Producer: Code Masters
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: The Oliver Twins
The sadistic Wizard Zaks works evil in the realm of Katmandu. To destroy his domination, Dizzy The Egg sets out to create a potion that can spike the warlock's spellmongering.
It's early closing down at the local supermarket, so Dizzy has to scour the land for the ingredients of his enervating brew, mentioned in an ancient recipe. And to gather together these unpleasant articles our ovular friend must walk, tumble and leap vertiginously through graveyards, forest and subterranean worlds full of lethal rivers and falling stalactites. Dizzy can also use magic mushrooms for extra-high bounding power - and all these tricks are useful, because points are awarded for every screen he completes.
But this isn't going to be just another Sunday-afternoon bound for our eggy hero. Many creatures and objects are under the wizard's control: bats with a cruel touch flutter through the air, Granny Smiths drop from trees toward our hero's noggin, rickety bridges disintegrate underfoot and spiders slip down their silken threads; other scuttlers patrol narrow tunnels... waiting.
During his travels, Dizzy may discover items that he can put to use - but only if he can first solve their purpose, perhaps with the help of the onscreen clues. With such things as spades, bags of gold and oilcans, Dizzy can open up whole new vistas of exploration that take him further in his quest.
When Dizzy has collected all the potion's ingredients he can return to the large cauldron, light it, and throw in the ingredients and the empty magic potion flask. Once filled, the flask can be carried to the evil wiz and smashed next to him. Katmandu is then released from his evil powers and Dizzy can look to the future as a free egg, not a potential omelette.
COMMENTS
Joysticks: Kempston
Graphics: very good cartoon-type graphics with plenty of colour
Sound: a good tune rattles away on the title screen but there are few FX
Anyone for scrambled eggs? Well, if not, don't get jumping too high in this fantastic new game from Code Masters. It's very similar to Firebird's cute Spiky Harold (reviewed in CRASH Issue 29, the ubiquitous indexing minion tells me), which had a hedgehog instead of an egg. The animation is excellent; the graphics are brilliant, with colour complimeting them perfectly; sound is used, with a good tune at the start and spot FX and tunes in the game. I can't find ANYTHING nasty to say about Dizzy, it's just so addictive and neat.
NICK [85%]
Dizzy may be a little too cute and cuddly for my liking, but there's a great game hidden within those small and furry folds! The average puzzle-solving/arcade adventure has never really appealed to me, so perhaps the puzzles in this one are much more logical - or perhaps it's lust plain easy to play. Whatever it is, it's fab. The inlay, like most of Code Masters's, goes a little overboard - the word 'brilliant' appears four times. But it's true: Dizzy is one to have in your software collection.
BEN [77%]
Dizzy is an appealing game with enough puzzles to keep your Interest going for a while. The graphics are all rather cutesy - it's the sort of game that provokes your mum to say 'Aw, isn't that sweet' - though the number of things that can kill you can become quite distracting. Dizzy is a worthy product.
RICKY [72%]
Code Masters
£1.99
What did the Ed mean when she said this was a natural for me? Gormless, yes, but dizzy - never!
Still, this is the sort of game that can only give off-balance a good name. It's an arcade adventure, packed with enough cute touches to make you forget you said you'd never play another one of the things as long as you lived.
For a start there's your hero, a nicely animated egg who has eggspectations of saving his world from the wizard Zaks and the infernal curse of eternally itchy athlete's foot. He doesn't just leap but performs the sort of rolls which would scramble a lesser egg.
This second cousin to Humpty Dumpty is big and colourful, and he walks and tumbles through a bright, imaginative landscape, dodging nasties and picking up the usual selection of odd objects. There's a fair variety to the scenery, with helpful messages whenever necessary, as Dizzy searches for the ingredients for the potion.
I don't think it will take too much wit to work out some of the puzzles though, such as how to use a raincoat if there are fatal raindrops! Restricting the number of objects carried to one, means that you have to retrace your steps rather a lot too, but the arcade elements keep tedium at bay, because there are many well-judged jumps, elevators and crumbling floors to negotiate.
So while the hard core problem solving corps may not favour it, anybody who likes some joystick skills combined with their brainwork should be well-pleased at this price. Far from original, but the yolk's on you if you fail give Dizzy a spin.
Label: Code Masters
Author: The Oliver Twins
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon
If there is one thing I hate more than autograph hunters who won't leave me alone (such people do exist, you know), it's programmers with a consistently good track record. Such programmers are the fine upstanding Oliver Twins, of Grand Prix and Professional Ski Simulators. Needless to say, their latest offering into the Code Masters foray is excellent.
In Dizzy, you play a little baby clucker. Not a chick, you understand, but a fully matured egg. Not any ordinary egg, but an egg with a mission. It's mission, should you choose to accept it is to collect ingredients for a potion to kill the evil Zaks who has been terrorising the eggs.
Screens are taxing and well laid out with a good use of colour. There are items lying about and these can be used to aid progress through the game. For instance, in one part of the game, there is a mineshaft which you must go down but can't jet to because of a minecart in the way. In the next screen is an oil can. See if you can work out what has to be done.
Dizzy has been described as 'The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure'. This is almost true. It should have been 'The Ultimate Budget Cartoon Adventure' as, wonderful as it is, it doesn't come close to my all time favourite Firelord. The graphics are clear, humourous in places and all are very recognisable.
One of the Oliver Twins' best and one well worth keeping an eye out for. Go on, buy it. Don't be chicken. (All right, that's enough of the egg yolks. (Ha, ha).
Supplier: Code Masters
Version Tested: Spectrum
In this arcade adventure you play Dizzy, a small egg-shaped creature whose mission is to kill the evil sorcerer Zax, an exceedingly wicked piece of work who has been conjuring rain during the Sunday afternoon cricket. And sorcerers don't come much nastier than that, do they?
To achieve your objective you must brew a strange potion that, as well as curing Athlete's Foot (as the inlay claims) will destroy Zax and end his reign of terror. In this noble quest Dizzy runs and jumps from screen to screen searching for the potion's ingredients and objects that may help him on his way. Many objects are needed to gain access to different sections of the world, which covers about 50 screens, and when and where to use them must be discovered partly by logical deduction and partly by trial and error.
The balance between puzzle difficulty and rate of progress is kept at just the right level in Dizzy to keep you coming back for more, but without making things to easy. The problems usually have a quite logical answer so you won't have to spend hours attempting to work out how the programmer's mind has been working.
The game is a little on the small side but at £1.99 50 screens of this quality and addictiveness are not to be sniffed at - even if Dizzy does look like Humpty Dumpty
Reviewer: Dave Packer
RELEASE BOX
Spectrum £1.99cs, Out Now
Amstrad £1.99cs, Out Now
Predicted Interest Curve
1 min: 4/10
1 hour: 7/10
1 day: 7.5/10
1 week: 7/10
1 month: 3/10
1 year: 1/10
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