Video Game Vintage Title: Dandy (video Game)

Dandy (video Game)

Dandy is a dungeon crawl computer game for the Atari 8-bit computers. Dandy was one of the first games to offer four-player cooperative play and a built-in editor. It later allegedly served as the inspiration for the popular Atari Gauntlet series.

Dandy (video Game) Gameplay

Dandy took place in a dungeon consisting of a series of 2D mazes drawn in a top-down fashion. The dungeon as a whole had multiple maze levels, connected together using stairwells. Portions of the mazes were also blocked off by locked doors, which could be opened by finding the keys scattered through the maze. The basic goal of the game was to fight through the maze to the next stairwell, from there to the next level, and proceed through the dungeon's levels to the end.

The players were armed with a sort of bow and arrow, which could be shot in any of the eight cardinal directions. Monsters came in several varieties, although the difference was strictly graphical. When hit, the monsters would "devolve" to the next less-powerful state, before eventually being killed and disappearing. Some monsters were placed in the maze during its pre-game creation and appeared as soon as that level was entered, while others were produced in "monster generators", skull-shaped objects placed in various locations.

Monsters touching the player would reduce the player's health, which could be improved by eating food. Food was scattered around the dungeon and was picked up on the way. Potions were also available, which would destroy every monster on the screen when activated. Potions could be either shot with the arrow, or picked up and carried for later use. A special "heart of gold" could also be collected, and used to revive dead party members.

The players interacted with the game primarily through the joystick, although there were a limited number of keys for eating food or using the potions. When two or more players played at once, the screen scrolled according to the average location of the group. This encouraged players to cooperate to explore the dungeon.

The game map was created using a custom character set drawn in the Atari's five-color text mode, moving about as the characters reached the edges of the visible portion of the map. Each dungeon level was three screens wide and high. The Atari's special smooth scrolling hardware was used to pan around the level, while the player/missile graphics capabilities were not used.

The game included a level editor that enabled ambitious players to design new dungeons and exchange them with other players.