The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy
System: NES
Release Date: 1991
Developer: Codemasters
Publisher: Camerica
Genre: Adventure
The trolls have all turned on you and your Yolkfolk in the Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy! As Dizzy, your girlfriend has been kidnapped by the evil Zaks and taken to his castle in the clouds. You need to find your way there by solving puzzles and collecting 100 stars. Only then will the barrier be broken and your relationship with Daisy be put back together again.
Dizzy is a sentient egg. He can move around and jump with the A Button. And jumping you will be doing throughout your adventure. There’s a lot of platforming at your fingertips and not much of it is easy. Dizzy can also pick up items and cycle through his inventory with the B Button. Only three items can be held at any time and pressing the B Button cycles all items to the right one slot. If it gets to the end, you drop it, but can pick it up later. Items you can pick up are black and white, but you can press the Select Button to get a short description of what you’re carrying and the area you’re in. Most items are used once, but the rope is used multiple times.
There are two main tasks to work toward once the game starts. First, you need to find your way to Zaks’ castle. The second is to collect 100 stars scattered across the world to open up the final ascent to Zaks. You will be completing these two tasks simultaneously. You begin in the tree top village that Dizzy and his friends live in. It’s relatively easy to find all the house and elevator keys you need to make it to the top. Each of your friends are in trouble in some way and there are items scattered about that must be collected to help them. They will all give you something in return to help you venture further along. For example, swimming is impossible without flippers, which are being held by Denzil. But he’s trapped in a block of ice, so figuring out how to rescue him is a priority.
While you’re walking around, the biggest hazard are spiders coming down from trees. These egg suckers like to trick you into thinking they’ll go all the way up, but then as you commit, they drop back down to cause damage. I could also tell the programmers are from Britain because you get hurt by droplets of water and there are rats everywhere. Luckily, there’s a somewhat generous, if limited, amount of food dotting the countryside. I did run across a glitch that made the game less of an exercise in torture. If you have taken damage, grab some fruit, then press the Select Button while your health is recovering, but before it is done. If done correctly, most enemies will no longer hurt you. If you touch an enemy that does hurt you or any wall flames that exist, your health will begin to drain again. This made walking around the tree tops less frustrating and all the backtracking much less painful.
When I finally made it to Zaks’ castle, I grabbed the last of the stars there… and had one left to find. This was after about three and a half hours after starting the playthrough and I really wanted to finish. So, I sighed and started walking around for awhile before thinking the only place I hadn’t really explored thoroughly was the pirate ship. I headed over there and found the final star! The final ascent to the evil wizard Zaks has him throwing angry faces at you like his name is Donkey Kong. You have to jump up a ton of single blocks, which is easier said than done with the way Dizzy rolls and has momentum carrying him a bit as he lands. It ends with a single bolt from Zaks’ staff. Simply jump the spell and watch him fall to his doom!
Graphics: 2.5
I think the scenery all looks nice. The sprites are pretty decent, as well.
Sound: 1.0
There are a number of different tunes, some renditions of famous songs, but too many of them are shrill.
Gameplay: 1.0
Dizzy controls okay, but his jumps will get you rolling when you don’t want to and many of the items are obtuse to understand. Why can’t I have a weapon to kill bad guys?
Difficulty: 1.0
Unless you want to take advantage of a glitch, good luck getting all the way through in the number of lives you can collect. Avoiding spiders, rats, and other bugs is too much of an ask.
Fun Factor: 0.5
If backtracking and item management sounds like a good time, you’ll love this one. Not me, though.
Overall Rating: 1.2
The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy earns a D+. I was just talking about how good Codemasters could be, but this is not a glowing eggs-ample.