Play Dangerous Dave - Shareware Online

Dangerous Dave came out in 1990 as a shareware title for MS-DOS, part of that wave of early PC platformers before the genre really exploded. It was made by John Romero, who would later become famous for his work on Doom, but here it was just a simple, tough little game you'd get on a floppy disk from a friend.

You control Dave, a small character in a red cap, moving screen by screen through a castle. Your goal is to collect all the gold cups on each level while avoiding enemies like bouncing balls and flying creatures. You jump across gaps, dodge hazards, and sometimes use a jetpack for tricky vertical sections. The pacing is relentless; mistakes send you back to the start of the level, and the difficulty feels unforgiving but fair. It's the kind of game where every success feels earned through pure repetition and focus.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".