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June 1987

Amstrad.png
Spectrum.png
C64.png
Dizzy Amstrad TitleJon Paul Eldridge
00:00 / 00:28
Dizzy Amstrad In GameJon Paul Eldridge
00:00 / 01:32

Spectrum

Playable in PC Browser

Amstrad

Playable in PC Browser

Commodore 64

Playable in PC Browser
Play Now : C64 (soon)

"Dizzy was exploring the Haunted Forest looking for berries flowers and a piece of wood with which to make a club when he uncovered a mystifying Stone slab. Brushing the dirt aside he was able to read (after a great deal of head scratching) the faint inscriptions.

The Avawiffovee Potion

Dizzy remembered his eggfather had spoken of such a potion. It is the only way to rid the Land of athlete's foot and it can also be used to destroy the evil wizard Zaks. Dizzy trembled with fear as he recalled words.  Zaks brought fear to the village, he cast spells that turned people old, made men blind and caused it to rain every Sunday afternoon during the cricket. Dizzy was determined to put a stop to all this, he would be the hero of the yolkfolk. He read on ..."

"You'll get Dizzy playing this action packed cartoon adventure as you somersault around Fantastic Mystical Kingdoms."

“Collect the ingredients for magic potion to kill evil wizard Zaks. A brilliant game by brilliant programmers for brilliant games players!"

The Press

Whilst developing Ghost Hunters, Philip was frustrated that the player character’s head was limited to 3x3 pixels with only 3 colours. He doodled within Panda Sprites for a few hours on a character that was essentially a large face fitting within the available sprite space. There was only space left to put feet and hands, and only enough resolution and colours to make them look like red boxing gloves and boots. With a little more doodling Philip added multiple expressions, idol animations and a spin jump. The character looked pretty cute, so we recompiled Ghost Hunters with the new character and had him running around the Haunted Mansion which was clearly the wrong setting. As a result, we said we’d come back to this character and make a suitable environment and game for him in the future.

We were big cartoon fans, regularly having a coffee break at 4.00 to watch kids cartoons, and were inspired to set Dizzy in a magical kingdom inspired by cartoons like The Smurfs, Dungeons & Dragons and Count Duckula. The codebase was essentially Ghost Hunters, but we wanted to add more meaning to the objects collected and decided that we’d turn this into a more puzzle-oriented adventure game, much like the classic text adventures we’d played a few years earlier like Zork, (Apple 2), Philosopher's Quest (BBC B) and Sphinx Adventure (BBC B).

The C64 version was coded by Ian Grey, who did a fantastic conversion and would do all future C64 Dizzy games. Codemasters arranged all conversions allowing us to get on with the next games, as a result, we’ve never met him or many of the people that did the conversions of our games.

We requested Codemasters put the flash “The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure” on the cover as that’s what we were trying to create despite the fact it was on low-resolution 8-bit computers. They were very concerned that the game wouldn’t sell and added “By the Oliver Twins authors of GRAND PRIX SIMULATOR!” hoping to capitalise on the success Grand Prix Simulator was enjoying. 

The Map from the original Spectrum version

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Story Behind Dizzy - The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure

Fusion Retro : 2020 Annual

December '19

In this 6 page article, we explain to Chris Wilkins the story behind creating our most successful character - Dizzy, back in 1987 when we were aged 19, having just left school.

Read article here

Buy Fusion Retro Game Magazine here

The Retro Fusion 2020 Annual Here

 

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