Rick is armed with a pogo stick (which can temporarily stun some enemies), gun, and dynamite. Both gun and dynamite have limited uses, which are replenished by certain Power Ups. The first game starts out with some adventures in the jungle and pyramids, when you find out about a Nazi plot to destroy London, and have to take out their missile base. The second game starts with an alien attack on London, and has you hijacking the alien ship and taking it to their planet to stop them.
This game provides examples of:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Rick has escape some "angry amazonian antagonists" in one level and rescue the "cruelly captured commandos" in another.
- Badass Cape: In the sequel.
- Detail-Hogging Cover: The cover art depicts Rick as a realistic human.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: the second game allows you to start at any of the four levels. However, to actually open the fifth level, you must start at the first and play all four, with no continues. To win the game, you must again start at the first and play all five with no continues.
- Expy: Rick is an Expy of Indiana Jones. Rick runs from boulders, fights Nazis, and even has a similar hat. In the sequel he's an Expy of Flash Gordon.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: A nice touch, however, is that all the Malevolent Architecture will also kill the enemies if they run into it. The enemies are not the dangerous part of the game.
- Eye-Obscuring Hat: In the first game Rick's eyes are always hidden under his hat. In the sequel they're hidden under his quiff.
- Fake Trap: Final room in Egypt, where the spikes retract. 8-bit platforms do not have this room.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: One level has Rick trying to recover the "Jewel of Ankhel". Will he succeed or will he end up with a "broken Ankhel"?
- Indy Escape: As soon as the first game starts, you have to run from a boulder.
- Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: The cover art for the first game shows a woman who's nowhere in the game.
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Nintendo Hard: You have only a small amount of lifes, no way to get more, and no continues. The second game lets you continue on the level you died on, but see Easy-Mode Mockery above. - Notice This:
- The Commodore 64 version had moving blocks colored differently.
- In the first level of the sequel, little arrows conveniently point buttons that allow you to switch off obstacles blocking your way — usually in form of security guns that are firing constantly in such short intervals that it's impossible to pass by. However, on one such occasion, pressing a button that arrow pointed at will fire the gun that's aimed at your hero, killing him instantly. In order to go further and survive, you have to press the button next to that one instead.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: There is no health bar in this game — the main hero dies the moment he is touched by an enemy or anything lethal.
- Perpetual Smiler: In-game, Rick is constantly bearing the very same, wide grin the way he is on the title screen.
- Platform Hell: Both games are full of hidden traps, spikes that only appear the moment they kill you, and hidden missile throwers.
- Schizo Tech: The second game takes place in year 1945 — but in the meantime, Rick somehow managed to switch his revolver and dynamite for futuristic blaster and delayed-detonation bombs.
- Schmuck Bait: There's an idol that appears for half a second, with an audio cue. It's really a Spikes of Doom trap.
- Sequel Hook: At the end of the second game, Rick retrieves his iconic hat and vanishes into a teleporter, then it's revealed that the Big Bad "The Fat Guy" survived and the text "...what will Rick do next?" shows on the screen.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The aptly named Caves of Freezia in the second game.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: You have two paths. Sometimes the more "dangerous" route is the one to pick, sometimes it isn't.
