Genre: 2d platformer
Developer: Core Design
Publisher: Microplay Software

Rick Dangerous is one of those games that lives and dies by its cute little tile art-- and alive it is, with adorable fuzzy-headed Amazonians, sphinx heads, spikes, and other sources of death. This Atari ST rendition is one of the versions to get the very highest quality graphics, and they are both colorful and razer sharp.

As one of a few PSG-based platforms to get this game, this is the only of those iterations to have fully digital sound effects. The various gun shot, dynamite explosion, and baddie dying sounds are shared with the Amiga version, and they sound excellent. As for the small handful of songs in the game, their humorous nature actually benefits from the PSG, versus the sampled representations on the aforementioned Amiga.

Rick Dangerous sees the player traversing tricky platforming screens, while straight-up memorizing the exact routes through each mini-scenario. The player can walk, jump, crawl, fire bullets, and drop dynamite. The entire game must be completed with only six lives, making management of ammunition and dynamite crucial! The physics are good, but it's a shame the stages are so trial-and-error oriented.

As an unholy marriage between Lode Runner and Montezuma's Revenge, Rick Dangerous is proof that a game doesn't need to follow good fundamentals to be addicting, as it ruthlessly taunts the player: just one more go, you can get just that little bit further, or increase that high score another hundred points! Like today's "Souls" games, there is a nice satisfaction that comes from mastery. But in this case one can just as easily wish for a parallel game, using the same engine, but featuring more conventional platformer stage design.