste your ammo.

The graphics are clear and considering the amount of colour used there is virtually no attribute clash. The scrolling is very smooth and produced hardly any flicker.

You want to avoid are the pinky spikes sticking out of the ground and the masses of green lumpy stuff on the floor, which tend to merge in with the background, so be careful.

Watch out for the men blowing darts from the sides, you'll have to do a bit of ducking there. Lastly, remember if you lay some dynamite by pulling the joystick down you'd better run away from it pretty quick or it'll blast you right off the screen.

There are four levels to get through, in all and they take Rick to Egypt to help recover the priceless Jewel of Ankhel; to a PoW camp to rescue some allied soldiers, and lastly Rick takes on a bunch of soldiers preparing a missile attack on London - what a boy!

It was great fun. The graphics are really clear and the colour was put to good use. This game consists of 85 screens so it took me ages to get through the lot.

Rick may not be as hunkey as Harrison Ford but he's certainly go me hooked - ol Rick come here and give us a snog.

Great 'Indie' style adventure a definite SU fave.