Magicland Dizzy is the fourth Dizzy adventure game and the first game in the series not designed and coded by The Oliver Twins. Instead it was designed by Neal Vincent and coded by Big Red Software, with The Oliver Twins retaining creative oversight.
Fantasy World Dizzy, ZX Spectrum
The third Dizzy adventure, Fantasy World Dizzy, was again designed by The Oliver Twins with graphics by Neil Adamson. It was published by Codemasters in 1989, initially for the ZX Spectrum, but also later for all the major formats at the time (Amstrad CPC, C64, Amiga, ST, and MS-DOS).
Treasure Island Dizzy, ZX Spectrum
Treasure Island Dizzy is the second game in the Dizzy series and was first released by Codemasters in 1988. It was again designed and coded by The Oliver Twins and once again features everyone’s favourite anthropomorphic egg, Dizzy.
Dizzy: The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure, ZX Spectrum
The first Dizzy game, and featuring a walking, talking egg that would become synonymous with “cartoon adventures” on the ZX Spectrum, and also budget releases from British software house Codemasters.
Continue reading Dizzy: The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure, ZX Spectrum
Rocket Man, ZX81
The second game in the Software Farm ‘high resolution range’ (the first being Forty Niner), Rocket Man is another technical miracle on the Sinclair ZX81. It was first released in 1984.
Forty Niner, ZX81
This 1983 release from Software Farm broke new ground on the Sinclair ZX81. You see: graphics on the ZX81, before Forty Niner, consisted of chunky basic graphics and ASCII symbols, because the machine wasn’t really capable of anything else. Or so the world thought…
Phantom Slayer, Dragon 32
Phantom Slayer is an early 3D maze game where the aim is to kill sinister, hooded figures that are chasing you through a randomly-generated, first-person maze. It was written by Ken Kalish and published by Med Systems in 1982 for the TRS-80 (and its UK counterpart, the Dragon 32).
River Raid II, Atari 2600
Based on Carol Shaw‘s classic vertically-scrolling shooter, but not created by her, River Raid II is a more challenging and slightly more complex take on the River Raid concept.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, XBox
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance is an expanded version of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (which was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2001). Substance was released for the XBox by Konami in 2002.
It’s the fourth Metal Gear game co-written and designed by Hideo Koijima and the seventh game in the series as a whole.
Vib-Ribbon, PlayStation
Vib-Ribbon is a unique game on the PlayStation. It is the only game I can think of that is mostly black and white and uses simple animated vector-style line art to present the visuals. That said: Vib-Ribbon is full of character and charm and goes to show what can be achieved when developers think out of the box.
The King of Grabs 