It’s no secret that we love Dizzy here at Retro 101, so when a collection from the Oliver Twins was announced we got very excited indeed. The fact there are a selection of other games from the pairing here as well and that some of the Dizzy games are previously unreleased NES versions just helped to further our anticipation.
There are five classic Dizzy adventures on offer and they
all more or less follow the same pattern of having to manoeuvre dizzy around
platforms, avoid hazards and pick up objects. The objects then need to be taken
to appropriate places to solve puzzles. The amount of lives you have and the
amount of objects you can carry varies but at their core the five games follow
the same template.
The good news is that each of the games is great fun to
play. Treasure Island Dizzy is the crazily tough one, Wonderland Dizzy is the
NES version of Magic Land with an Alice in Wonderland Influence. Dizzy the
Adventurer is a good place for newcomers to start as a more forgiving version
of Prince of the Yolk Folk and Mystery World Dizzy is the NES version of
Fantasy Land Dizzy and is themed around fairy tales. The biggest and best of
the games though is the Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy which takes influence from
all the games in a sort of epic greatest hits adventure.
Dizzy also appears in two other titles on the collection.
Panic Dizzy is unfortunately, a fairly poor puzzle (much like the home computer
version), but Go Dizzy Go is an excellent maze type game. Very loosely
influenced by Pacman and block pushing games it has Dizzy traversing a single
screen maze avoiding enemies and picking up fruit. Once all the fruit is collected
it’s on to the next level. It’s similar to Kwik Snax Dizzy on the home
computers but this is by far the best version of it.
Four other Oliver Twins games also make the collection and
show what they could do away from the iconic egg. Dreamworld Pogie is a spinoff
featuring Dizzy’s pet mouse. This is a more traditional platform game with players
traversing a linear level to reach an exit while collecting stars along the
way. It’s colourful, fun and often crushingly difficult. Super Robin Hood is
another platform game with players avoiding traps and taking out enemies with
arrows. It’s not amazing but again, provides a solid and fun experience that
will likely keep you interested long enough to finish it.
Fire Hawk and BMX Simulator round out the package. BMX
Simulator is the only game here which is genuinely bad with a top down view
used to display four bikes racing around a single screen track in the style of
Super Off Road. It’s frustrating and not implemented in the best way and is
destined to be played once before players quit out never to return.
Fire Hawk is pretty much what you would expect from an 8-bit
version of Desert Strike. Here you fly a helicopter over enemy territory to
complete a host missions such as rescuing POW’s or destroying buildings. It
also has the added gimmick that when the helicopter goes into a descent to pick
up a passenger the game switches to a first person view where you have to shoot
down incoming enemies. It works well enough but is very difficult and playing
it can be frustrating at times.
Overall, the Oliver Twins collection is the strongest reason
to own an Evercade we have come across so far. It collates an often overlooked
group of software from two industry legends and includes two games that may
well have been lost to time otherwise. The main reason to own this is of course
the high amount of Dizzy on show but the other games are mainly solid as well
and it all adds up to a very nice cartridge that will likely stay in your
Evercade for a long time. This is exactly the sort of thing we need for the
console. Simply put – it’s Eggcellent.
Game Ratings
Treasure Island Dizzy 4/5
The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy 5/5
Go! Dizzy Go! 4/5
Dizzy The Adventurer 5/5
Panic Dizzy 2/5
Wonderland Dizzy 4/5
Mystery World Dizzy 4/5
BMX Simulator 2/5
FireHawk 3/5
DreamWorld Pogie 4/5
Super Robin Hood 3/5
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