Yes, of course… Dandy was actually released by Electric Dreams, but did you know that in fact the original developer was not to be Nick Pelling, but the Ram Jam Corporation?
This updated version of the classic Dandy game on the Atari (Which inspired what was Gauntlet) got into a bit of trouble, ironically because it was a Gauntlet clone. Ram Jam Coporation were assigned to doing the C64 conversion as well as the Spectrum version and promised Electric Dreams that it would be completed for Christmas.
Months sadly passed with nothing to be seen for the C64 version, and so Electric Dreams frantically got Nick Pelling to do a quick conversion over the space of a few weeks. Overall it wasn’t a bad game, but what of the Ram Jam original title?
In recent times, thanks to Richard Hewison – we can confirm that there was no Ramjam conversion actually started. Their in-house compiler application (written by Trevor Toms) wasn’t up to the job of doing arcade games on the C64, and they didn’t have the time to get it done themselves (no C64 expertise) so Nick Pelling was quickly drafted in by Electric Dreams to do the job.
He was given the graphics and the level designs (which were created in a text editor on an Amstrad CPC) and had just two weeks to do it. This was Nick’s first ever C64 game!
Case closed!
Contributions: Richard Hewison
