Kwik Snax
A Dizzy arcade puzzle game built around moving blocks and rescuing the Yolkfolk, designed by the Twins and programmed by Lyndon Sharp.
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
- Maze, Puzzle
- Developer
- Lyndon Sharp; The Oliver Twins (design)
- Publisher
- Codemasters
Development and publication
Development: Lyndon Sharp; The Oliver Twins (design). 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
Whilst working on The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy, a project that would take around 6 months, we had ideas for other games. Following the success of Fast Food we wanted to create its sequel but were too busy to write it ourselves. Instead I, Philip, wrote up the game design and agreed on a deal with Lyndon Sharp, one of the freelance programmers at Codemasters.
He did a fantastic job of programming and audio on Amstrad and Spectrum and even added his own music and signature intro to the Spectrum version - The Dizzy Mob band. Sadly there was no memory available to add this to the Amstrad version. Chris Graham produced all the graphics.
Since Dizzy was very popular, and it was a great game, it sold quite well, but the 8-bit games market was shrinking. Jason Benham sent Codemasters a Commodore 64 maze game, and since they weren’t planning on converting Kwik Snax to the C64, they simply changed the main character to Dizzy and put the game out as Kwik Snax for C64. Whilst we were surprised when we found out, it did make commercial sense.
Beno and Damon were given the contract to produce the ST and Amiga versions, which was later converted to the PC. They did such a great job we hired them and Lyndon as some of our first employees of our new game development studio, which would later become Blitz Games.
Original documents
Archived Kwik Snax document (PDF)