Dizzying

When growing up, the Dizzy computer games by Codemasters were always enthralling, if incredibly taxing on the noggin.  Dizzy gets his name from the character's tumbles and somersaults while jumping, a feature inspired by the designers, the Oliver Twins, whose graphics software enabled them to rotate an image easily so each frame did not have to be manually drawn. The software distorted complex sprites so the character was required to be simple, hence the choice of an egg.  There was much British humour to leaven proceedings but the quests could be fiendish.  Even the walkthroughs published in computer magazines were not always straightforward, with the first games of the series, Dizzy, in particular requiring pinpoint precision in movement to avoid numerous lethal hazards, with ability to carry only one object and no restart positions.
Being a callow youth, I willingly used the walkthroughs once I had run into a dead end on the computer games, though it was largely the map I looked at and only the instructions where absolutely necessary. One game eluded me though: Treasure Island Dizzy (AKA Dizzy II) The walkthrough map and instructions were published in Issue 10 of one Commodore 64 journal and again is Issue 40 and though I amassed almost all these magazines (a source of great amusement too), these two issues in particular eluded me.
So, in the days before the internet entered homes, schools or libraries on any wide-scale basis, let alone finding what you wanted on there easily, I was left to try almost everything I could as the Codemasters had puzzles so obscurantist that one almost had to be inside the designers’ heads. Treasure Island Dizzy was a lazy port from the Spectrum, as were all in the Dizzy franchise, apart from the last one Crystal Kingdom Dizzy (perhaps because by this point the Spectrum machine had become a collector’s item), which, ironically, I never got around to purchasing and playing. Therefore, even though more than most when there should have been azure skies, it looked like Dizzy was exploring in the depth of night. The Commodore could have supported a far wider graphic package but it was just easier to rack up profits by not making adjustments.
I was quite pleased when I, literally, unlocked one of the puzzles – a crystal sword opened up a grave with its ‘ingenious’ lock (the game had, sometimes cryptic, explanatory scrolls and script in certain places) and I found the smugglers’ cave. This brought me more the game to get to my final object – buying a boat from a shop to take Dizzy home, but though I bartered a handheld video camera (lost by tourists in the treetop village) and microwave oven (used by pirates for midnight snacks) and bought another component of the boat with a bag of gold from an abandoned mine, the tight-fisted shopkeeper still needed one more item of value, so as to sell me the ignition key for the motor (“I’ve got my overheads to cover”). I searched everywhere, knowing that a second grave (with an obvious liminal slab) was crucial.
But I never did work it out. Over the years, I thought about trying to find out but it was always the case that I either didn’t have the time or access to the internet when it came into my head. This week, I did find the time and went to YouTube where there were two walkthroughs, the Amiga version (with incomparably superior graphics, an expanded quest and, arguably, more fiendish puzzles, such as having to collide with nominally deadly enemies to find gold coins) and the Spectrum version (i.e. identical to the Commodore, right down to the tinny music and extra points given for dissolving a ‘Spectrum abuser mag’ item in the sea). I watched the half-hour it took ‘Pancho’ to complete the Amiga game, which had a wonderful Raiders of the Lost Ark sequence and quite trippy screen panels. The Spectrum game (by another user) was about quarter of an hour quicker. Both held the missing clue.
Looking back, it seems incredibly obvious and I must have only overlooked it in my naivety. In the screen panel next to the impenetrable grave, there was a rope and wood bridge. One had to retrieve the axe from the other island and drop it on the bridge. In fact, I may have actually done this, just not in the right place. If I had dropped it at the edge of the bridge, nothing would have happened. Only if the axe was dropped in the middle of the bridge, did a hitherto invisible platform lower from it, to allow access to the river below and thus a new hidden cave, holding two new coins and ‘the cursed treasure’. In both versions, Dizzy had to hold a ‘A holy Bible/A Bible [it varied in the editions]’, presumably to ward off the ‘curse’ of the treasure or maybe to escape the grave through the liminal slab (which might have foxed me) and, ahem, a snorkel to navigate underwater. Treasure chest in the inventory and delivered to the shopkeeper, the Arkwright of the islands handed over the ignition key and Dizzy could traverse the sea back home and to the final coin.
I should have been contented but instead I felt deflated. I had been so close to winning the game in my youth. Maybe older, I would have been more comprehensive. The axe on the bridge (albeit the very middle) seems one of the more obvious puzzles that could have been solved. Had it been something virtually unfathomable, it would have been easier to take. Equally, had I done less, as with the other Dizzy games, it wouldn’t have mattered so much but I had given my all (in the absence of expert help) and wasn’t far off.
Like Dizzy, I have a new quest. To watch Youtube walkthroughs of Dizzy in the Amiga format, to see how the Codemasters should have rendered Dizzy, graphics-wise at least (or near enough, given the limited power of the Commodore). The egg with boxing gloves still exerts a hold over me.