Dynamite Dan

Copyright : Mirrorsoft | Reviewed by : Corazon

Curse that Dr. Blitzen! The evil sod has snatched some top secret documents and locked them away in a safe inside his mansion. These documents must be retrieved! Who will step forward? What brave soul will risk all for fame, glory and some neat bits of important paper? What? Who? Dan Dare? Naw, too futuristic.... Rick Dangerous? pah! too pretentious... Who then?......... Did I mention we?ll need dynamite to blow open the safe? .... Who? ... Dynamite Dan? ok he?ll do.

Graphics

The graphics and animation in this game are fairly basic, with monsters following set patrol paths.

The sprites are fairly big and chunky and Dan himself looks suitably unheroic with his big belly. The mansion layout itself is pleasantly varied, with no two rooms looking even vaguely similar, which helps to ecourage the player to really explore. The most striking thing would be the very libral use of colours, make no bones about it, this game is colourful, garishly colourful.

Sound

A nice familar piano tune plays at the title screen, but thankfully turns off when play begins. The rest of the sounds in this game are as a striking as the colourschemes! When you jump, take damage, use a teleporter or find a powerup you really know about it. When you lose a life it almost feels like your CPC is telling you off, through the medium of music!

Gameplay

With the CPC platform swamped with games of this genre, it takes something pretty special to stand out from the crowd. Most people would argue that the platforming crown belongs to Software Projects? "Jet Set Willy", but Dynamite Dan comes close.

The premise is essentially the same too, you?re given a mansion of sorts to explore, it?s filled with a plethora of weird and wonderful nasties and you?re given the task of collecting a set amount of items. The big difference here is that instead of the 100+ items that JSW tasked you with locating, Dynamite Dan requires just a handful. 10 simple little sticks of dynamite, now that can?t be so hard can it? Yes it flippin? can!

Unfortunately you see, the dynamites are placed in random locations each time you play, and the foes in this game are everywhere. You will rarely find a small pathway clear of one monster or another, thus, nimble fingerwork is pretty much essential for this game. It is however, far more forgiving than most games of this nature, in that touching a monster will not result in your death. Instead, you loose a few bars of your health meter, tucked away at the bottom of your screen. If the meter completely depletes you lose one of your 9 lives, but extra lives can also be picked up on your journey.

Then we come to the master stroke of this game. Upon touching an enemy, it will be disintigrated, never to return again for the remainder of the game, plus your energy bar can be refilled by grabbing one of the many munchables spread around the map. With this touch, seemingly impossible screens can be tackled by simply going in "Rambo" style and taking out everything at the cost of some energy, or even a life or two. Be careful though, there are not enough food items around to allow too much of this behaviour. If by some miracle you suceed in your task and blow open the safe, you are still faced with returning to your handy blimp escape vehicle with the vengeful Dr. Blitzen hot on your heels!