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
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.
The adventure games also included many elements of platform games, such as running and jumping to avoid enemies and hazards. They also relied heavily on object and inventory based puzzles to interact with the environment and non-player characters. For example, the opening screen of Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk tasked the player with escaping from a locked cell using a jug of water, a pile of leaves, and a box of matches.
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. A health bar was first introduced in Magicland Dizzy, allowing Dizzy to be hit without dying.
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.
Except for Dizzy himself, the most prominent member of the Yolkfolk is his girlfriend, Daisy. She is often a damsel in distress, with her rescue being the key motivator to the plot of several of the games. Indeed, when Codemasters issued Dizzy collectable cards, Daisy's card acknowledged this: "The only problem with Daisy is that she's always getting captured". 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.
Setting The Dizzy games all take place in fantasy settings loosely based around fables and fairy tales. By alluding to other well known stories, the games are able to present scenarios and puzzles that are interesting and appealing, while also accessible even to a young audience. For instance, a puzzle in which the player must use magic beans to grow a giant beanstalk relies upon the player's pre-existing knowledge of the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Similarly, the games' simple black-and-white morality, with many of them having the final goal of defeating the evil wizard Zaks, was also a nod to their fairy tales roots. Speaking on the subject, Andrew Oliver said that "it's common in any fairy tale to have an evil person to defeat, and so we went down this route".
Development Creation Dizzy was created in 1987 by Andrew and Philip Oliver, collectively known as the Oliver Twins and published by Codemasters. 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. The character of Dizzy was created before any of his games; the Olivers had noticed that most traditional characters in video games of the time had very small faces which were largely unable to express emotion. As such, they decided to create a new character who was little more than just a large face, rounded out with gloves and boots. They had also ported a development tool -- Panda Sprites 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. It was initially released for Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum since the two platforms' similar hardware (both use the Z80 microprocessor) made it easier to develop on the CPC and quickly port the code to the Spectrum. A port to the Commodore 64 followed.
At first, Codemasters' David Darling was not impressed by Dizzy, and wanted the Olivers to continue to create more Simulator games instead. However they mostly paid game developers only in royalties at that point, so they published it anyway since it constituted such a low risk for them. Initial sales were unremarkable, being similar to an average Codemasters game of the time; unusually, they remained steady for a prolonged period rather than suffering drop off over time. This was enough for both Codemasters and the Olivers to want to produce a sequel.
Growth of the series Treasure Island Dizzy was again written for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC, using an updated version of the game engine from the original Dizzy, and a world editor that the Olivers had also written. 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.
One of the problems that they encountered during development was that it was possible to put the game into an unwinnable state. When the player lost a life, they respawned – effectively being brought back to life – in a safe location. One of the game's items was a snorkel that was required to move underwater and the twins found that it was possible to respawn in such a way that the snorkel was completely inaccessible, either under or across the water. Being unable to think of any other solution in time for release, they made the decision to give the player only one life. This removed the logic problem but also gave the game a reputation as the series' most difficult incarnation.
In addition to the three platforms that Dizzy had appeared on, Treasure Island Dizzy was also ported to the Amiga, Atari ST, Nintendo Entertainment System, and MS-DOS.
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, caution over not wanting to over-saturate the market with similar games, and even a desire to develop a game that could be made very quickly to be out in time for Christmas. Regardless of the reason for the change in format, it proved to be a successful one, with Philip Oliver later commenting that "people get more involved in the adventures but the arcade games sell just as well".
The next game, Fantasy World Dizzy, was a return to the adventure game format. It also saw the introduction of the Yolkfolk characters, who were prominent throughout the rest of the series. The extra characters allowed the Olivers to include more dialogue in the game, moving it further towards their original conception of an interactive cartoon. Kwik Snax, another maze game (though this time with a much greater emphasis on puzzle solving). was released in 1990.
Handing off to Big Red Software Kwik Snax was the last Dizzy game for the original Amstrad and Spectrum formats the Oliver Twins developed. By this point, it was clear that these formats were not going to survive for much longer 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.
Speaking after the fact, the twins commented that they had previously contracted out development of ports of their games to other system, and that this felt like the natural next step for them. For the first game that Big Red developed, Magicland Dizzy, the Olivers still played a major role in the creation, collaborating on the game's story and overseeing the game's design. The next game, Panic Dizzy, was similar; for this falling block puzzle game, the Olivers came up with a design for the game which they sent to Big Red to create.
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.