Dizzy the Adventurer
A NES reworking of Prince of the Yolkfolk, bundled with the Aladdin Deck Enhancer and later adapted for the Excellent Dizzy Collection.
Image credits and source
Aladdin Deck Enhancer packaging featuring Dizzy the Adventurer
Credit: Codemasters — artwork belongs to its respective rights holders
Source: The Oliver Twins archive
Game at a glance
- Status
- Classic
- Released
- 1992
- Platforms
- Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Gear
- Genres
- Adventure, Platform
- Developer
- The Oliver Twins and their team (NES adaptation)
- Publisher
- Codemasters
Development and publication
Development: The Oliver Twins and their team (NES adaptation). Publication: Codemasters.
The named development credit refers to the original or specifically identified version. Other ports and later re-releases may have different development teams.
Making the game
Producing cartridges, especially NES cartridges was an expensive business with high inventory costs. Codemasters came up with a great way to reduce costs by putting more components into a cartridge adaptor called the Aladdin. This would be sold at the price of a regular cartridge whilst further Codemasters NES games could be sold at half the price to plug into the Aladdin.
To make Aladdin a more attractive purchase it needed to include a game and it was decided to make that game Dizzy the Adventurer. We based this on the very successful Dizzy, Prince of the Yolkfolk.
Sadly Aladdin failed in the US market with Camerica, it’s exclusive distributor, going bust. We then converted the game to the Sega Master System, Game Gear and the MegaDrive and they were included in the Dizzy Excellent Collection - along with Panic! Dizzy and Go! Dizzy Go! Sadly Codemasters produced only a very small production run of this making them extremely rare. The Megadrive version wasn’t released at all.
Original documents
Archived Dizzy the Adventurer document (PDF)