It is a platform game with "cartoon" graphics in which the player embodies Rick Dangerous, a sort of Indiana Jones, in search of the lost Goolus tribe in the Amazon. But his plane crashes, and that's where the game begins. The action takes place in 1945.
A feature universally recognized by fans of the game is its difficulty. Indeed, the levels are full of traps often hidden or practically impossible to avoid, there is only a very limited amount of lives, the quantity of bombs and bullets available to Rick decreases very quickly.
The progression requires not only to have good reflexes, but also to die and retry until you know by heart the layout of the traps of the level.