Bubble Dizzy
After being thrown overboard by pirates, Dizzy must climb rising bubbles to reach the surface in this underwater arcade spin-off.
Image credits and source
Original cover / promotional artwork
Credit: Codemasters — artwork belongs to its respective rights holders
Game at a glance
- Status
- Classic
- Released
- 1990
- Platforms
- Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amiga, DOS
- Genres
- Arcade, Platform
- Developer
- Big Red Software / Lyndon Sharp; The Oliver Twins (original concept)
- Publisher
- Codemasters
Development and publication
Development: Big Red Software / Lyndon Sharp; The Oliver Twins (original concept). Publication: Codemasters.
The Oliver Twins created Dizzy and contributed the concept, design or oversight identified above. Programming and conversions are credited separately.
Making the game
We decided that Fantastic Dizzy on NES should include some mini-arcade games. These were developed by our good friend Peter Williamson.
The concept for Bubble Dizzy was straight from the illustration of Treasure Island Dizzy that sees Dizzy walking the plank. Narratively, that’s fantastic, but it’s not an event that actually happens in the game, so we thought we’d rectify that by including this in Fantastic Dizzy, it was also a great excuse for adding a Pirate and his ship.
Once Dizzy was made to Walk the Plank he was clearly going to end up in the water and we thought that was a great intro to a mini-game.
Dizzy sinks to the bottom and must rise to the surface by jumping on bubbles, but the longer he rides on them the more likely they are to pop so he needs to keep moving from bubble to bubble.
It’s a neat little game and we decided that it was worth creating another Dizzy arcade game for home computers from the concept, obviously adding more features and levels.
Original documents
Archived Bubble Dizzy document (PDF)