Dangerous Dave

Dangerous Dave (1988) was designed by John Romero, an action-puzzle game which accompanied an article on a BASIC add-on for UpTime, a disk magazine released for multiple home computing platforms.  It was one of the earliest games John Romero programed, and created an early, minor gaming hero in the form of Dave.  The game was simple, the objective being to obtain certain items scattered through rooms full of traps.

In 1990, John Romero, John Carmack and Tom Hall, original founders of Id Software, were working for a publishing company called Softdisk.  While there, Carmack developed a way to create rapid side-scrolling graphics, a feat that had been problematic on the PC because redrawing the entire screen as it moved tended to cause significant slowdown.  Carmack had the revelation that if the largest graphical area that is on-screen in a game (the background) was a stationary image, then the game would run much faster since only small portions of the screen would have to be drawn in motion.  Putting this into action, he recreated the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3, and inserted sprites of Romero's Dangerous Dave character in place of Mario.  This demo was titled Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement, and the performance was so good they knew they had something special on their hands.  While still working for Softdisk, the team began their own private project, a full recreation of Super Mario Bros. 3 which they intended to sell to Nintendo.  However, upon seeing the demo Nintendo informed them that they had no desire to expand into the home computer market.  Fortunately for them, Scott Miller of Apogee Software discovered their work and immediately snatched the boys up, and the newly-formed Id Software began developing shareware games under the Apogee publishing label.  Their scrolling technology would be used to produce one of their first hits, Commander Keen.

Still under contract to produce games for Softdisk, however, and so to fulfill their obligations to Softdisk they released several minor titles under that label.  One of these was Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, released in 1991.  In it, Romero's character took on a new life and a personality.  A pickup-driving, shotgun-toting redneck, Dave must enter a zombie-filled mansion to rescue his little brother Delbert.  The game had a sense of humor and also a reasonable amount of blood, as killing enemies would cause them to explode into gory chunks (Monster Bash and Bio Menace by Apogee would use similar gory deaths).  Gameplay was fun and Dave's method of attack was unique: Dave's shotgun holds eight shells, but Dave has an unlimited ammo supply.  Any time you stand still, Dave will reach into his pockets and begin loading shells, if needed.  This is a slow process, so strategy and skill come into play: make your shots count, and be sure to find safe places to load up.  You can also shoot diagonally up and down, which is good as enemies will often crawl along the ceiling or floor.  Although short (the whole game is about a third the size of most Apogee-branded releases) it has charm and a solid entertainment factor.  In 1993, the game was re-released by publisher Froggman under the title Rooms of Doom, with Dave and Delbert renamed Jake and Mickey.

After this, Softdisk would release two more entries in the Dave franchise, although they would no longer be programmed by John Romero and company.  The first of these sequels, Dangerous Dave's Risky Rescue (1993), involves Dave's quest to save his brother Delbert once again, this time from the evil Dr. Nemesis.  In Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, any time an enemy killed Dave, the player would be treated to a small close-up of Dave getting attacked in comical fashion.  In Dave's Risky Rescue, the gore-factor was increased by extending these animations.  For instance, in Haunted Mansion, if a wolf attacked Dave you'd seen him get thrown to the ground by the beast.  In Risky Rescue, the animation would continue to show blood and Dave's severed head go flying.

The last game of the franchise, produced by Softdisk in 1993 (the same year as Dangerous Dave's Risky Rescue) was Dave Goes Nutz, which has Dave again seeking to rescue Delbert from Dr. Nemesis, but this time Dave has been locked up in a mental hospital filled with zombies...or are they nurses, and has Dave truly lost his mind?  Retaining the increased gore of Risky Rescue, Dave Goes Nutz continues with the dark humor of the series, yet seems much more disturbing when you place it in the context of a mental hospital.  After this title, Dave would disappear from the scene, though he has been ported to different systems.  Notably, Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion was ported to mobile devices in 2008.  Although Dave never achieved the fame of Duke Nukem, he was a precursor of things to come and part of the early history of John Romero and Id Software.