The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy (NES)

A Massive 2 Meg Game!!! (Note: this cover picture alone is 11.6 Meg)

Prediction

The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy is one of the few NES games I managed to keep from my childhood. Most of the rest of them were either sold off at garage sales, taken by my older brother, or possibly lost entirely. This game however was special, so I always managed to hold on to it. Don’t get the wrong idea, I hated the game as a kid. It was just too hard, so I rarely ever actually played it. No, instead I held onto it for an entirely different reason. For one thing, this is an unlicensed game made for the NES, which in itself makes it very interesting to me. More importantly however was the fact that they packaged it in a gold cartridge. To my knowledge the only other gold cartridge games for the NES are the 2 Zelda games, so it made the game seem so rare.

Now that I’m older, I realize the reason I didn’t like this game was because I didn’t understand what it really was. Back then I thought it was supposed to be primarily an action game with a little bit of puzzles thrown in, similar to how the Zelda series mixes action and puzzles. However, now that I’m older I see that I couldn’t have been more wrong. This game is actually a pure puzzle game which requires you to have an amazing memory. With this new knowledge maybe I’ll be able to make at least SOME progress in the game. There’s only one way to find out, and that’s to dive right in and see.

Gameplay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daisy, who I believe is Dizzy’s girlfriend, has been kidnapped by the Evil Wizard Zaks. It’s up to Dizzy to leave the Treehouse Village of the Yolkfolks and save her. If you haven’t already picked up on it, you’ll notice right away that Dizzy, as well as most of the other characters, are anthropomorphic eggs. Honestly I always found that cute and it was one of the reasons I always at least tried to play the game as a kid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a puzzle game, you’ll primarily be picking up various items and bringing them to wherever it is they need to be used. Dizzy’s house acts as a basic tutorial, teaching you to pick up items, like the house key which is for some reason hiding up in the rafters, and to use them on the appropriate items, in this case Dizzy’s door. You might also notice that you can only hold a maximum of 3 items at a time, so you’ll be swapping items regularly. I hope you can remember where you left everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that we’re outside, I’m suddenly remembering so much from when I was a kid. Primarily the fact that I had never managed to make it out of the Treehouse Village before, all the spiders always ended up killing me. They’re still very annoying because instead of most games where you take a hit and that’s it, this game gives you constant touch damage until you move away. Thankfully there are lots of fruit lying around to eat and refill your health.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to my many years of gaming experience, I can finally make some minor progress in the game. For example I know enough to put the large plank of wood over this deadly spike pit now. Finally I can cross it and see what’s on the other side. Here we can find some weed killer to kill the egg eating plants in the Treehouse Village and explore more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And explore we do! With the help of some rope we can swing from platform to platform as we make our way around the village. Here we find the home of another Yolkfolk, Denzil. Thankfully we picked up his house key along the way and can actually see what’s inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately it looks like he has been frozen solid somehow. Probably more of the work of the Evil Wizard Zaks! If we want any help at all from him we’ll have to find some way to thaw him out first. And so we venture off into the world in search of more items to help us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually I find a mining cave which has a “Dry Match” in it. This might be helpful somehow, we could start a fire or something to free him from the ice. Unfortunately the mine also has a minecart puzzle which ultimately does me in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You control the minecart and it’s up to you to guide it to safety. You get very little warning when something bad is going to happen. Instead you need to memorize the whole path until you can do it perfectly. This would take SEVERAL attempts before you can do it successfully. Unfortunately you only have 3 lives, and I wasted them all here. So it looks like that’s where my journey is going to end for now. Perhaps we’ll be back some other time to make another rescue attempt.

Verdict

Price – $22.00

The game isn’t as rare as the gold cartridge would make you believe. However it isn’t quite a discount bin release either. If you’re into puzzle games though it’s definitely worth the price.

Play Again? – Probably

Now that I at least understand what I’m supposed to be doing I might try to actually beat it.

Total Deaths – 3 Deaths

If I ever want to beat the game, that number is going to have to be much higher. This game is definitely a trial and error type game.

Fun Rating – 7.5 / 10

This game was way too hard for me as a kid, and it’s still probably too hard for me now. However, it has the promise of being a really fun game. I’ll always consider this a hard game, but being honest, it really isn’t. It’s a puzzle game first and foremost, so in reality I simply don’t know the answers. If I did know the answers this would be a very fair and probably relatively easy game. It would just take a while before I have any idea what the heck it is I’m supposed to do. There are a lot of different items to collect, and the world is fairly expansive. So if you’re a puzzle game fan, you might just want to give this game a chance.

Who are you and what are you doing here? This is a Yolkfolk Village, not a People Village!

 

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