Dizzy fans rejoice! In what seems like an unending trove of unreleased software that Philip and Andrew Oliver have found down the back of their sofa, Panic! Dizzy is the latest in a line of rediscovered Dizzy titles seeking crowdfunding. The game will be free to play on their website, but the pair are kickstarting the production of NES cartridges just as they have for Wonderland Dizzy, Dreamworld Pogie and Mystery World Dizzy.
According to their blurb:
This game was written, by Philip and Andrew, in the autumn of 1992 in just 64KB using PCs with PDS boards cabled to NES consoles.
Unfortunately Panic! Dizzy wasn’t released by Codemasters at the time and was moth-balled. It was only recently rediscovered and restored by Dizzy fan Lukasz Kur for this very Kickstarter Campaign.
The game features five different puzzle modes - Four Suits, Match More, Dizzy Dice, Perfect Path and Picture Perfect - each with two-player support. A couple of them bear a passing resemblance to Data East's Magical Drop - you can find more details on the Kickstarter page. They're close to reaching their £13,500 goal, so it seems this will become a reality. It's unthinkable today that a developer could possibly create a game and promptly forget all about it - how times have changed.
Is your head spinning with all these unearthed Dizzy games? Reckon the Oliver twins have anything else pugged away in a bottom drawer somewhere? Let slip your Dizzy fandom in the comments below.
Comments (26)
So this isn't to be confused with Dizzy Panic, which was released on 8-bit systems? Strange how it had such a similar name.
At this age the Oliver twins look like Dizzy themselves
I wish a remake of the original Dizzy adventure game was in the works. I never finished it, but it was captivating.
I played a lot of the old Dizzy games on ZX Spectrum but I'm pretty sure a 'new' one isn't going to hold up these days. Sometimes nostalgia needs to stay as nostalgia.
@dystome @SmaggTheSmug They are making a new Dizzy game, but it's for the ZX Spectrum Next. Not heard much about the game but it's apparently happening. Think they released one or two screenshots a little while back.
Any chance of a Famicom release?
Would love an dizzy collection to be released over this as having to boot up my amstrad evey time I want to play them is a pain mind you they take less time to load up than som ps4 games these days which is odd
Dizzy collection for Switch PLEASE!!!
@FragRed
And there i was thinking this was a joke so i Googled Spectrum Next and boom there it was.
I like the look of this old school computer, i used to spend ages coding on my original rubber key speccy only to get a Syntax error message
Yep I echo that , let’s get these in a collection for the switch !
@Welshland I did think perhaps I should clarify it was a real thing when commenting. I backed it and they have provided updates on every step of production. It's not emulated but entirely hardware based - it is effectively an 8 bit ZX Spectrum but backwards compatible with all existing games.
Nice to see them still finding some gold buried beneath their archives.
@SmaggTheSmug I was thinking the same thing about them looking like Dizzy lol
@dystome I don't get what you mean? I'm old enough the have played on a ZX Spectrum & none of my other beloved 80s franchises have been ruined. Except Ninja Turtles, Transformers, She-Ra, ReBoot..
@dystome I downloaded a few of the originals a year or two back and loved replaying them. They obviously are pretty short buy today’s gaming standards but I still enjoyed the nostalgia trip if nothing else.
I owned loads of Dizzy games back in my Amiga 500 days. I didn’t even know they had been released on a Nintendo console to be honest. Always up for a trip down nostalgia lane though!
@Ooyah On the ZX Spectrum it was called Dizzy Panic on the box but Panic Dizzy on the loading screen (or vice versa, I can't remember).
But weirdly, whatever it was called, it seems a completely different game to this...
They used to be SO prolific, and I admired them greatly growing up.
Half a dozen amazing games a year. The ultimate duo.
Some days I wonder, if they actually sat down and made "little" games nowadays, for mobile, or eShop, or GameJams, or something.. what wonderful games they'd create.
I wonder why they don't do that more..
@antonvaltaz see also KwikSnax on the C64, vs every single other version of KwikSnax
Give us the Dizzy Collection FFS.
@Jayenkai Never knew that! Only ever played the Spectrum and Amiga versions...
@antonvaltaz Once got into an argument with someone at college (me a CPC owner, him a C64 owner) about that, before we both came to the realisation.
Played through a bunch of the old Dizzy games on Amiga just recently. There’s something about that formula that I really connect with. The spin-off games... not so much.
The first time I played Dizzy was on the monochrome green Schneider CPC. It felt like a good adventure game at the time (late 80ies.) Unfortunately it was lots of try&error, puzzles were often cryptic, and even though it looked like a kids game we were never able to beat it because of the strict life limit.
I later played a C64 Dizzy-sequel (island themed). At least it was in 16 colors, but it was still difficult enough to be frustrating. I tried it a bit but gave up. My platforming preferences at the time were Bubble Bobble, Bomb Jack, Wonder Boy, and Giana Sisters and I got my adventure fix from Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, and Project Firestart instead.
I'd take the Megadrive version of Fantastic Dizzy on the Switch
Wow what a blast from my childhood... Dizzy. The original was very challenging back in the day.
The dice matching game resembles a game released on the NES called Palamedes (or maybe its Famicom-exclusive sequel, I do remember the rules were slightly different between the two).
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