Spectrum Analyzer: Dizzy

[Phillyman]

From the Atari 2600 to the NES to the Sega Genesis, you thought you've experienced everything there is to know about retro. Don't get too cocky though, Americans! There's a whole other chapter of classic gaming you've likely missed. Pack your bags... 1UP is taking an extended trip to England to discover:

Oh crap, I am so totally late with this column! All right, let me get prepared … I’ll just plug in my favorite joystick, then fire up some Oasis to get into a British frame of mind. Now I'm electric, baby!

This week, we’ll be covering an icon of vintage British gaming that went largely ignored here in the United States. He had a little more luck finding an audience here than Manic Miner, but chances are the only time most American gamers saw Dizzy was in a segment on QVC in the early 1990s, or buried in the back of a copy of EGM along with ads for the Game Genie. His series of games on the NES were overshadowed by heavy hitters like Mega Man, Castlevania, and Metroid, mostly because unlicensed developers like Codemasters had difficulty selling their wares alongside software with Nintendo’s seal of approval, but also because the title character fell flat with young male NES owners. Really, an animated egg? It’s been twenty years since Dizzy’s debut on the Nintendo Entertainment System and I still have trouble wrapping my head around the idea. Even more bewildering is the fact that Dizzy was not the only egg in Great Britain’s basket. No, the nation popped out plenty of other prenatal mascots, including this scary customer…

Done screaming? Good. Anyway, Dizzy didn’t start out as much of anything at first. Like Kirby, the character was a placeholder graphic inserted into the game so the developers could work on stages while thinking of a more appealing design. The design team made him round because the game was designed with agility in mind, and the simple shape made it easier to animate his acrobatic antics. Eventually, the developers grow fond of their hastily drawn hero and stuck with him, although they didn’t decide on what exactly he was or where he came from until they started work on Fantastic World Dizzy, the third game in the series. That’s when they came up with the Yolk Folk, a race of ovoid beings including Dizzy’s girlfriend Daisy and kid sister Dora, who detests frogs and bakes cakes as a hobby. I don’t know what’s more disturbing… the fact that these characters have such detailed back stories despite not having been born yet, or that little Dora probably has to resort to cannibalism to make her pastries. (I wonder if she’s ever made quiche?)

All this talk and I haven’t even described how the games play! Well, here’s what you need to know. Dizzy’s a side-scrolling platformer that’s best described as a head-on collision between Sonic the Hedgehog (which the game actually predates by several years) and Maniac Mansion. Dizzy is surprisingly agile in spite of his stubby limbs, spinning through the air and cartwheeling down hills like a gold medal gymnast. However, unlike Sega’s spiky blue cash cow, our thin-shelled hero is extremely fragile and will shatter at the slightest contact with the creatures roaming each stage. His goal is not to confront them, but rather to locate items that grant safe passage to other areas. An empty treasure chest can be used as a stepping stone to climb a steep hill, and a raincoat protects Dizzy from the downpour of storm clouds. So it’s a bit like a Metroid game or the half-dozen Castlevania titles that were directly inspired by it, but there’s also a puzzle element in figuring out which doodad works with which onscreen obstacle.

The first Dizzy game was fairly rough, as most games designed for the 48K Spectrum tend to be. Sound effects are limited to harsh throaty croaks, and Dizzy can only carry one item at a time, forcing you to choose your inventory carefully and scout ahead for obstacles compatible with that empty flask or pile of birdseed you found several screens away. The second game, Treasure Island Dizzy, harnesses the power of the 128K Spectrum for a more satisfying experience. Dizzy’s got enough pocket space for three objects, and there’s an upbeat soundtrack that accompanies him on his travels. It’s typical European “gurgle music” that sounds like someone is violently shaking the system as it plays, but it nevertheless shows effort on the part of the programmers. There's even a voiced introduction, at a time when digitized speech was a rare commodity in video games.

Both games prove yet again that Nintendo hard’s got nothin’ on Spectrum hard. Dizzy has no means of defense in the first game, and the sequel ups the ante by giving you only one life (!!!) and hiding traps all over the island. There’s no way to escape when one of these traps is triggered… it just drops, turning poor Dizzy into an instant omelet. How anyone could beat Treasure Island Dizzy without save states and without an online strategy guide is beyond my comprehension, yet this is exactly what British kids had to do in the emulation and internet free 1980s. My hat’s off to you guys. We may have beaten you in 1776, but two hundred years later, there isn’t an American gamer alive who could hope to compete against Britain’s army of Spectrum-hardened soldiers!

I should probably also mention for completion’s sake* that Dizzy migrated to several other consoles, including the NES and Genesis. The games on those two systems had the same basic gameplay of the originals on the Spectrum, with the added bonuses of more buttons (because nobody likes pushing up to jump in a platformer) and improved graphics. Greatly improved, in the case of the Genesis game shown here… the high resolution, rich colors, and parallax scrolling must have been a feast for the eyes for Spectrum owners who graduated to a 16-bit game system. Oddly, the conversion of Treasure Island Dizzy on the NES (included as one of the four games in Codemasters’ Quattro Adventure compilation) suffers next to its Spectrum cousin with simplified levels, colorful but more banal visuals, and jerky character movement. Maybe they didn’t have enough space on the cartridge to do it justice, but this game should have shined on the NES, rather than feeling like a step back.

* If I really wanted to be complete, I’d talk about the entire library of Dizzy games, including all the spin-offs, but this feature is late enough already!

Special thanks to YolkFolk.com and Wikipedia for historical information. Wait, so the guys who created Dizzy were responsible for those wacky Burger King games that were released a few years back? Now I know what was in the Sneak King's breakfast sandwiches...

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