• Remember Rick Dangerous ?

Come on, a bit of nostalgia.

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Long before Lara Croft, Rick Dangerous was the Indiana Jones of video games, climbing up the temples in South America, dodging the rocks, escaping the indians, picking up the treasures and of course saving the world. Rick Dangerous is a port of the game with the same name edited by Core Design and dated from 1989. This adaptation is based on the XRick one, with a certain number of improvements, notably:

The video mode has been pushed to 640x480 32 bits.
A filter has been applied to texture rendering in game in order to soften the "big pixels" effect (which is nevertheless part of the charm for a game dated from 1989!)
The screen layout and the game behaviour are now identical to the EGA version.
Graphisms and sounds are those of the Amiga version for their quality.
The path through submap 19 has been fixed.
All the crashes and known bugs of XRick have been fixed.

And of course, IT'S FREE!!!


  • Screenshots
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Hall of Fame
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In Amazonia (ouch, ouch, ouch !)
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In Egypt
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At Schwarzendumpf Castle
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Quick view of the texture filter
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And the windowed mode

  • Donate

Rick Dangerous is completely free and will hopefully remain free, which means you can use it free of charge for any purpose. If you are satisfied with it and want to help Rick Dangerous improve or motivate the development of other quality features, any amount of donation small or large will be welcome and gratefully appreciated.

Please however not forget that the original XRick author also deserves your thanks for having made the greater part of the software's basis.


  • Download the latest version for Windows and Mac OS/X
  • How to play?

It's very simple: lead Rick Dangerous with the direction arrows while avoiding traps, and make him perform actions like for example:

- SPACE bar + UP arrow: fire the gun in the direction where Rick is headed to (watch out for your ammunition!)
- SPACE bar + DOWN arrow: drop a dynamite stick (... and run for your life!)
- SPACE bar + LEFT arrow: blunt your stick left (that's sometimes useful!)
- SPACE bar + RIGHT arrow: blunt your stick right (that's sometimes useful!)

Other keys:

- P, or the Pause key: pause the game (can help while dodging difficult obstacles!)
- ALT + ENTER: switch from window to fullscreen (and back).
- F4: shut off or turn back on the sound effects.
- F5: decrease the sound volume.
- F6: increase the sound volume.
- F7: enable or disable the texture filtering.
- ESC, ALT + F4 or F10: quit the game (a life-saver at the office...)

Bonus: joysticks and gamepads are also supported!


  • Change Log

Rick Dangerous was in the beginning a small personal hobby whose publication was not initially planned, that's why a detailed log of changes has not been filled. The current version nevertheless ended up online after witnessing the interest it was being given.

Rick Dangerous 1.5 - 2023-12-24 (Merry Christmas !)

- Entering "FLUFOMATIC" and "POOKY" in the high scores table enable you to restart the game at the last played level and episode.
- Typing "MEMEPASMAL" and "MATOSGRATOS" during the game toggles infinite lives and ammunition.

Rick Dangerous 1.4 - 2023-09-02

- Added ARM chip (Apple Silicon) support for users with these newest Mac computers.
- The P key can be used again to pause the game (unlike PCs, Mac keyboards have no dedicated Pause key).
- Restored the floating bonus score that disappeared during the SDL2 switch.

Rick Dangerous 1.3 - 2018-11-29

- Switched to SDL2.
- Much better texture filtering thanks to the XBRZ algorithm.
- Fixed a badly indexed sprite bug (credits: Jason Andersen).

Rick Dangerous 1.2 - 2016-08-14

- Recompilation under Visual Studio 2015.
- New installer.
- Signed code and installer (for the paranoid virus scanners).
- 16-bit sounds (it has been reported that some recent sound hardwares no longer support 8-bit samples).
- Now also for Mac!

Rick Dangerous 1.1 - 2009-10-09

- Game resolution pushed to 640x480 (it has been reported that some recent screen hardwares no longer support 640x400).

Rick Dangerous 1.0 - 2009-10-08

- Initial release.

Rick Dangerous x.x - 2007-xx-xx

- 32-bit video mode.
- Texture filter (software filtering).
- Fullscreen is now 640x400 instead of 320x200.
- Much simplified video code.
- True EGA screen layout.
- True DOS intro screens.
- Game speeded up a bit to match the original DOS speed.
- Integer size warnings in code fixed.
- Game freeze on NULL sound pointer fixed.
- Submap 19 fixed (reverted to original Rick Dangerous map chain list).
- Picking up of entities when zombie fixed.
- Bullets escaping crash bug fixed.
- Bad guys escaping crash bug fixed.
- Map intro screen not running fast enough fixed.
- Map intro tunes never ending fixed.
- Miscellaneous fixes of the XRick initial port.

Pierre-Marie Baty


  • Frequently asked questions

- Which versions of Windows are supported? The game has been tested with Windows XP and Windows 7. The other versions of Windows (Vista, 8, 8.1 and 10) should work as well. Please notify me if it was not the case.

- Which versions of Mac OS/X are supported? The game should work with all 64-bit versions of Mac OS/X since Mountain Lion (and maybe even before) up to Monterey (at least). Please notify me if it was not the case.

- Why is Rick Dangerous free? Is it really free? Sure, it is. Really. I could decently not charge for a game of which I am not entirely the author. :)

- Will there be other versions? No new version is planned at the moment, unless a major bug is reported to me.

- What about Rick Dangerous 2? I didn't like Rick Dangerous 2. Not only that game was much slower and much less reactive, but it was also much less funny than Rick Dangerous 1. Furthermore, maybe it was very fashionable to shoot aliens in the beginning of the 90s, but I find that making this the plot of Rick Dangerous' follow-up was a terrible lack of imagination. Whatever, I find Rick Dangerous 2 uninteresting at all, that's why I'm not motivated to do anything for it.

- I found a bug/annoyance! Well in this case let me know and I will fix it.

- Do you need programmer's help? No, honestly I don't believe there can be room for two programmers on this software. Even more now since it's finished. But thanks for the intent. Remember, if you want to help me, the best way is to make a donation.

- Can you add such or such cool feature? Possibly. Drop me an email, tell me what you exactly want and we'll discuss that.

- Are you a professionnal programmer? I am an independent and autodidact IT generalist. If you think your company could hire me, feel free to make an offer. Here is my resume.

- How come the links to your email aren't clickable on this page? Sorry. That's to prevent digger robots to harvest my address and spam mail to reach my mailbox. You have to type the address yourself in your mail client.


  • Reviews and links

I will add links to articles and reviews about this software as soon as some are published. If you intend to write one, please tell me about it, so that I can add the link and your website logo here.


My girlfriend is a reflexologist. Don't hesitate to visit her website!