This disk contains 6 of the eggcellent Dizzy games that were
released by codemasters over the years, although strangely enough it doesn't have the
first ever Dizzy game, or the game Fantasy World Dizzy, it does however contain the game
Fantastic Dizzy which contains almost all of the plot / locations / puzzles of the
previously mentioned missing titles. For those that have never met Dizzy, he is an egg
with legs and Boxing gloves on his hands (don't ask, no-one knows), he bounces and rolls
his way around platform and puzzle laden screens combining objects and utilising the
things he finds around him to save his fellow egg-shaped friends the Yolkfolk, he can
usually carry 3 things at a time, but during Treasure Island Dizzy has to drop things only
in the order they were picked up (which means thinking carefully before going into water
holding a snorkel and a crowbar, becuase if you try to use the crowbar and have the
objects in the wrong order you could drop the snorkel and drown), the other games are a
lot more forgiving though. They are all on the same theme, which means if you like one
Dizzy game, you'll like em all... However, this also means that if you hate one, you'll
probably hate the lot. But you won't, cos they're cool, and it's DIZZY! As an example, in
issue 86 of Your Sinclair magazine for the ZX Spectrum there was the results of a poll for
the top ten best games, of those ten games, a massive SIX of them are Dizzy games.
Seeing as this title contains
six games, I thought it prudent to write a short piece on each of them, with additional
information about the production if needed (like the fact that Treasure Island Dizzy had
music and effects written by a bloke called David Whittaker, who used to live just up the
road from me and had a 4 track recording studio in his flat, which was the first ever
recording studio I ever did any recording in, playing bass for a mates demo tape, DW was
also in a local band called Music for Pleasure, who had a singer called Mark Copson, who
is shortly to be singing on some of my songs recorded in my own home studio... what goes
around, comes around)
Treasure Island Dizzy
This was the second Dizzy game to be released, and one of my faves. The design was by the
Oliver Twins, who designed Dizzy in the first place. The idea is to get off the island and
back to the yolkfolk, not too easy considering water is fatal, the fact that you have only
one life also hampers you in this mission, in fact it makes it almost impossible (I've
never managed to finish this game and have often considered cheating just to see the end).
The music is pure Dizzy and very catchy, I want it to be played at my funeral to cheer
y'all up. First released in 1987 on the 8 bit machines, the year after the initial release
of the first Dizzy game.
Magicland Dizzy
The fourth in the series, the design was mostly done by Neil Vincent, but the Twins also
had a hand in there too. All the Yolkfolk have had a spell put on them and it's up to
Dizzy to rescue them all (again). A lot more colourful then Treasure Island, and with more
lives to play with too, cool Dizzy gameplay has you pulling your hair out trying to
remember where you dropped objects that you were carrying earlier and now need.
Spellbound Dizzy
Boasting a whopping 110 rooms, this was the 5th game in the series. Another Oliver Twins
game, this one has you trying to rescue the Yolkfolk after accidently reading a spell out
of a magic book and sending them to the underworld (which is not as spooky as you might
think). Animation is a lot better in this game, the chewing face when Dizzy eats is too
cute. Three live to start with in this one, and you'll need em too (I actually finished
this one and it wasn't easy, with no save facility I had to leave the CD32 on for 3 days
solid). The level design is also slightly different to the 8 bit version, with a few
differing puzzles too
Dizzy Prince of the Yolkfolk
After losing their pet, Pogie, Dizzy and Daisy go looking for him, they discover a castle
and weird things happen (as they so often do), the object of the game is to sort
everything out and make the world a nice place for the Yolkfolk. Not the largest of the
Dizzy games, so it should be fairly easy to finish, although some of the puzzles are
challenging enough and as usual there's a fair bit of running about to do in order to take
each object to it's required destination, for example, don't go near the ferryman (strange
dude with a scythe, hooded cloak and glowing red eyes) without first having something
valuable to give him, otherwise you'll lose a life. Don't say you weren't warned.
Crystal Kingdom Dizzy
Has a Cameo appearance by CJ the Elephant, which is cool in itself, the palatte used is
more colourful than a week on the mushrooms, good stuff. the game itself is very nice to
play too. Basically the treasures of the Yolkfolk have been robbed and it's up to out hero
Dizzy to put the world to rights and retrieve the stolen goods. Again more lives make the
gameplay easier but the puzzles are still making finishing the game a real challenge, a
fun challenge though. The learning curve in this one is really well thought out, nice and
easy to start off with, the difficulty increases at a nice steady pace, cool.
Fantastic Dizzy
The cream of the crop, the most advanced Dizzy game ever and also the last ever, this game
is the only game which uses an actual button to jump (all the rest use the UP to jump
method, which I personally can't stand, in fact I hate it so much I went to the extreme of
rewiring my spare CD32 pad so that the green button also acts as the UP position on the
thumbpad, this makes games like Turrican a lot easier to play too, I highly recommend it
for anyone wanting to play straight ports of amiga platformers), this alone sets it apart
on this format as being a real joy to play, this is also the only one of these Dizzy games
which has a save feature (press both the shoulder buttons on the CD32 pad to reach the
save/load screen), as a result there's a fair chance that you can finish this game, that's
assuming that you can battle your way through the puzzles and subgames (of which there are
many).
Conclusion
Fantastic Dizzy would be worth the price of the disk on it's own, with the other games
thrown in it makes it a real bargain (I sometimes suspect that that's exactly what
codemasters did, simply bolted the other games on as a massive bonus, thank you
Codemasters), even at the currently inflated ebay prices this is a disk that'll last you
for a while and not make you think you've been ripped off. The control system on the rest
of the games could have been tweaked for this CD32 version, but that's probably my only
gripe. The thing to bear in mind with the Dizzy games is that they were all, with the
exception of the last two games, released as budget games first and foremost, they were
cheap, cheerful and dripping with gameplay, and you simply can't argue with that. So
although they may have a few faults, and may not have flash coding or impressive graphics
routines, they still remain my all time favourite games, even in this Xbox, PS2 world,
there's still a lot to be said for down to earth colourful egg-shaped fun.
For real fans, here's a
petition to try to get the Codies to release some new Dizzy games... http://www.petitiononline.com/dizzy/
Apologies to Ridge and Kada who have been trying to outdo each other by
writing a longer review then the other, seems you'll have to do better :-p |
