Fantastic Dizzy

"Beutiful puzzle game flawed by lack of save feature."

If you ever owned a Spectrum then there is a good chance that at some point you would have come across a Dizzy game. There were around ten of them and as far as the Spectrum went, they were pretty good. The graphics were colourful instead of monochrome, the sound was ok and the games were fun to play. Overall they were some of the most popular games on the system and rightly so. But what do the Dizzy games offer to the Genesis and the 16bit generation.

Dizzy is an egg with boxing gloves and boots! He lives with with the Yolkfolk in their tree house happily going about their business, every now and then though the evil wizard Zaks will decide to kidnap Dizzy's girlfriend. This has happened again and it is your task to get her back, the only thing in your way is the two hundred and fifty stars you need to collect and the scores of puzzles you need to solve.

The game is basically a platform puzzler. You wander around coming across various objects which you can pick up and use elsewhere to progress further in the game. The whole game is made up of this type of gameplay broken up by the various sub games at various points around the world. These sub games are basically some of the games that were released under the Dizzy guise on Spectrum. When you get thrown off the pirate ship into the sea you get a game where you have to ride bubbles back up the the surface before your air runs out, this was Bubble Dizzy on the Spectrum, now it can be easily put in as a sub game on Genesis. These sub games split up the normal gameplay and make the game more enjoyable.

It's not all puzzles and games though. Along the way there will be hundreds of things that will be willing to scramble our heroes insides and stop him from complete his task. Some of the creatures will need to be avoided whist others need to have an object given to them or used against them. If you do touch any of the nasty beings then your energy bar will drain, if it empties Dizzy will lose one of his three lives. The bar can be topped up with fruit that is stroon across the lands you will explore, lives can also be increased by completing the sliding puzzles you can play. These puzzles are a picture of Dizzy but mixed up, you need to make up the picture before the time runs out.

The graphics are very cartoony and really colourful throughout. The characters are very cute if a little odd. What were the designers thinking of when they invented an egg with boxing gloves? The enemies are mainly spiders, snails and other creepy crawlies and there are hundreds of them. The scenery is varied too as there are loads of different locations to explore ranging from pirate ships to graveyards to spooky castles. You will never get bored of looking at the same backgrounds which is a great thing.

The music complements the cartoony theme and has different tunes for different sections. It can get repetitive though and the cuteness will soon wear off and you will be reaching for the volume control. Overall the music is not awful but it won't stick in your mind either.

The thing that really lets the game down is the lack of a save system. The game is very linear and you do not want to keep doing the first part of the game over and over again. A few save slots would have made the game more enjoyable because it is quite easy to use your lives. It is possible to finish the game but it would take a few hours solid to do it, is is not a game you can play for half an hour or so.

Fantastic Dizzy is definitely different from everything else on the Genesis. The puzzles range from obvious to taxing and the game will take ages to finish. Definitely worth a try and and a must for fans of the original games.

Graphics - 9 -
Sounds - 5 -
Gameplay - 6 -
Game size - 8 -
Addiction - 7 -

Overall - 7 -

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/16/01, Updated 10/16/01