Dizzy is a series of video games, created by the Oliver Twins and published by Codemasters. It was one of the most successful British video game franchises of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Originally developed on the Amstrad CPC and quickly ported to the ZX Spectrum, the series also appeared on multiple home computer and video game console formats, with over a dozen games being published between 1987 and 1992.

The series is named for its main character, an anthropomorphic egg, called Dizzy for the way he somersaults and rolls around the landscape. The games are set in various fairytale-like locations and typically involve Dizzy trying to save his friends and family, the Yolkfolk, often from the schemes of his nemesis, the evil wizard Zaks.

Most of the games in the series were platform-adventure games, with an emphasis on puzzle solving, collecting objects and interacting with other characters. In addition to these core adventure games, the Dizzy branding and character also appeared in several action games with unrelated gameplay.

Since the demise of the series in the early 1990s, there have been numerous attempts to revive the series. These have included a remake for smartphone platforms, a Kickstarter campaign, and the publishing of several old games that were thought lost. The series has also served as the inspiration for other games, including many fangames.

Common elements

Gameplay

thumb|256px|The first screen of [[Treasure Island Dizzy (ZX Spectrum version) establishes the setting for the game and also immediately introduces coins, a newly added feature.]]

The games of the Dizzy series are commonly categorised into either two or three groups. Core to the series and comprising over half its titles are the adventure games, all of which have similar gameplay and mechanics. The rest of the games in the series all have different gameplay from the adventure games and from one another, and are connected only by branding, themes and character. These are commonly referred to as the arcade games, but are sometimes further split into arcade and puzzle games. They also relied heavily on object and inventory based puzzles to interact with the environment and non-player characters.

Additional innovations were added as the series progressed. The ability to carry more than one item simultaneously was added in Treasure Island Dizzy and refined in Fantasy World Dizzy. Collectable items were also first introduced in Treasure Island Dizzy in the form of coins; later games retained the idea but often used other items such as diamonds or cherries.

Characters

The main protagonist and player character for the series is the eponymous Dizzy, an anthropomorphic egg with big eyes, a smiley face, boxing gloves and minimal identifying features. Named for the way he somersaults and rolls around the screen, Dizzy's design was kept deliberately simple. The idea was that this allows players to project themselves onto the character, and to imagine a character beyond what could be achieved by computer graphics of the time.

Throughout most of the series, Dizzy is joined by a cast of recurring characters, also eggs, known as the Yolkfolk, who make up his friends and family. Not present in the original Dizzy – The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure, the Yolkfolk are first mentioned in Treasure Island Dizzy and then appear on-screen in Fantasy World Dizzy. Including Dizzy, there are seven Yolkfolk in total: Dizzy, Daisy, Denzil, Dora, Dozy, Dylan, and Grand Dizzy. Introduced to allow for more story threads and more interesting characters, the Oliver Twins based each of them on a different character from popular culture. For example, Dora was modelled on Velma from Scooby-Doo and Denzil on Fonzie from Happy Days. However, she eventually appears as a second playable character in Wonderland Dizzy.

Other than the Yolkfolk, prominent recurring characters are the evil wizard Zaks, who was the primary antagonist in several games of the series; and Dizzy's pet, Pogie, a small furry creature known as a Fluffle, who starred in Dizzy, Prince of the Yolkfolk, Spellbound Dizzy, and the spin-off game Dreamworld Pogie. Prior to Dizzy, the Codemasters had mostly published simulation games such as BMX Simulator and the Oliver Twins own game, Grand Prix Simulator, and they were eager to branch out into different types of games. to the Amstrad CPC from the BBC Micro original (called Sprites Plus) -- which could be used to easily rotate images on the screen, and they were eager to put it to use. Trying it out on their new character made him somersault and roll around the screen, which they believed gave him a unique feel and also gave rise to his name, Dizzy.

For the game itself, the Olivers aimed to create something with more story and characters than many contemporary games of the time. Their goal was a game that was more akin to an interactive cartoon, hence the game's subtitle, Dizzy: The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure. Originally, it was just going to be called Dizzy 2, but they eventually took motivation from the naming of the James Bond series and decided to name it Treasure Island Dizzy, aiming to make it clearer that the game was a separate, stand-alone experience that could be enjoyed without having played the original.

The third game in the series, 1989's Fast Food, saw a departure from the style of the first two games. Instead of the platform adventure gameplay they had, it was a maze video game, inspired by Pac-Man. The Olivers have given various explanations for this change in interviews they have given over the years, including a desire to prove that the character of Dizzy was valuable even outside the adventure format, and both Codemasters and the Olivers wanted to expand Dizzy into the video game console market. Not only could this allow them to reach a larger audience in the UK and Europe, but it could also allow them to break into lucrative foreign markets, such as the US. Even so, demand for Dizzy games on the original formats was still strong at the time, and it was Codemasters' biggest series. Spread too thin to work on new home computer titles themselves, the Olivers decided to contract out future development to Big Red Software.

Big Red Software created two further Dizzy adventure games, Spellbound Dizzy and Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk, both released in 1991. By this time, they were working almost entirely independently, creating games that fit the pre-established formula with minimal oversight or input from the Olivers. Crystal Kingdom Dizzy reached number one in the ZX Spectrum games chart, and ended up being the last Dizzy game. Despite a generally favourable reception, the game sold only a quarter of its predicted half million copies. with twelve games from the series reaching number one in the charts. Speaking in 1992, Andrew Oliver stated that the Dizzy series received more fan-mail than all other Codemasters games combined. In addition to its success in its home market, the Dizzy games were also extremely popular in Russia and Eastern Europe. Sometimes, modified or themed versions of the games were used, such as Dizzy's Easter Eggstravaganza, an Easter-themed version of Fast Food that appeared on a 1993 Amiga Action cover disk.

A Crash magazine cover tape from 1991 included Dizzy 3 and a Half: Into Magicland. This was a short game, comprising only five screens, that served as a prequel for Magicland Dizzy, and was not commercially released or made available anywhere else. Crash also published a special edition of Treasure Island Dizzy.

Remakes and revival attempts

The Oliver Twins and Codemasters, who both own 50% of the intellectual property,

In October 2011, the website EggCitingNews.com was registered by Codemasters Software Ltd. The main page on the site featured a pair of eyes peering from an egg carton, accompanied by the phrase "Guess who's back?". and updated art by Leigh Christian, who had also worked on the original game. Updates that were made to modernise the game included the addition of achievements and a hint system, and the removal of lives. It was released on 9 December of the same year for iOS and Android.

Oliver Twins launched a Kickstarter project titled Dizzy Returns in November 2012; the game was to be the first official sequel in over 20 years. The Oliver Twins asked Dizzy fans to help pledge £350,000 to the Kickstarter campaign in order for the game to be made. By the Kickstarter project's deadline on 21 December, only £25,620 was pledged to the campaign. The Oliver Twins announced on the same day that Dizzy Returns was no longer in development. They attributed the failure to starting the campaign very early in pre-development and therefore not having anything concrete to show to potential backers and stated that while they were still interested in revisiting Dizzy in the future, any such project would have to have a "considerably different" vision.

In the 2010s, the Oliver Twins found the code for several lost NES games that were written during the 1990s but never published; the brothers subsequently released the games. Wonderland Dizzy, a remake of Magicland Dizzy, was released on 24 October 2015. Dreamworld Pogie, a previously unreleased spin-off, was discovered in 2011 and released in 2016.

A new game for the series, Wonderful Dizzy, in development by the Oliver Twins and based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was due to be released for the Spectrum Next in late 2018, but was finished in late 2020 as a regular ZX Spectrum title. A few days before the game's release date, the Oliver Twins stated on their website that it would be released on 18 December.

In November 2020, a completely new version of Fast Food (now titled Fast Food Dizzy) was released for the Nintendo Switch. It was developed and published by the Oliver Twins on the FUZE program for the console.

Game releases

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|+ Individual games of the Dizzy series

|-

! Name

! Release date

! Type

! class="sortable" | Formats

! class="sortable" | Notes

! class="sortable" | Refs

|-

| Dizzy || 1987 || Adventure || CPC, Spec, C64 || Subtitled The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure. ||

|-

| Fantasy World Dizzy || 1989 || Adventure || CPC, Spec, C64, Amiga, ST, DOS || Also known as Dizzy III, remade for NES as Mystery World Dizzy. ||

|-

| Kwik Snax || 1989 || Puzzle || CPC, Spec, C64, Amiga, ST, DOS || Sometimes considered a sequel to Fast Food. ||

|-

|Dizzy 3 and a Half: Into Magicland || 1991 || Adventure || Spec || While still an official game, it was released for free in Crash magazine. Serves as an intro to Magicland Dizzy. With only 5 screens, it's the smallest game in the series. ||

|-

| Magicland Dizzy || 1990 || Adventure || CPC, Spec, C64, Amiga, ST, DOS || Also known as Dizzy IV, remade for NES as Wonderland Dizzy. ||

|-

| Dizzy Panic || 1990 || Puzzle || CPC, Spec, C64, Amiga, ST, GG, NES|| Also known as Panic Dizzy. ||

|-

| Bubble Dizzy || 1990 || Arcade || CPC, Spec, C64, Amiga, ST, DOS || ||

|-

| Spellbound Dizzy || 1991 || Adventure || CPC, Spec, C64, Amiga, ST, DOS || Also known as Dizzy V. ||

|-

| Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk || 1991 || Adventure || CPC, Spec, C64, Amiga, ST, DOS || Remade for consoles as Dizzy the Adventurer, later remade for mobile phones. Also known as Dizzy VI. ||

|-

| Dizzy Down the Rapids || 1991 || Arcade || CPC, Spec, C64, Amiga, ST || ||

|-

| Fantastic Dizzy || 1991 || Adventure || Amiga, DOS, NES, MS, MD, GG || Also known as The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy. ||

|-

| Crystal Kingdom Dizzy || 1992 || Adventure || CPC, Spec, C64, Amiga, ST, DOS || Also known as Dizzy VII. ||

|-

| Dizzy the Adventurer || 1992 || Adventure || GG, NES || Console remake of Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk. ||

|-

| Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk (mobile remake) || 2011 || Adventure || iOS, Android || Remake of the home computer game of the same name. ||

|-

| Dreamworld Pogie || 2016 || Arcade || NES || Spin-off game ||

|-

| Kwik Snax, Treasure Island Dizzy, Fast Food, Fantasy World Dizzy, Magicland Dizzy || Amiga, Atari ST ||

|-

| rowspan="2" | Dizzy's Excellent Adventures || rowspan="2" | 1992 || Kwik Snax, Dizzy Panic, Dizzy Down The Rapids, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk, Spellbound Dizzy || Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 ||

|-

| Kwik Snax, Dizzy Panic, Bubble Dizzy, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk, Spellbound Dizzy || Amiga, Atari ST ||

|-

| The Excellent Dizzy Collection || 1992 || Go! Dizzy Go!, Dizzy the Adventurer, Panic Dizzy || Game Gear ||

|}

Cancelled games

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|-

! Name

! Expected release date

! Type

! class="unsortable" | Formats

! class="unsortable" | Notes

! class="unsortable" | Refs

|-

| Learn with Dizzy || 1992 || Educational || Amiga, Atari ST, PC || Educational Dizzy game by Codemasters. ||

|-

| Untitled Dizzy game || Mid-2000s || Adventure || PS2 || Blitz Games pitched a 3D concept to Codemasters including a trailer. ||

|-

| Dizzy Returns || 2013 || Adventure || PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U || Crowdfunding was set up through Kickstarter in late 2012. || that enables fans to easily create their own games in the style of the original games. Fans had previously had to use other game engines, which were not always suited to the puzzle style of the Dizzy games. From 2006 to 2016, the makers of DizzyAGE ran a competition each year to find the best game from the previous year, with several of the competitions featuring prizes offered by the Oliver Twins. As of 2018, there are over a hundred fan games listed on the DizzyAGE website.

The Seymour series is a similar franchise, also developed by Big Red and published by Codemasters. The first game in the series, Seymour Goes to Hollywood, was originally conceived as a Dizzy game, but was rebranded due to a desire to keep Dizzy retained to fantasy settings.

Wibble World Giddy is a 1993 public domain parody game for the Amiga. It features similar gameplay to the Dizzy series and stars Giddy, an egg very much like Dizzy except that rather than wear boxing gloves he simply had very large hands. A sequel, Giddy 2, was released the following year, also on Amiga, with a third game, Giddy 3, being made in 2000 for DOS, then subsequently ported to multiple other formats.

Clover: A Curious Tale is a 2009 adventure game that has similar mechanics to and is considered an homage to the Dizzy series. The PC version was published by Blitz 1UP, part of the Oliver Twins' Blitz Games Studios.

References

  • The inside story of Dizzy at Codemasters software