Crystal Kingdom Dizzy
Dizzy searches for stolen crystal treasures in a later Codemasters adventure developed by Visual Impact and Reflective Designs.
Image credits and source
Original cover / promotional artwork
Credit: Codemasters — artwork belongs to its respective rights holders
Source: The Oliver Twins archive
Game at a glance
- Status
- Classic
- Released
- 1992
- Platforms
- Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amiga, Amiga CD32
- Genres
- Adventure, Platform
- Developer
- Visual Impact; Reflective Designs
- Publisher
- Codemasters
Development and publication
Development: Visual Impact; Reflective Designs. Publication: Codemasters.
The Oliver Twins created the Dizzy character and series. This later entry was developed by Visual Impact and Reflective Designs, rather than personally programmed by the Twins.
Making the game
Whilst we continued to focus on console games, still hoping to crack the American games market, there was still a good opportunity to produce another Dizzy Adventure game for the European computer games market.
Paul Ranson took production lead with Dave Thompson taking lead programmer and designer roles. The seventh and last Dizzy adventure* was initially called Dizzy and the Lost Treasure of the Yolkfolk, but was eventually given the shorter name Crystal Kingdom Dizzy. If the crystal sword, chalice and crown were not returned to their rightful place, then darkness would forever fall upon the land of the Yolkfolk. Dizzy had to travel the various lands solving puzzles, whilst searching for the stolen mystical crystal treasures of the Yolkfolk.
Codemasters decided to sell this at full price, £19.99 for the ST & Amiga versions, and £9.99 for the Spectrum, Amstrad and C64 versions. It came in a large box, with a brilliant illustration and supported by a good marketing campaign. It reviewed far better on the 8-bit computers which by now were 10 years old and this unsurprisingly was to be their last Christmas.
*last until Wonderful Dizzy December 2020 - 28 years later.
Original documents
Archived Crystal Kingdom Dizzy document (PDF)
Archived Crystal Kingdom Dizzy article (PDF)