Dizzy Collection 1

The English Oliver twins Phillip and Andrew Oliver produced a classic series with Dizzy from Codemasters. From the early days of the Spectrum’s “Dizzy, The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure” C1986 all the way to this bundle pack produced more recently and consisting of three games, Codemasters made some great games. Magicland is the core game in the bundle reviewed here, with the traditional puzzle game play that made the series’ name. The other two are spin-off Dizzy games and are arcade style examples of the Pac-man theme in a food related setting (interestingly there is another reference to Pac Man in the main dizzy game in the 1990 game “Magicland Dizzy” whereby dizzy collects a power pill that imbues the hero with the ability to kill ghosts).

Magicland Dizzy was the 6th game in the Dizzy Series, and the fourth traditional puzzle adventure type and was in fact the first game not designed by the Series creators and chinks of programming were outsourced to outside developing companies.
The Amiga version of Magicland Dizzy features the kind of rich colors and details one is accustomed to from the Amiga, and sounds and music provide a delightful retro setting. Gameplay itself is a mix of skill and problem solving with timing critical on a number of tricky areas. Dizzy has an energy bar which can be replenished by collecting certain items hidden throughout the landscape. Water is, as ever, deadly to our ovum resembling hero and so must be avoided at all costs.
KwikSnax and Fast food dizzy are in my mind fairly weak games and are an unnecessary appendage to the key classic Magicland Dizzy. You could say it is the bloated appendix of the collection, game play is tedious, slow and laborious and the maze style action soon becomes repetitive and one questions why time should be spent on this. Other than the historical value in the wider context of the dizzy collections development, this game has no purpose anymore. The only vaguely interesting point about Fast Food Dizzy is that originally it was made for the UK happy eater service station food chain, however it was pulled and the ‘Dizzy Egg’ character replaced the Happy-Eater Pacman shaped logo.