Producer: Electric Dreams
Retail Price: £7.99
Author: Ram Jam Corporation

Dandy, the game that has inspired many clones, has been released by ELECTRIC DREAMS on the Spectrum. Originally written by student John Palevich for the Atari as part of his thesis, the game went on to become a major hit in the arcades under the new name of Gauntlet. ELECTRIC DREAMS have converted Gauntlet back to home computers under the original name.

The scenario remains the same as in the arcade version. The player controls one of two characters, Thor and Sheba. The idea is to penetrate deep within the dungeons pillaging treasure. The dungeons, however, are inhabited by some very nasty creatures, mostly giant spiders. When you kill all the nasties in one screen, you must then disable the control box behind them. The treasure and other useful objects are contained within separate compounds in the dungeon. In order to move between these dungeons, keys must be found.

Your character can also arm him/her self with some pretty potent spells. These are identified as lightning flashes around the game. Using these, it is possible to rid an entire screen of monsters. Also, to keep your characters energy up, various tasty titbits can be picked up along the way.

The game has a two player option. If two people are playing then each person controls one character, with the object remaining the same. The characters are viewed from above, and the action moves from screen to screen in the direction of your character. The character's status reports are at the bottom of the screen. A square box represents how much treasure has been collected, A key shows how many keys are in your possession and a lightning flash shows the number of spells safely nestled in your pouch. Between the two status charts is a small window showing which level you are on. Treasure can be traded for energy if your supplies get too low. The game is over when all the treasure has been found and all the monsters killed.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Player One: Q=up, A-down, Z=left, X-right, C-fire SPACE=Cast Spell (1 player mode), F=Cast Spell (2 player mode) A-Trade treasure for energy Player Two: P-up, L-down, N-left, M=right, B-fire, G-cast spell, T=Trade Treasure for energy 0-Pause game
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: Understandably limited
Graphics: nice shading, inclined to get a little messy
Sound: some nice spot effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: twenty screens per level. Three levels in total

Mmmm, though Dandy is a good game, I don't think that it's quite as good as Druid The graphics and colour are excellent, but the game slows down to an awful extent when there are lots of characters on screen. What the officially licensed version of Gauntlet will hold though, I don't know. We wait with bated breath….

ELECTRIC DREAMS have once again come up with the goods. The play area is well detailed containing lots of colour, and the little creatures are well animated. All this said I must confess that I found the game quite boring after a few plays. Also, the sound only contains a few quiet spot effects. If you can't wait for the 'official' version of Gauntlet then this could be for you.

Gosh a Gauntlet variant, and it's a really good one too! The game is appealing from the word go and is easy enough at first to give you a real sense of achievement, and compelling enough to make you play on. The graphics are in the most part very good but they do get messy occasionally. The two player characters are nicely detailed and they move around very quickly. The sound however is a little disappointing. If you like this type of game then I strongly recommend that you give this a good eyeball.

Electric Dreams
£7.99

Hah! Take that, sirrah! Electric Dreams has thrown down the gauntlet (clone), in the run-up to the Christmas battle for the best sword and sorcery plan-view thrasharama.

Dandy is a dungeon-based arcade adventure, using the now popular Gauntlet format. You view the game from above, walking (or if you don't like man-sized spiders, running) around a mazelike dungeon with treasure, keys, snacks and spells for you to collect, and baddies for you to kill. Although you can play it as a one player game. Dandy really comes into its own when using the two player feature. You go in as a team, yourself and a well chosen friend, helping each other to beat a path through the ranks of Spiders, Vampires, and Werewolves, to the treasure, and beyond to the Inner Room containing the Secret Runes. But only one of you can enter this secret realm... so choose your friend very carefully.

There are fifteen different levels, and the map is so huge on each level that you get about 12 individual screens to explore. Unlike the scrolling screen on the real Gauntlet, the screens flip back and forth as you move up the corridors. This does make judging where you're going to end up a little dicey, but doesn't detract from the flow of the game.

You must move around the dungeon performing tasks in a certain order, and be careful what you shoot. For example, if you go in a certain direction, you lose one key opening a door that leads you to a relative dead end, where there are no more keys available to get you out again... You just have to sit around and wait for death. (Pretty depressing, really.) You soon learn the best routes, and find your way through the level, clearing it of all the hairy leggy things. (Brrr).

The spells you find are like smart bombs, clearing the screen of all baddies. Then all you do to prevent them reforming when you're out of the room, is shoot their source of power, the charnel houses. These are little squat constructions full of bones, and shooting neutralises them.

This has to be the closest thing to a proper arcade conversion, although it's actually more similar to the game Gauntlet was based on. The graphics are lovely to watch, the sound is good and the gameplay fairly sizzles along like a bolt of magic. Far from being a pale imitation of its original, like some I could mention, Dandy is a first class game in its own right, and with 192 different screens to face, it'll prove to be not only a value for money challenge, but a tip for the top, too. (Ptui! Too many tees, there.) Have at ye... (Kerchang!)

Well, ain't that just Dandy?

Issue 35 (December 1986) Page 145

RICKY: Electric Dreams lost to US Gold in the battle for the official Gauntlet licence. So they decided to go one better and buy the rights to Dandy - the game which inspired Gauntlet.

Dandy goes down to the simplest elements of a Gauntlet game - the object for our two heroes, Thor and Sheba, is to penetrate deep within a series of dungeons, collecting as much treasure as humanly possible and avoiding the hordes of evil spiders.

To combat these dreaded foes, you can find spells which make your character so potent that he/she can rid the entire screen of adversaries - the 'smart bomb syndrome'.

Graphically Dandy is remarkably colourful and moves well, though the action can slow down when a lot is happening onscreen. And Dandy may have a great deal of simple appeal - but I found it didn't hold my attention for as long as long as Ranarama, say, probably because of the little variation in gameplay.

CRASH's original ratings seem a bit over the top when you compare the game with today's Gauntlets, but do try to get a look at Dandy.

ROBIN: Colourwise Dandy is an excellent game - the graphics are well-defined, and the screen doesn't get cluttered up with nasty attribute problems. There are exciting one- and two-player options. Overall it's a good game.

Then: 84%
Now: 72%

Label: Electric Dreams
Author: Ram-Jam
Price: £7.99
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

In Dandy the Gauntlet-style playing area - that threatening mixture of blind alleys and sudden wide open spaces as designed by a architect from ancient Greece - looks as impressive as ever.

There is perhaps marginally less variety than with Druid. The main difference between the look of each level are only colour and the actual design of the maze.

The detail however is greater than for Druid - it's a trade-off of screen detail against screen variety.

The broad idea of the plot is easily summarised. Kill hundreds of monsters (a nasty kind of spider) though don't accidentally destroy goodies like keys zap spells (smart bombs) and food. Through the game are large treasure chests which may reveal treasure.

Part of the game, at least first time round, is simply finding your way through to the next level. This is made that little bit more tricky by the fact that there area series of underground passageways whose sometimes complex linkage takes a while to unravel - simply ordinarily but tough when giant spiders are queuing up to take you on.

Now Dandy is a pretty stupid name for a game don't you think? I mean you wouldn't expect a game called Dandy to be fast and frenzied would you?

Many moons ago there was a game in the arcades called Dandy. It was a sort of swords-and-sorcery played as if it were a manic zap-'em-up. You rushed round a mythical landscape armed with a selection of spells, which behave curiously like photon blasts, and killed mythological enemies by the cart-load. You had to select your spells to kill most effectively and pick up keys and bonus spell power by opening caskets. It wasn't that successful until it was renamed and turned into a multi-player game. It became Gauntlet - and the rest is history.

This then is Dandy not Gauntlet. On the other hand Dandy when played by a maximum of two players is, more or less, Gauntlet.

Let's just say that Gauntlet fans will find Dandy as good a conversion of Gauntlet as they could hope for. (The reason that Electric Dreams is putting out Dandy rather than licencing Gauntlet is more complicated and decidedly tacky in places. In the event the Dandy licence was much cheaper than Gauntlet and US Gold (which licenced Gauntlet for a lot of money) was not amused.

The curious - and deadly - way the monsters have of lining up to batter you is retained faithfully in Dandy. Those who enjoy mass destruction should be well pleased. It is, however, more of a two-player game than Druid and if you have a duel port interface both can control their characters from joystick. This should substantially add to the game and help capture much of the excitement of the arcade original. At the time of writing the two players seemed to be Thor and Sheba, personally I wouldn't want to have a name like Sheba (unless I was an Alsatian) and I hope that's changed before the game goes out.

There is really no major problems with recreating the general look of the original on the Spectrum. The background is fairly ordinary - lots of straight lines - and the pathways generally stay the same colour all the time so almost no colour clash at all.

Design is elegant and movement is smooth - given the requirements of the two-player version, ie, that both players have to be in the same area of the screen there is no point in making the screen scroll - it just updates very quickly when you reach the edge of the current section.

In other words it looks great.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Electric Dreams
PRICE: £7.95

Will Dandy steal the honours from Gauntlet? That's the question on everyone's lips. Well, it's certainly won in the release date stakes. We've only seen previews of the Spectrum Gauntlet so far.

Dandy was the brainchild of John H. Palevich, who sold his idea for a Dungeon and Dragons style multi-player adventure game to Atari who turned it into Gauntlet. The rest is history...

Electric Dreams got the rights to the original Dandy game and turned it over to the Ram Jam Corporation who created the computer version you see before you.

It doesn't have the eight-way scrolling of Gauntlet - you simply "flip" from screen to screen. But you DO get a two player option, hundreds of baddies to wipe out, treasure galore, weird spells and lots to eat! You can either play the part of Sheba, "240 lbs of screaming bloodlust", or Thor, "one Norwegian mother". The blurb doesn't tell you whether he's a one parent family or a mother of quads. I, for one, think we should be told...

Meanwhile back at the game you find yourself in a typical series of Gauntlet style dungeons. You're looking down on the carnage from above. The dungeons are baffling mazes with doors which can only be opened with keys you find dotted around - along with treasure, spells and food. Food keeps your energy level up, spells can be used to paralyse, disorientate or simply kill your enemies in smart bomb style.

Enemies come in the form of horrible spiders, demons and generally horrible nasties. They literally infest the dungeons and keep on coming unless you wipe out the monster generators by some heavy use of the fire button.

The basic idea is to collect all the treasure in each dungeon and get out alive. Successfully complete a set of dungeons and you get a clue which will help you solve the ultimate riddle.

You get a clue from all three dungeon "loads". You can play the three sets of dungeons in sequence or at random you'll need all the clues to discover the final solution.

The key to the game is staying alive. After all, if you're fighting fit you'll be able to cope with finding a way to the various exits, won't you?

You can swap treasure for energy if you're running low.

Spells are cast randomly by hitting the appropriate key. There's no telling what they'll do. In fact it's hard to tell what they are doing unless you're lucky enough to hit a "kill" spell. Then everything gets zapped. Shame you can't choose which spells to use.

The graphics are extremely attractive, although the little black characters you control are sometimes difficult to see - especially when you're teleporting about from room to room.

The rest of the dungeon looks suitably solid and great attention to detail makes it a great game. Lots of nice shading and great use of colour.

Probably the best looking Spectrum game around at the moment together with Lightforce.

Dandy is very playable and very addictive - especially with two players. You'll find yourself hacking and chopping your way through dungeon after dungeon deep into the night!

But I've got a feeling that most of you will be waiting for the real thing...

Dandy is on the way for the 64 and Amstrad.

Watch out for our special Dandy map next issue!

Various
Electric Dreams
Arcade
£8.95

Druid may have been first but Dandy, the latest the latest Gauntlet clone from Southampton-based Electric Dreams, will certainly take some beating for the accolade of the best rip-off of the arcade classic. Released first on the Spectrum, with Amstrad and Commodore 64 versions to follow, the game is based closely on the Atari game which inspired the coin-op.

Anyone who has played the arcade game will feel at home immediately with Dandy. The graphics are similar and the gameplay allows for the same feeling of glorious mayhem. As with Gauntlet, Dandy allows two players to play simultaneously, although on a Spectrum keyboard it can become very cramped.

There are 15 dungeons in all which can be played in any order. As you work your way through each level various treasures can be traded for energy, as well as literally hundreds of baddies to make life almost impossible.

It is a matter of whether you have already bought Druid. If not, whether it is because you are waiting for Gauntlet. If the answer is no to both, Dandy should be a definite part of your games collection. Gauntlet is unlikely to be any better and it could possibly be much worse.

Electric Dreams is really starting to get it together and if you read the company profile elsewhere in this issue, you can read about what it is planning for the future.

ARCADE ACTION IN THE NECROMANCERS DUNGEON AS THE MAGICAL FLAK FLIES...

Electric Dreams
£9.95

Fifteen dungeons packed with spectres, necromancers and assorted nasties lie in wait for those brave enough to enter.

Taking the role of Thor, who can be joined by Sheba (controlled by a second player) you must hack and zap your way through rooms, passageways and stairways to get to the treasure.

Dandy may seem an odd name for a massive, magical, arcade adventure but it is named after an original game that later became known as Gauntlet.

Only a fraction of each dungeon level is shown on the screen at any one time which flip to the next section when you move off the edge of the screen.

This lack of gradual scrolling means that you often rush into situations you'd rather avoid like a horde of necromancers.

Immediately below the dungeon display is a scroll indicating the present levels of energy and number of keys, treasure and spells for each player.

You begin the game with 1000 energy units that are drained at an alarming rate whenever a nasty gets near you. Luckily this can be topped up by collecting piles of food that are strewn around the dungeon (usually on the wrong side of an army of dungeon denizens).

Keys, magic and treasure can also be found and are essential to your survival.

The keys are used to open the doors that would otherwise block your path but since there are less keys than doors, care must be taken to use them only on the doors that are important and lead to treasure or the way out. Quite often a room has several doors all leading to dead ends when the correct route is through a teleport pad that jumps you to a similar pad in an adjacent room.

Use the valuable keys on dead end doors and you won't have enough to reach the stairs that lead to the next level.

Pressing the fire button hurls a hail of blasts at the nasties in your line of fire. One hit is enough to take out most dungeon dwellers but the necromancers need 4 hits to kill them. The worst to shift are the spectres not only because they need more hits to kill them but also they can drift through walls that block the others. If you don't get them, they'll certainly get you.

There can be as many as thirty or more critters coming at you so even one shot nasties become a big problem. The answer lies in magic.

Unfortunately, the spells that you find have a random effect when they are cast. Sometimes a spell may wipe out a screenful of nasties but others may only stun them for a short time or just disorientate them.

Even if you've wiped them out you must move quickly as they'll quickly be replaced as more are generated.

If things get really tough and your energy plummets you can trade treasure for energy that might keep you going long enough to find some more food.

Dandy must be played at a frantic pace otherwise you will be constantly overrun with nasties. This will mean that you will make mistakes such as using a key on the door you were trying to avoid letting loose a horde of monsters that begin to chase you.

Complete a set of dungeons and you'll be awarded a clue but you'll need to survive all of them to get all three clues to solve the game.

I'm not sure of the point of these clues that are thrown in almost as an afterthought but perhaps when the riddle is solved it will make more sense. But before then I've got a few more spectres to trash!