Dizzy

Overview

The Dizzy games by Codemasters were a series of games following Dizzy, a boxing glove-wearing egg, and his family the Yolkfolk.

Although the games primarily started as solo adventure/platformer games some of the later games branched off to be more arcade-like, with games akin to Pac-Man (Fast Food Dizzy) and Tetris (Dizzy Panic!) - similar to the branching out the Mario games have taken in recent years.

The main series plays like a cross between an adventure game with inventory puzzles and a platformer. In addition to navigating Dizzy across platforming challenges and other hazards the player also need to find items scattered throughout the large open worlds to solve puzzles. These puzzles could have obvious solutions, such as finding a pile of dry leaves to set a fire and burn a door out of the way, or quite obscure, like finding a harp to take to Saint Peter in order to collect cheese to catch a mouse. Dizzy usually has a strict inventory limit as well, which meant players had to be judicious about what to bring with them and explore a little beforehand.

The Dizzy games remained in the domain of home computers until its seventh entry, The Fantastic World of Dizzy, which saw console ports for NES, Game Gear, Genesis, and others.