Review: Treasure Island Dizzy (1988)
Back in the days when I was playing on the humble but brilliant Amiga I recall a day out with my mother, grandmother and brother. I couldn’t tell you where we went, perhaps the coast, but we ventured into a market at one point and from a very small games stall I purchased a box set of five Dizzy games. Amongst these was Treasure Island Dizzy, easily one of the best of the collection.
If you’re still young, unlike me, you may be wondering who or what the hell Dizzy is. Well, he was the star of a series of games on the Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore 64, Amiga, NES etc and was a bit like Humpty Dumpty, an egg with a face and arms and legs. Dizzy’s plethora of titles would see him journeying through a series of different worlds and settings, gathering items, collecting coins, solving puzzles and avoiding some pretty nasty enemies too. Treasure Island Dizzy sees our friend on a desert island and eager to find passage across the sea and home. Along the way he has to acquire parts for a boat to suit a very demanding shopkeeper and get to the bottom of a mystery involving the lost treasure of the dead pirate, Hookjaw.
Treasure Island Dizzy allows our friend to carry up to three items at once as he aims to solve a variety of puzzles. However, call it cruel or sheer genius, there is a trick to the use of these items. To select an item to use in a given situation, you have to choose to drop it first. Whenever an item is picked up it goes beneath any previous items you may have picked up and, if there are none, it goes to the bottom of three slots in your inventory. If you gather two more they go into the second and third slots, and push the first item into the top spot. When you decide you want to use an item it will either need to be at the top of your inventory or you’ll have to drop others to use it. This presents a difficulty in that Dizzy’s first item is a snorkel allowing him to explore under the ocean but if you’re not careful you may inadvertently drop this while underwater and drown our hero!
There are some great sections to explore on the island include a series of tree houses and some subterranean caves beneath the ocean. The puzzles are not the most straightforward and you may be reduced to some trial and error at times but given the limited amount of items in the game you’ll get there. The difficulty with the game comes in two forms. Firstly, Dizzy has just one life so one little slip and it’s game over, no mercy from the producers of this game, and this may lead to frustration. The other factor which annoyed many gamers, myself included, was that once you had gathered parts for a boat to escape the island you are then told the game is only won if you collect 30 gold coins. Treasure Island Dizzy isn’t the only game in the series where it’s difficult to accomplish this. Some coins stand out a mile away but others are hidden in bushes, behind doors and only standing in a certain spot and hitting the action button will reveal them, which makes it pretty challenging.
Those grumbles aside this is still one of the best of the Dizzy games. The graphics are simple, colourful but effective, doing exactly what the game requires. That background music is one that will still play in the hearts of many a gamer from the late eighties and early nineties too. This one is probably third behind Magic Land Dizzy (1990) and Dizzy: Prince of the Yolk Folk (1991) but is still a memorable journey back into my childhood. Like many films today, games have become more about the visceral experience which is a shame. Despite its simplicity there is a lot of charm to be found in many of the titles from the Dizzy series. They don’t last long but what is there is often brilliant.
Treasure Island Dizzy is one of the best of the Dizzy titles. There are some frustrating elements in there which would be addressed with later games but this still a fun way to pass an hour and immerse yourself in a bit of gaming history. Visuals wise this isn’t jaw dropping but game play wise it’s memorable and fun.
Verdict: 4/5
Game Review: Treasure Island Dizzy | Thank you for reading Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dave
