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Review: Lost island dizzy
Author: David Newton (DavidN)
Added: 10/05/2003
Overall:
Average:9/10

Yes, I'm back, although not for long - I'm going to have to revise in a pretty solid fashion if I'm going to have a hope of passing the looming exams. That won't happen, of course, but I can always pretend.

So, Dizzy then. I'm a great fan of the series - I have five of them in my Retro games directory, which comes to over 600MB (see http://www.angelfire.com/retro/aurorasoft/WCBpersonal/list.html for the whole thing). As well as being a unique adventure style and having some nice humorous touches, they got the difficulty right as well - some obvious puzzles and nothing too obscure, with just the right length of game to be challenging while still excusing no saving. Apart from Fantastic Dizzy, of course, that one was just ludicrous. I was hoping for a game that recreated the classics.

The game starts off well, with a classic Dizzy title screen, like the ones you used to get on the Amstrad or C64 versions. Happily, the loading process doesn't take four and a half hours with multiple retries this time, and you can just press Space to begin.

I was instantly transported back in time ten years - the presentation of the game is pretty much exactly the same as the old games, and it's even got an authentic-sounding chip MOD playing in the background. The graphics are taken directly from the Amstrad version (I think), and I'm not sure how to score them - they're very well used but obviously not up to today's standards. The movement feels authentic as well, though jumping takes a bit of getting used to.

The inventory system is the only problem I really have with the game. Instead of the "Exit and don't drop" inventory window coming up, this uses the system seen in the Seymour games - press Enter and the inventory slides along the row, picking up or dropping along the way. As much as I don't like this system, it works fine apart from a bug where you can pick up two objects in the same slot.

The familiar coin collecting is here as well, and what's slightly annoying is that the inventory still cycles when you pick one up, meaning that you have to sort out your inventory again every time. A small point, but it does get annoying.

Despite a couple of oddities in the game, I got what I was hoping for - another Dizzy game. Worthy of the Oliver Twins themselves? Quite possibly. What a game to come back to - very well done.

Let me just be clear about this - it's not the graphics that made me decide to give the game a 9 rather than a 10, it's the various bugs and slight annoyances in it... otherwise, we've got a classic on our hands here.

Well, I really want to make a Dizzy game of my own now... that's my revision stuffed. By the way - this is my anniversary, my Review #100 - unless I've counted wrongly, which would be hideously embarrassing.

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