.RICK DANGEROUS RICK DANGEROUS 1 ---------------- Keys ---- O Jump K Duck Z Left X Right E Game Over P Pause/unpause Space Fire Esc Quit Keys in highscore screen ------------------------ O Up K Down Z Left X Right Space Select ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RICK DANGEROUS 2 ---------------- Keys (redefinable) ---- O Up K Down Z Left X Right Q Game Over W Pause/unpause P Fire Esc Quit ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT RICK DANGEROUS These days, PCs can be blindingly fast machines, running at over 2 GHz with 4.3 billion colours (even though the human eye can only see 30,000 or so, thus making anything over 16-bit colour useless!), producing even more blindingly fast and realistic games with the kind of graphics that ZX81 owners of 20 years ago would have said was pure science fiction. It wasn't always this way! Back in 1989 when Rick Dangerous was first released, the 16-bit machines, i.e. the Atari ST and Amiga, very definitely had the upper hand on PCs. This is very well reflected in these two games! I don't know too much about the history of PCs, but in the late 80's and early 90's the favoured machines were (presumably) 286 and 386 models, running at anything up to 25 MHz - any nerds out there will, I assume, correct me on this one, but as there were still many older XT and AT machines around, the games had to be programmed with these in mind. Consequently, it's graphically inferior to the ST and Amiga versions. Rick 1 has a choice of EGA, CGA or Tandy graphics; the CGA is a truly horrific four-colour version (nice green hair on the Goolus in South America though!), the EGA is better - it's 16 colours, like the ST and Amiga versions, but with a standard pallette so there is, for example, red and yellow where the brown and orange should be. The Tandy graphics don't work on my machine. The graphics in Rick 2 are selectable as either the nasty CGA version (though at least this time there's a different four-colour set for the Ice Caverns of Freezia... not that that's saying much...), or the 16-colour EGA/VGA version, which looks identical to the Atari ST and Amiga versions. Worse still, using the VGA version slows the game down to about half-speed, even on my 1 GHz Athlon. The sound is acceptable on Rick 2, holding its own against these two machines, but only if you have a sound card that is compatible with the Adlib drivers, and if you can get the driver program to work, which I have, once. Otherwise you're stuck with the PC speaker, which is as basic as basic gets; its single-note beeps and twiddles are music to the ears of owners of the deathly-silent ZX81, but are blown clean out of the water by a 128K Spectrum. How times have changed... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The PC version of Rick 1 uses these keys: O = up, K = down, Z = left, X = right, SPACE = fire P = pause, E = abort game, ESC = exit. Rick 2 uses a slight variation of these keys: O = up, K = down, Z = left, X = right, P = fire W = pause, Q = abort game, ESC = exit. Control keys and fire are redefinable for Rick 2, but restricted to alphabetical keys and RETURN. See the "How to play Rick Dangerous" page to see how to use Rick's arsenal of weapons. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So far, I've yet to find a hacked and cracked version of either Rick game, and there'd certainly have been no scope on ancient PC games for the intricate multi-game packages with fancy menus and extensive training modes, which were so favoured by the Amiga and ST hacking squads. What's more, there's no save-game facility either, so it's traditional cheats for everyone. The PC versions do have high score tables though, so type POOKY on the high score table for Rick 1 and you'll start again on the level you died on - once you're past South America. For the really technically minded among you, here's some hacks for the code in the game. DEBUG FILE CHEATS It is worth noting that I've never managed to make the debug commands work, though maybe that's because I run Rick from a Windoze-based Command Prompt rather than raw DOS. That may work. Still, here's how to do it. For infinite lives on Rick 1: create a text file with the following information and save it with the name RICK.DBG (actually, I've done it for you here): G266 T G37 T G9FE T ECS: 02 F3 C6 06 8C 6E 06 C3 G T Then type the following line at the command prompt: DEBUG RICK.COM < RICK.DBG For infinite lives and free level choice on Rick 2: Presumably this is the text that needs to be saved as rick2.dbg followed by the command DEBUG MAIN.EXE < RICK2.DBG - but I can't say for sure. I think those first two commands debug and nmain.exe shouldn't be in the text... debug nmain.exe l e 9caf 05 e d7ed eb e d824 90 90 90 w q HEX CODE CHEATS Cheats for Rick 1 and 2 can be implanted by typing the following hex code. Rick 1 has two files, RICK.CGA and RICK.EGA for the two graphics modes, which are encrypted files. RICK.COM unencrypts whichever file is selected and runs the game. The unencrypted versions, denoted RICKCGA.EXE and RICKEGA.EXE, which can be altered with this hex code, are given here. CHEAT ADDRESS OLD CODE NEW CODE RICKCGA.EXE - RICK 1 CGA VERSION Infinite lives 0001518Ah FE C8 90 90 Infinite bullets 00016655h FE C8 90 90 Infinite dynamite 000166C0h FE C8 90 90 Alternative controls (cursor keys & SPACE) 000153C7h 18 48 000153D4h 25 50 000153E1h 2C 4B 000153EEh 2D 4D 00015426h 18 48 00015433h 25 50 00015440h 2C 4B 0001544Dh 2D 4D RICKEGA.EXE - RICK 1 EGA VERSION Infinite lives 0001B4F2h FE C8 90 90 Infinite bullets 0001CB3Ch FE C8 90 90 Infinite dynamite 0001CBA7h FE C8 90 90 Alternative controls (cursor keys & SPACE) 0001B72Fh 18 48 0001B73Ch 25 50 0001B749h 2C 4B 0001B756h 2D 4D 0001B78Eh 18 48 0001B79Bh 25 50 0001B7A8h 2C 4B 0001B7B5h 2D 4D MAIN.EXE - RICK 2 Infinite lives 00006ADFh FF 0E 14 66 90 90 90 90 Infinite shots 00008C1Dh FF 0E 12 66 90 90 90 90 Infinite bombs 00008C1Dh FF 0E 10 66 90 90 90 90 Direct access to level 5 00009C03h 83 3E C7 06 00009C08h 75 06 00 90 0000988Eh 83 3E C7 06 00009893h 75 06 00 90 Speed up game 00009D0Eh 75 FB 90 90 00009D13h 74 FB 90 90 Speed up game even more 00009D31h 75 FB 90 90 00009D36h 74 FB 90 90