The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy

The Good
Fantastic Dizzy is one of those games where everything seems to be in tune, with nothing looking bad or terribly misplaced. Starting with the graphics, they make the most from the machine. All scenarios and characters have vibrant colours and are well detailed, from the guillotines in the town to the trees in the graveyard. Then, there are some smaller details: Dizzy puts a sad face when it's raining or when he enters Daisy's house, there is a day/night cycle, occasionally it rains or as the player goes deeper in the pirate ship, the water gets darker, just to name a few examples. Objects to pick up are all well visible and it's unlikely anyone passes by one and misses it.

Passing to sound effects, they are almost nonexistent, but music makes up for it. Anyone who thinks the YM2612 can't produce nothing but white noise should really hear the work of Matthew Simmonds in this game - from the Caribbean-sounding tune of Bubble Bobble and the organ sounds in the graveyard to the very suiting underwater theme, music plays a large part to get the player immersed into the game world, and in this case it is a success.

The Bad
There's a nuisance about dealing with the inventory: you carry three objects at once, one of them (the rope) pretty much everywhere. While this just makes planning a necessity, having to press "B" five or six times to bring an object from the bottom to the first slot could have been worked out by using the A button to select the object to be dropped / swapped, and then the start button to pause and display the inventory.

There is only one problem with graphics: the lack of vertical scrolling. Of course, the areas are huge, but in some parts in Yolkfolk village you jump, wait one second to load the upper area, miss the jump by a bit, wait another second, back to the area you started the jump, wash, rinse, repeat.

Finally, there are some problems inherent to the genre. With a total of 250 stars you might well miss one or two, and will have to trace the levels, screen by screen and minigame by minigame until every one of them is caught. It's also possible to be in an unwinnable position if an object like the rope or the flippers are left somewhere that can't be accessed without them.

The Bottom Line
Fantastic Dizzy is one of those games that some gamers will love, others won't. The plot is simple, and will require some "Fedex quests" to solve, some of them immediately required to complete another.

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cf. Getting the mushroom, vial and flower to get medicine, heal Grand Dizzy, get egg and finally trade egg for golden cloverleaf.

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These steps solve three puzzles, and must be completed in this order), yet thanks to the music and lush graphics, travelling around gets less a chore and more about exploration. How many games let you explore a giant tree house, the depths of the ocean, a castle, a pirate ship and then let you walk in the clouds?