Dizzy

Sinclair User

Overall 9/10

Tony Dillon 9/10

Label: Code Masters Author: The Oliver Twins Price: £1.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Tony Dillon If there is one thing I hate more than autograph hunters who won't leave me alone (such people do exist, you know), it's programmers with a consistently good track record. Such programmers are the fine upstanding Oliver Twins, of Grand Prix and Professional Ski Simulators. Needless to say, their latest offering into the Code Masters foray is excellent. In Dizzy, you play a little baby clucker. Not a chick, you understand, but a fully matured egg. Not any ordinary egg, but an egg with a mission. It's mission, should you choose to accept it is to collect ingredients for a potion to kill the evil Zaks who has been terrorising the eggs. Screens are taxing and well laid out with a good use of colour. There are items lying about and these can be used to aid progress through the game. For instance, in one part of the game, there is a mineshaft which you must go down but can't jet to because of a minecart in the way. In the next screen is an oil can. See if you can work out what has to be done. Dizzy has been described as 'The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure'. This is almost true. It should have been 'The Ultimate Budget Cartoon Adventure' as, wonderful as it is, it doesn't come close to my all time favourite Firelord. The graphics are clear, humourous in places and all are very recognisable. One of the Oliver Twins' best and one well worth keeping an eye out for. Go on, buy it. Don't be chicken. (All right, that's enough of the egg yolks. (Ha, ha).

Your Sinclair

Graphics 9/10

Playability 8/10

Value For Money 9/10

Addictiveness 7/10

Overall 7/10

Rachael Smith 7/10

Code Masters £1.99 Reviewer: Rachael Smith What did the Ed mean when she said this was a natural for me? Gormless, yes, but dizzy - never! Still, this is the sort of game that can only give off-balance a good name. It's an arcade adventure, packed with enough cute touches to make you forget you said you'd never play another one of the things as long as you lived. For a start there's your hero, a nicely animated egg who has eggspectations of saving his world from the wizard Zaks and the infernal curse of eternally itchy athlete's foot. He doesn't just leap but performs the sort of rolls which would scramble a lesser egg. This second cousin to Humpty Dumpty is big and colourful, and he walks and tumbles through a bright, imaginative landscape, dodging nasties and picking up the usual selection of odd objects. There's a fair variety to the scenery, with helpful messages whenever necessary, as Dizzy searches for the ingredients for the potion. I don't think it will take too much wit to work out some of the puzzles though, such as how to use a raincoat if there are fatal raindrops! Restricting the number of objects carried to one, means that you have to retrace your steps rather a lot too, but the arcade elements keep tedium at bay, because there are many well-judged jumps, elevators and crumbling floors to negotiate. So while the hard core problem solving corps may not favour it, anybody who likes some joystick skills combined with their brainwork should be well-pleased at this price. Far from original, but the yolk's on you if you fail give Dizzy a spin.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Crash

Use of Computer 79%

Graphics 80%

Playability 79%

Addictive Qualities 75%

Overall 78%

Ben Stone 77%

Nick Roberts 85%

Richard Eddy 72%

Producer: Code Masters Retail Price: £1.99 Author: The Oliver Twins The sadistic Wizard Zaks works evil in the realm of Katmandu. To destroy his domination, Dizzy The Egg sets out to create a potion that can spike the warlock's spellmongering. It's early closing down at the local supermarket, so Dizzy has to scour the land for the ingredients of his enervating brew, mentioned in an ancient recipe. And to gather together these unpleasant articles our ovular friend must walk, tumble and leap vertiginously through graveyards, forest and subterranean worlds full of lethal rivers and falling stalactites. Dizzy can also use magic mushrooms for extra-high bounding power - and all these tricks are useful, because points are awarded for every screen he completes. But this isn't going to be just another Sunday-afternoon bound for our eggy hero. Many creatures and objects are under the wizard's control: bats with a cruel touch flutter through the air, Granny Smiths drop from trees toward our hero's noggin, rickety bridges disintegrate underfoot and spiders slip down their silken threads; other scuttlers patrol narrow tunnels... waiting. During his travels, Dizzy may discover items that he can put to use - but only if he can first solve their purpose, perhaps with the help of the onscreen clues. With such things as spades, bags of gold and oilcans, Dizzy can open up whole new vistas of exploration that take him further in his quest. When Dizzy has collected all the potion's ingredients he can return to the large cauldron, light it, and throw in the ingredients and the empty magic potion flask. Once filled, the flask can be carried to the evil wiz and smashed next to him. Katmandu is then released from his evil powers and Dizzy can look to the future as a free egg, not a potential omelette. COMMENTS Joysticks: Kempston Graphics: very good cartoon-type graphics with plenty of colour Sound: a good tune rattles away on the title screen but there are few FX

An eggstra picture - and we're not yolking, white?

Dizzy The Egg scours Nepal for his magic ingredients.

ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment)

Visual Effects 4/7

Audio 4/7

IQ Factor 7/7

Fun Factor 5/7

Ace Rating 788/1000

Dave Packer 788/1000

Supplier: Code Masters Version Tested: Spectrum In this arcade adventure you play Dizzy, a small egg-shaped creature whose mission is to kill the evil sorcerer Zax, an exceedingly wicked piece of work who has been conjuring rain during the Sunday afternoon cricket. And sorcerers don't come much nastier than that, do they? To achieve your objective you must brew a strange potion that, as well as curing Athlete's Foot (as the inlay claims) will destroy Zax and end his reign of terror. In this noble quest Dizzy runs and jumps from screen to screen searching for the potion's ingredients and objects that may help him on his way. Many objects are needed to gain access to different sections of the world, which covers about 50 screens, and when and where to use them must be discovered partly by logical deduction and partly by trial and error. The balance between puzzle difficulty and rate of progress is kept at just the right level in Dizzy to keep you coming back for more, but without making things to easy. The problems usually have a quite logical answer so you won't have to spend hours attempting to work out how the programmer's mind has been working. The game is a little on the small side but at £1.99 50 screens of this quality and addictiveness are not to be sniffed at - even if Dizzy does look like Humpty Dumpty Reviewer: Dave Packer RELEASE BOX Spectrum £1.99cs, Out Now Amstrad £1.99cs, Out Now Predicted Interest Curve 1 min: 4/10 1 hour: 7/10 1 day: 7.5/10 1 week: 7/10 1 month: 3/10 1 year: 1/10

Dizzy ponders a graveyard problem.

AMSTRAD VERSION Graphics are virtually identical to the Spectrum version; you might feel a little peeved about that, but they are very well done. Gameplay is just the same.