Dizzy

Copyright : Codemasters | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

I have no idea what Codemasters were smoking when they came up with the idea for this very long running and highly acclaimed adventure series starring a little egg named Dizzy as the main character but it sure did make them a bit of money in the pre-Colin McRae years.

In the first adventure our hero Dizzy has stumbled across a strange looking stone slab with the inscription "The Avawiffovee Potion", remembering that his father had spoken of such a potion saying that it could cure the Athletes foot in the village and also wipe out Evil Wizard Zaks. The wizard had turned young men into old men, creatures into mutants and he made it rain every Sunday during the Cricket, determined to put a stop to this our hero embarks on an adventure to liberate the land of Katmandu.

A strange storyline and game...but is it any good?

Graphics

The first time I played this game it was on a cover tape on the Amstrad Action magazine, I loved it and grabbed the nearest £2.99 rushed to the store and bought the full price game. Dizzy is one of the few non point and click adventure games that keep the player interested long enough to complete the game, of course with the media being cassette you couldn?t save your game half way through which meant spending more than a few hours staring at your monitor.

Having said that, it can?t be held against the game because you could hardly save on any game which was stored on cassette because it would be very difficult to find your save game again later (imagine the fast forwarding and rewinding you would need to do). It?s cartoon graphics appeal to all ages and even those who truly hate adventure games will want to give this game a try.

Sound

The soundtack is great if a little repetitve and strongly advisable that you turn down your speakers after the first 4 or 5 loops otherwise you?ll be pulling you hair out.

Gameplay

The only truly major flaw in the first game is that you can only pick up one item at a time, taking that into consideration you would think that Codemasters would place the items you need to use in a relatively close spot to the place you need to use them, wrong! if you need an item that was at the start of the game you need to go back to the start and pick it up again. Another nasty little drawback that is present in all the Dizzy games is the control system, although designed to make things more difficult (and it does that well!) it can be frustrating at times.