I SO love playing Dandy!

[AtariSociety]

I played Dandy for the 1st time in about 40 years yesterday and what a fun time I had.  This game was and still is one of my favorites.  

Why???

Well because on an Atari with 4 joysticks ports you could play, in cooperation with up to 3 more friends (or Foes!), an awesome D&D type game.

I used to play this with 2 other friends all the time in the early to mid 1980s and had such a great time.

Friday nights, drinking with friends, eating all sorts of snacks, and playing what seemed forever, Dandy.

I always called it Dandy Dungeon btw.

Did you all play this game in the day?

Played with buddies?

Did any buddies ever screw you over and not revive you should you have perished?  haha

 

TJ

 

[Beeblebrox]

Ahh Dandy Dungeon... I spent hours as a kid playing and creating my own levels with the map editor. Must have a go soon. ?

 

Wonder what the scope is for a networked version of Dandy Dungeon over Fujinet is? 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Beeblebrox

[AtariSociety]

29 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

Ahh Dandy Dungeon... I spent hours as a kid playing and creating my own levels with the map editor. Must have a go soon. ?

 

Wonder what the scope is for a networked version of Dandy Dungeon over Fujinet is? 

a networked Fujinet version of Dandy could be a fun idea!

TJ

[gilsaluki]

Just got a copy of this game.  Need to figure it out.

[timdu]

7 minutes ago, gilsaluki said:

Just got a copy of this game.  Need to figure it out.

Instructions are posted online at:

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-dandy_1494.html

[AtariSociety]

14 minutes ago, timdu said:

Instructions are posted online at:

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-dandy_1494.html

Yupper, I read those before playing.

Well at least the page that showed me how to eat and drop the bombs.

haha

TJ

 

[bfollowell]

And here's a little history, though most probably know it at this point, but Dandy was the direct inspiration for the arcade hit Gauntlet and the later console dungeon crawl Dark Chambers. It's kind of funny really, I hadn't even heard of Dandy until about mid-way through college, about 1987, and I figured it was just a really basic 8-bit version of Gauntlet that someone had done. Little did I know that I had that reversed. Actually, I don't believe it was until the nineties that I noticed that Dandy had the earlier copyright date and read that it had actually served as inspiration for Gauntlet.

 

[AtariSociety]

12 minutes ago, bfollowell said:

And here's a little history, though most probably know it at this point, but Dandy was the direct inspiration for the arcade hit Gauntlet and the later console dungeon crawl Dark Chambers. It's kind of funny really, I hadn't even heard of Dandy until about mid-way through college, about 1987, and I figured it was just a really basic 8-bit version of Gauntlet that someone had done. Little did I know that I had that reversed. Actually, I don't believe it was until the nineties that I noticed that Dandy had the earlier copyright date and read that it had actually served as inspiration for Gauntlet.

 

Indeed, Dandy came 1st.  

I love the less graphicy, for lack of a better word (is graphicy even a word haha) that Dandy is.

Love Gauntlet too but love the rogue look of the graphics that was used.

TJ

[+CharlieChaplin]

I also like Dandy, but prefer the later "hack" named Aliens.

Levels are fully interchangeable between Dandy and Aliens.

 

[gilsaluki]

I have always enjoyed my APX titles.  There's something so cool about the whole concept, user-programmed software, packaged simply, yet professionally.  Knowing all the trouble Atari had with their talent (programmers), and Atari's reluctance to recognize them for their artistic and hard work, APX was something different.  The manuals always, like a good book, told us something about the author.  And, in most cases even had a photo of the artist.  I love that.  I then look them up on Google to see how they aged, what they are now doing, etc.  APX was revolutionary, and we got some darn good titles from it.  Salmon Run is great, Dandy, Getaway, etc.  They also had some cool applications and utilities as well.  Oh, the golden age.  Then that dummy, new president from RJ Reynolds came in and shut it down.  I hear some folks never got paid for their submissions.  Well, I have diverted this conversation.  Sorry folks, it's TJ's fault. Ha.   TJ NOT here. 

Edited March 12, 2022 by gilsaluki
spelling

[TGB1718]

3 hours ago, AtariSociety said:

I played Dandy for the 1st time in about 40 years yesterday and what a fun time I had.  This game was and still is one of my favorites.  

Thank you, I had never heard of this game, just tried it and it's great fun, wish I had known about all those years ago.?

[AtariSociety]

1 minute ago, TGB1718 said:

Thank you, I had never heard of this game, just tried it and it's great fun, wish I had known about all those years ago.?

It is quite addictive!

Enjoy it.

TJ

 

[devwebcl]

http://devwebcl.atarionline.pl/dandy/mapas/00_uniques/

 

https://manillismo.blogspot.com/2012/01/dandy-todos-los-mapas.html?m=1

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by devwebcl

[zzip]

On 3/12/2022 at 2:46 PM, bfollowell said:

And here's a little history, though most probably know it at this point, but Dandy was the direct inspiration for the arcade hit Gauntlet and the later console dungeon crawl Dark Chambers. It's kind of funny really, I hadn't even heard of Dandy until about mid-way through college, about 1987, and I figured it was just a really basic 8-bit version of Gauntlet that someone had done. Little did I know that I had that reversed. Actually, I don't believe it was until the nineties that I noticed that Dandy had the earlier copyright date and read that it had actually served as inspiration for Gauntlet.

I discovered Gauntlet around the same time as I got my first issue of Antic.    I was obsessed with Gauntlet and wanted something similar to play at home.  I noticed the Dandy Dungeon game in the catalog section of Antic and it reminded me a bit of Gauntlet, but I had no idea it was the direct inspiration!     I never ended up buying it though.

[Mclaneinc]

On 3/12/2022 at 6:44 PM, AtariSociety said:

Yupper, I read those before playing.

Well at least the page that showed me how to eat and drop the bombs.

Are we still talking about Dandy now?

 

(ah, yes, toilet humour..)

[Mclaneinc]

On 3/12/2022 at 7:46 PM, bfollowell said:

And here's a little history, though most probably know it at this point, but Dandy was the direct inspiration for the arcade hit Gauntlet and the later console dungeon crawl Dark Chambers. It's kind of funny really, I hadn't even heard of Dandy until about mid-way through college, about 1987, and I figured it was just a really basic 8-bit version of Gauntlet that someone had done. Little did I know that I had that reversed. Actually, I don't believe it was until the nineties that I noticed that Dandy had the earlier copyright date and read that it had actually served as inspiration for Gauntlet.

 

Yes, I learnt about that a little while ago, I was always sure it was based on Gauntlet until someone put me right on here..

 

Really enjoyed playing back then, but oddly wasn't a gauntlet fan. Loved the Aliens levels mod..

[AtariSociety]

2 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

Yes, I learnt about that a little while ago, I was always sure it was based on Gauntlet until someone put me right on here..

 

Really enjoyed playing back then, but oddly wasn't a gauntlet fan. Loved the Aliens levels mod..

I think what I loved most about Dandy and Gauntlet was the super rapid fire it had and the way the nasties changed to different nasties as they were shot.  All seemed fast paced like I was awesome at shooting.  hahaha

TJ

 

[+bhall408]

I loved Dandy back in the day!

 

I recently downloaded the source and started "porting" it to assemble with ca65 (so I could do that on my Mac). I have about 1/2 of the files converted at this point.

 

The intent is to produce a version that can run on a cart and/or a 5200 (original requires disk+DOS), and perhaps add a few features along the way.

 

[TGB1718]

Still can't believe I missed this one, maybe it's the name, "Dandy" doesn't really conjure up what the game is about, nor how good it really is.

[Lord Thag]

Weirdly, this was one I didn't play. I had a huge stack of disks I got with my Atari, but none of them had Dandy on it. I've only played it in the last decade, but it's fun. You can totally see the inspiration for Gauntlet there too.

 

I'd love to see it on cart.

[littleman jack]

6 minutes ago, Lord Thag said:

Weirdly, this was one I didn't play. I had a huge stack of disks I got with my Atari, but none of them had Dandy on it. I've only played it in the last decade, but it's fun. You can totally see the inspiration for Gauntlet there too.

 

I'd love to see it on cart.

Video 61 sells it on cart.

And yes, it is a really fun game! I've only played it on an emulator, but hope to get the cart eventually.

[bfollowell]

2 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

Still can't believe I missed this one, maybe it's the name, "Dandy" doesn't really conjure up what the game is about, nor how good it really is.

 

Maybe it would've helped had we all known that Dandy was a play on letters for D&D, or D an dy.

 

[+bhall408]

40 minutes ago, littleman jack said:

Video 61 sells it on cart.

And yes, it is a really fun game! I've only played it on an emulator, but hope to get the cart eventually.

Selfish, but the incentive for me is that if I make a version that doesn't require disk, it will work in Argon (where we're starting off with just CAR and XEX support to keep the UI/UX more XEGS/game system like). As a side benefit, that is then the same work you'd need to do towards a 5200 version. As the levels are only 1K, the levels + game will fit in ROM+RAM.

 

[TGB1718]

8 hours ago, bhall408 said:

Selfish, but the incentive for me is that if I make a version that doesn't require disk, it will work in Argon (where we're starting off with just CAR and XEX support to keep the UI/UX more XEGS/game system like). As a side benefit, that is then the same work you'd need to do towards a 5200 version. As the levels are only 1K, the levels + game will fit in ROM+RAM.

What about custom levels, how will you be dealing with that ?

[+bhall408]

4 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

What about custom levels, how will you be dealing with that ?

If you are building from source, they can be baked in at compile time.

 

At runtime, you wouldn't support them, otherwise you are back to requiring "D:" and ATR file format

 

We'll see where this ends up. I spent more time on it last night. Initially I'll just be bringing up the source code same as it was (version 1.2) and then branch off from there to a version that doesn't require data files on disk.