Game Review: Dan Dare – Pilot Of The Future (Commodore 64, Virgin Games / Ricochet)

By now I don’t really have to hide my love of science fiction from all of you visiting this site. But what most of you probably don’t know is that as well as retro gaming, and sci-fi, I’m a huge fan of the Eagle comic. So much so, that I’ve been running a Facebook group dedicated to it for several years. So it was no surprise that I was at the front of the queue when Dan Dare: Pilot Of The Future was first released for the Commodore 64 back in 1986…

Fly Like An Eagle

While other publishers were looking towards arcade games, TV shows and movies when it came to seeking out the “next big thing” for their major franchise license deal, Virgin Games decided to look closer to home. The Eagle had been one of the most popular boys adventure comics of the 1950s and 1960s, running for 17 years before it eventually closed but not without leaving a strong legacy behind it. That legacy was the start of it’s only ongoing strip that featured in every one of its issues – Dan Dare: Pilot Of The Future.

There was still a huge buzz and excitement around science fiction at the time so it’s no surprise that Dan Dare became such a figurehead for the Eagle and not just within the pages of the comic but unusually Dan Dare merchandise cropped up everywhere as well – something you’d only normally associate with the likes of Marvel and DC characters.

Dan Dare – The Return

After a brief comeback, by way of 2000AD, Dan Dare – and the Eagle, made a surprise return in 1982… When it came to the 1982 relaunch of the comic, spearheaded by Barrie Tomlinson, they wanted Dan Dare to be the central character once more but with a modern twist. But instead of rebooting the character, they chose to set the stories several hundred years in the future (playing it safe this time) and having this “new” Dan Dare being the great great great grandson of the original.

In the Eagle of the 1950s and 60 the original Dan Dare was born in the early 1960s and the stories themselves were set in the 1990s – certainly set far enough ahead for them to get away with any of their future predictions (or so the writers thought at the time). Looking back it’s wildly inaccurate but the same could be said for most comics, TV shows etc that jump too far into the future… and besides, did they ever expect anyone to be reading about Dan Dare 40+ years after he was first created?

Dan Dare: Pilot Of The Future – When Is It Set?

Now this is where things get somewhat confusing. This game was released in 1986 when the comics were telling the story of Dan Dare’s descendant. Sales were still quite respectably for The Eagle itself, with it selling around 90,000 copies each week so there were more than enough gamers familiar with the character and the rest of the comic’s line-up. And it certainly helped that Zzap and Crash artist Oliver Frey had been one of the artists on the Dan Dare strip for a short period so C64 and Spectrum owners were aware of the strip anyway.

But instead, Virgin Games opted to base Dan Dare: Pilot Of The Future on the original character as seen in the 1950s/1960s comic run. Whether this was because of a licensing issue and it was a more affordable option presented to Virgin at the time, or was done so the game could be developed outside of the comic’s continuity is uncertain but it seemed to be a strange decision to go with a version of a character that most of the current readers of the comic at the time wouldn’t have been familiar with. In fact, this original incarnation of Dan Dare wouldn’t be seen in the Eagle until the story shifted back to the past and focused on the original Dan Dare in July 1989,

What About The Story?

While appearing at an event to celebrate his life and career, Dan is interrupted by his arch nemesis the Mekon. His latest plot once more sees him threatening the Earth with total destruction unless he is given complete rule over the universe… and he intends to do this by using an asteroid that he has set on a collision course with the planet. With no time to lose, Dan jumps into his spacecraft the Anastasia accompanied by his best friend and sidekick Digby, his pet Stripey, and scientist Professor Jocelyn Peabody.

But it’s a race against time to stop the asteroid, fight through the hordes of Treen soldiers in the complex underneath the surface, defeat the Mekon and save the Earth once more and get back home in time for tea! It’s not that simple though. As soon as you land on the asteroid, Digby and Peabody are captured by the Treens so as well as defeating the Mekon you have to rescue your friends before you can escape back to Earth…

Gameplay

In terms of the game itself, Dan Dare: Pilot Of The Future is an arcade adventure and you control our futuristic hero using the joystick. While Digby and Peabody have been captured, you’re accompanied by Stripey around the asteroid and you have to explore the surface, caves underneath, and work your way down into the Treen complex to find and defeat the Mekon. To do this you have to find and use a variety of objects to solve puzzles, open hatchways to unlock new areas to explore, and so on.

Controls are simple enough, using the joystick to move Dan around the environment and whenever you encounter an object or puzzle you can interact with a caption appears on screen. Hold the fire button down and you can they cycle through various options of what to do ranging from picking up items or using anything you may be holding at the time. It’s a very easy system to get used to and allows for quick and easy gameplay with no need for anything beyond a single button.

Those Are Fighting Words!

Occasionally you’ll encounter Treens walking around the caverns or the underground complex. While you can avoid some of them, you’ll have no choice but to fight others later on to obtain passcards to get past locked doors. Instead of grabbing a weapon, all of the combat in the game is handled through old-fashioned fist fights and again these are fairly simple. These start automatically as soon as you and a Treen get too close to one another, and once that happens you see a bar appear showing both yours and the Treen’s heath.

You only have a couple of different punches at your disposal, as well as two guard moves so it’s a combination of judging when to attack, guard, a bit of luck, and some button bashing although most fights are fairly easy to get past. You need to keep a close eye on your health meter during the fight as you only get one life, and it can also be depleted in other ways from electrocution, drowning and other hazards you encounter so you have to tread carefully throughout the game.

As I said, you only use your bare knuckles in the fight and in fact, the only weapon that you do get to use are bombs that you throw at the Mekon at the end of the game, and a giant laser that you need to use to solve a puzzle to gain entry to the Mekon’s lair.

Playability

Despite being a relatively short game with a relatively small number of puzzles that need to be solved, with a lot of your time being spent trying to find your way around the complex and cave system, Dan Dare: Pilot Of The Future is a genuinely fun game. You don’t need to have any familiarity with the comic or any of its characters to be able to enjoy it although its comic book presentation does work better for those of you who are already fans of Dare and his cohorts.

A good memory or mapping is pretty much essential to find your way around, especially with some of the areas in the complex leading to sudden death as you’re overrun by Treens when you accidentally stumble into a troop of them, but after a bit of practice you’ll soon learn where to avoid and what warning signs to take note of. But even after a few failures, it’s compelling enough to keep you wanting to come back for more, especially with the high score entry informing you of how far you managed to progress in the game.

Graphics and Sound

Presentation in Dan Dare is absolutely first class. From start to finish, the game looks like an interactive comic, with some great animation on Dare himself, some bold, colourful and varied locations, and the information captions on screen making the game feel as if it’s leapt right from the pages of The Eagle itself.

Sound, on the other hand, is somewhat limited. While there are some reasonable spot effects that do the job, they’re not overly spectacular and are certainly disappointing by C64 standards. There’s also no in-game music and the title tune is rather brief and doesn’t really seem to fit the game. I expected something futuristic or a more epic theme considering the heroic nature of the game. The music itself was composed by Chris Blackwell (presumably for one of the other versions of the game) then converted to the C64 by Graham Marsh (better known to C64 demo scene fans as The Mighty Bogg) and frankly it shows that it’s not a C64 original composition.

A Tale Of Two Loaders

The original release of the game from Virgin featured a great comic-book style loading screen from Stu Jackson. However, when it came to the budget re-release Mastertronic changed the loader completely. All the Commodore 64 titles in the Ricochet range were created using snapshots from a freeze cartridge, and then had a new loader added to them. Many had Invade-A-Load incorporated into the loader allowing you to play a cut-down version of Space Invaders while waiting for the game to play, but in the case of Dan Dare you were left looking at a blank screen for a few minutes instead.

Using these snapshots seemed to be more reliable and made loading quicker and presumably meant that Mastertronic could use shorter cassette lengths (critical when trying to keep production costs down) but in this case losing both the title screen AND not having Invade-A-Load is something as a disappointment for the re-release.

Overall

As a long-standing fan of Dan Dare and The Eagle, Dan Dare: Pilot Of The Future is right up my street, It’s a challenging and absorbing sci-fi romp that – unlike many other licensed titles – does justice to the character it’s based on. While it’s not the greatest game, and even to this day I’m baffled over their choice of using the original Dan Dare rather than the modern one that was in the comics at the time, it’s well worth getting whether you’re a fan of the comic or not.

As an aside, when Virgin Games picked up the license for Dan Dare, all three formats the game was released on (C64, Amstrad and ZX Spectrum) actually had three completely different games rather than ports of the same title!

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