Dangerous Dave!

[jg007]

I was looking at http://www.johnromero.com and was reminded of this great game, any chance you can find the shareware versions and release them?

Thanks !

James

[DOSGuy]

Dangerous Dave is one of the first games I ever played. I asked John Romero about Dangerous Dave, and it's not clear to me if the game is legal to distribute or not.

You'll notice that the title screen indicates that the game is copyright Softdisk. I emailed Softdisk a year ago and asked about the legal status of their old games, including the original Dangerous Dave (known internally as "Dangerous Dave in Trophy Trouble"), Catacomb 3-D, Catacomb Abyss, Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, Keen Dreams and Rescue Rover. The response was that they own the rights to all of the games and they asked me not to sell them. I responded that I had no intention of charging money for someone else's property and asked if it was legal to distribute them for free. They didn't respond. A few months ago I asked again, since they hadn't answered after more than a year, and they still haven't answered.

I contacted John Romero and he expressed the opinion that the original Dangerous Dave is essentially a port of his Apple II version and therefor belongs to him, and he gave his blessing to freely distribute it. I hope his interpretation is correct, but would a court agree? Until I can get Softdisk to agree with that interpretation, I have to consider the legal status of the game to be unclear.

[PJPsyco]

Softdisk seems to have broken up its various endeavors into independent groups. I purchased some of their games from their online store http://www.downloadstore.com/. I found most if not all of their other titles for sale at http://www.virtualsoftware.com/ but have not yet shopped there. Softdisk's game division seems to be named Flat Rock Software (http://www.flatrocksoft.com/), perhaps they might know something?

[Calvero]

I've found a disk image of the Gamer's Edge Sampler disk and it contains Catacomb and Dangerous Dave. (And when you open the image with a hex editor you'll also see some bits of Commander Keen 1, including its source code in the form of a couple of constant definitions.) Here's an ad for it. The disk contains a menu that you can use to start both games. When you exit the menu you'll get the following message:

PLEASE MAKE COPIES OF THIS ENTIRE DISK AND GIVE IT TO FRIENDS

We want as many people as possible to sample the great programs available
from Gamer's Edge. A three issue trial subscription to Gamer's Edge is
only $49.95. To order, or for more information, call 1-800-831-2694.

MAKING COPIES OF THIS DISK

You may make copies of the entire disk as you received it and give it away
to as many friends and family members as you like. However you can't make
copies of individual programs or sell copies of this disk or it's programs.

THESE PROGRAMS ARE COPYRIGHT (C) 1990 SOFTDISK, INC.

Softdisk programs are protected by federal law. Softdisk Publishing, as a
member of the Software Publishers Association (SPA), supports the industry's
effort to fight the illegal copying of personal computer software.
Report copyright violations to:

SPA, 1101 Conneticut Ave NW, Suite 901, Washington, DC 20036

Gamer's Edge (C) 1990 Softdisk, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

So I guess you may put Dangerous Dave on your website if you also put the rest of this disk on your site.

[DOSGuy]

I have no problem with that!

[ThreeHeadedMonkey]

Nice find!

[Calvero]

(And when you open the image with a hex editor you'll also see some bits of Commander Keen 1, including its source code in the form of a couple of constant definitions.)

It looks like the disk contains some sort of beta version of Keen 1.

[Calvero]

I've uploaded the contents of the Gamer's Edge sampler disk with the correct time and date stamps to MegaUpload. I had to find a 720kB disk to write the image to to get the time and date of the directories right .

Are you going to put John Carmack's Catacomb, the other game on this sampler disk, also on your website? It's a pretty rare game. When you search the Internet about this game, you mostly get results about the 3D sequels and when you do find something about a 2D Catacomb game you mostly get results about the 30 level sequel Catacomb 2 aka The Catacomb. This game has only 10 levels. It's very hard to find a place where one can download this game, but you have the power to change this .

[DOSGuy]

I had been lamenting the fact that the timestamps had been lost, and then you remedied it! Did you choose gameedge.zip because I did, or was that an amazing coincidence?

Are you going to put John Carmack's Catacomb, the other game on this sampler disk, also on your website?

That's the plan! I'm not at home at the moment (and haven't been for days), so I need a bit more time to get this stuff done than I normally do. Now might be a good time to sign up for the newsletter for anyone whose curious about where I've been. I'll be sending one out as soon as I get home.

[leilei]

(And when you open the image with a hex editor you'll also see some bits of Commander Keen 1, including its source code in the form of a couple of constant definitions.)

It looks like the disk contains some sort of beta version of Keen 1.

Holy crap I love betas! Too bad it's not a super early beta though, but it's still cool just for this alone.

[Calvero]

Yes that part is so cool, I also had the idea to put it on YouTube.

Did you choose gameedge.zip because I did, or was that an amazing coincidence?

I chose gameedge.zip because you did and I usually use 8.3 filenames for DOS stuff.

[Calvero]

Are you going to put John Carmack's Catacomb, the other game on this sampler disk, also on your website?

That's the plan!

You didn't forget this, right?

[DOSGuy]

Not entirely, but I've only been home for a few hours at a time since March, and I just haven't had the necessary time to devote to it. I changed provinces in early March and I haven't had room to move my computer yet. Since I don't have my own computer, I'm mostly focusing on adding new games since it doesn't require much testing or research. I've never played Catacomb, and I want whatever I write about it to be accurate and useful.

I'm in Northern Ontario at the moment and using dial-up. I'll try to find time for it when I get home, but I have a busy week of ratification votes coming up. My union just negotiated a new collective agreement and we need the membership to vote on it.

[Calvero]

I see.
I asked this because I saw you did add some new games, but not Catacomb.

[nickherc]

One of my first games. It was creepy for me and I only made it to the second level (I was a boy), cellar level? There were spiders and stuff.
The creepiest thing I ever saw in any PC game was that "grandma throwing knifes at you" in Dangerous Dave.