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...
| GAME FILES | ||
| Rick 1: | Go to the site | Direct download |
| Rick 1 de-corruption program: | Direct download | |
| Rick 1, hackable versions: | Direct download | |
| Rick 2: | Go to the site | Direct download |
These downloads from Totochfly's Abandonware site will require the file extension to be changed from .PC to .ZIP - I can only suspect that Lycos France doesn't allow .ZIP files on its servers.
A word of warning: this particular download of Rick 1 is Spanish, and will show up as "Packed file is corrupt" when run. Fortunately, the problem was solved by Frank Jackelen who sent me a file which unpacks the game properly. Download it, then make sure both loadfix.com and rick.bat are in the Rick 1 directory. Run rick.bat and the problems are sorted! Cheers, Frank!
Erm... let's just say you'll only need an emulator if you're one of those hardcore anorak Linuxophiles who absolutely refuse to recognise or use anything made by Mafia$oft. And, in fact, even that isn't true now, for Rick 1 at least! (You'll see what I mean on a different page...)
So, for these people, you'll need a DOS emulator, and I haven't a clue how to get one or where to get it, because I don't need one!
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 ready-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 best solution is, you have to crack the game yourself - the Hex Codes section below will explain this.
The PC versions contain the standard will-it-work-or-won't-it cheat. 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 or Hyde Park.
On Rick 2, typing TRUEFAITH during gameplay will give Rick infinite ammo and lives. This is not invulnerability: Rick will still die as normal when shot, stabbed, run over or electrocuted (etc.) Cheers to Kilian Hekhuis for this one.
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):
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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...
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debug
nmain.exe l e 9caf 05 e d7ed eb e d824 90 90 90 w q |
Cheats for Rick 1 and 2 can be implanted by implanting the following hex code. There's an explanation of how to use them on this page. Big cheers to Kilian Hekhuis for explaining to me how these work!
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 000153D4h 000153E1h 000153EEh 00015426h 00015433h 00015440h 0001544Dh |
18 25 2C 2D 18 25 2C 2D |
48 50 4B 4D 48 50 4B 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 0001B73Ch 0001B749h 0001B756h 0001B78Eh 0001B79Bh 0001B7A8h 0001B7B5h |
18 25 2C 2D 18 25 2C 2D |
48 50 4B 4D 48 50 4B 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 00009C08h 0000988Eh 00009893h |
83 3E 75 06 83 3E 75 03 |
C7 06 00 90 C7 06 00 90 |
| Speed up game |
00009D0Eh 00009D13h |
75 FB 74 FB |
90 90 90 90 |
| Speed up game even more |
00009D31h 00009D36h |
75 FB 74 FB |
90 90 90 90 |
The EGA/VGA version of Rick 2 has exactly the same graphics as the Atari ST and Amiga versions, so I've only included the CGA screenshots. You'll see the alternative title screen for Rick 2 if you die in the Ice Caverns of Freezia.
Rick 1 comes with CGA or EGA graphics: CGA is four colours as for Rick 2, EGA is 16 colours but sticks to a standard Mafia$oft pallette, so the browns and oranges of the ST and Amiga versions are replaced by red, maroon and yellow, for instance. It still looks very different, so I've included EGA screenshots as well.
Hit the thumbnail to see a full-size version of the screenshot.
| RICK 1 TITLE SCREEN (CGA) | SOUTH AMERICA | EGYPT | SCHWARZENDUMPF CASTLE | MISSILE BASE | ||
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| RICK 1 TITLE SCREEN (EGA) | SOUTH AMERICA | EGYPT | SCHWARZENDUMPF CASTLE | MISSILE BASE | ||
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| RICK 2 TITLE SCREEN (CGA) | RICK 2 TITLE SCREEN (ALTERNATIVE COLOURS) | HYDE PARK | THE ICE CAVERNS OF FREEZIA | THE FORESTS OF VEGETABLIA | THE ATOMIC MUD MINES | THE FAT GUY'S HEADQUARTERS |
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