Treasure Island Dizzy - GameHammer

[Zoe Robinson]

It's time to play Treasure Island Dizzy. This was the first Dizzy game I ever saw and I loved it. Does it still hold up after all these years? Let's find out!

[Shaun M. Neary]

Ooooh, I had a very love/hate relationship with this game in '89. For some bizarre reason my tape copy would crash whenever Dizzy would enter the water, regardless if he had a snorkel or not. I finally got a second copy around 95, but it would only be recent years that I'd actually finish it.

It's a good test to be able to do it all on one life. If you can finish this on one life, you can finish any Dizzy on it. People need to remember that there's no time limit on Dizzy games, and pacing yourself is the key. I can pretty much finish this one blindfolded at this stage. Must re-play it on the Speccy soon, although with the amount of Spectrum hardware issues I've had recently, i'm in no hurry to return to it just yet. 

[andycadley]

One life probably makes this harder than it ever should have been and I do suspect that just preventing you from dropping the snorkel underwater would have been a better solution, but overall I think this is still my favourite of all the Dizzy games. It was the first I ever played, so some of it is nostalgia, but it also felt the most coherent and with the least amount of illogical puzzles (though some were frankly pushing the limits)

[mr_lou]

The Dizzy games were never part of my CPC era. I only first saw a Dizzy game when my brother started playing them on his Amiga. He was very hooked on them, and I thought the games looked very cosy.
Many years later I finally tried the various Dizzy games on my CPC, but just couldn't find the atmosphere they were supposed to have. Not sure what it was. Maybe I'd just gotten too old before trying them out myself.

I've generally always liked the idea about these platformer exploration adventure games, but usually I find them all to be way too tricky and illogical and difficult.
I guess that's why I liked Teodoro so much. Nothing in this game was illogical. Want past a yellow wall? Go find a yellow key! Logical! Simple! :-)

[tjohnson]

The video mentions the CPC version is slower, why is that?

[pelrun]

Differences in how the graphics are handled by the CPC and Speccy are why things are generally slower on the CPC.


The Speccy uses attributes, where the actual graphics are a simple 1-bit monochrome bitmap, and there's a second memory area that defines what the foreground/background colours are for each 8x8 pixel block on screen. That looks bad, but the memory used by the bitmap is small, which means it takes less time to move blocks of graphics memory around. And you can have lots of different coloured areas on screen simultaneously (but only 2 in any particular block).


The CPC uses a straight bitmap, no attributes. So in mode 1 you can make any pixel any of the 4 colours - no colour clash - but you have to move twice as much data as on the Speccy for every pixel. So equivalent drawing operations take twice as long. You're also limited to only those four colours across the entire screen.

[Carnivius]

Good but was never one of my fave Dizzy games for some reason.

[Phantomz]

@Zoe Robinson

Enjoyed the video.   

Shame you prefer the speccy version to the original Amstrad version.  traitor  Only joking 

I've changed the speed of dizzy in the game slightly on the Amstrad version, check out these two disc images to see if they feel or play any better for you. 

[Shaun M. Neary]

One life probably makes this harder than it ever should have been and I do suspect that just preventing you from dropping the snorkel underwater would have been a better solution, but overall I think this is still my favourite of all the Dizzy games. It was the first I ever played, so some of it is nostalgia, but it also felt the most coherent and with the least amount of illogical puzzles (though some were frankly pushing the limits)

Strongly disagree here. I can get how it's a pain in the ass compared to modern gaming where you essentially get infinite lives until you finish the game.

The original Dizzy, you had room to be reckless, the sequel required you to think a bit before you moved forward and ensured the items you had were in certain order before you dropped them. It's kinda revolutionary for it's time when you look at it in retrospect really. And if you ballsed it up, you had to have another go.

[Shaun M. Neary]

The Dizzy games were never part of my CPC era. I only first saw a Dizzy game when my brother started playing them on his Amiga. He was very hooked on them, and I thought the games looked very cosy.
Many years later I finally tried the various Dizzy games on my CPC, but just couldn't find the atmosphere they were supposed to have. Not sure what it was. Maybe I'd just gotten too old before trying them out myself.

I've generally always liked the idea about these platformer exploration adventure games, but usually I find them all to be way too tricky and illogical and difficult.
I guess that's why I liked Teodoro so much. Nothing in this game was illogical. Want past a yellow wall? Go find a yellow key! Logical! Simple! :-)

I think it really depended on which one you started off on. I'd say give Fantasy World Dizzy another go first. There's a lot more depth then it's predecessors due to interaction with the Yolkfolk, etc. Whereas the first two was just collect things, drop things which could get a little banal after a while. But try Fantasy World Dizzy again and stick with it, especially the cloud route and the illusion screens. If my better half can get into it (and subsequently finish it), then anyone can! 

[ivarf]

Differences in how the graphics are handled by the CPC and Speccy are why things are generally slower on the CPC.


The Speccy uses attributes, where the actual graphics are a simple 1-bit monochrome bitmap, and there's a second memory area that defines what the foreground/background colours are for each 8x8 pixel block on screen. That looks bad, but the memory used by the bitmap is small, which means it takes less time to move blocks of graphics memory around. And you can have lots of different coloured areas on screen simultaneously (but only 2 in any particular block).


The CPC uses a straight bitmap, no attributes. So in mode 1 you can make any pixel any of the 4 colours - no colour clash - but you have to move twice as much data as on the Speccy for every pixel. So equivalent drawing operations take twice as long. You're also limited to only those four colours across the entire screen.

The above is probably true. But surely this game doesn't get anywhere near pushing the CPC. I would rather say the CPC version is slower due to lack of coding skills/effort

[pelrun]

If only every game developer had infinite time, skill and motivation to complete a title... "good enough to ship" is generally the only thing that actually matters.

[mr_lou]

If only every game developer had infinite time, skill and motivation to complete a title... "good enough to ship" is generally the only thing that actually matters.

Except when creating hobby projects today. Now we finally get to spend as long as we want, which explains all the awesome releases we've seen in recent years. 

[dthrone]

"[size=0px]If only every game developer had infinite time" - there is probably a poke for this [/size]

[Shaun M. Neary]

The above is probably true. But surely this game doesn't get anywhere near pushing the CPC. I would rather say the CPC version is slower due to lack of coding skills/effort

Eh, the Oliver Twins and lack of coding skills/effort do not go in the same sentence. Go look at Ghostbusters II.
It was most likely due to lack of time. They ended up knocking out Fantasy World Dizzy in one month.

That's right, a month!

[mr_lou]

Eh, the Oliver Twins and lack of coding skills/effort do not go in the same sentence. Go look at Ghostbusters II.
It was most likely due to lack of time. They ended up knocking out Fantasy World Dizzy in one month.

That's right, a month!

I never understood why gamedevs didn't get more time to make the games.
I'm convinced gamedevs doesn't pick that job because of the money, but rather because they're passionate about being creative and create entertainment.
I'm convinced that most gamedevs back then would be willing to spend at least twice the amount of time developing a game, than they actually got payed for.
And I never understood why gamedevs just couldn't be informed a bit sooner about the project.
Like for example when it was a game about a movie. Come on! You've been working on this movie for 2 years? Why not inform the gamedevs from the start too?
Would have resulted in much better games I think.

[Shaun M. Neary]

I never understood why gamedevs didn't get more time to make the games.
I'm convinced gamedevs doesn't pick that job because of the money, but rather because they're passionate about being creative and create entertainment.
I'm convinced that most gamedevs back then would be willing to spend at least twice the amount of time developing a game, than they actually got payed for.
And I never understood why gamedevs just couldn't be informed a bit sooner about the project.
Like for example when it was a game about a movie. Come on! You've been working on this movie for 2 years? Why not inform the gamedevs from the start too?
Would have resulted in much better games I think.

Actually this was discussed in both the US Gold book and the Oliver Twins book (may have been touched on in the Ocean Software book too but it's been a while since I read that one), but basically, it's all down to timing. For Fantasy World Dizzy, it was knocked out in time for a Christmas release due to kids having extra money around that time to spend on games.

Treasure Island, I've no idea officially as it came out in August, but the Twins were working on multiple games around that period of time, Race Against Time for Sport Aid 88 was one, there were probably others.

With movie licenses, it's a little more more complicated due to the amount of legal red tape involved. And the bidding war tends to last longer than the development time. Again, like games, a lot of the big movies tend to be aimed for the Summer holidays, or Christmas holidays. Because scripts can get chopped and changed at the 11th hour, they wouldn't release any of the plot to anyone until they knew for sure it was finalised. Otherwise you'd end up with a game using a scene from the movie that was cut in the end. Although a lot of movie tie ins had nothing to do with the movie either, but that's a whole other rant. 

[Nich]

They ended up knocking out Fantasy World Dizzy in one month.

That's right, a month!

And I believe they wrote Fast Food in a weekend.

[Zoe Robinson]

And I believe they wrote Fast Food in a weekend.

I think we can all believe they wrote Fast Food in a weekend.

[andycadley]

At the end of the day, spending twice as long on a game means it costs (almost) twice as much to make and that means you need to sell a lot more to recoup the costs. Budget games developers were bound to cut every corner to get something "good enough"


Given that, the Dizzy series was actually pretty high quality overall (excluding CKD which, to my mind, was no better despite costing full price)

[Shaun M. Neary]

I think we can all believe they wrote Fast Food in a weekend.

And yet it was still far more playable than a lot of games that took months to code! 

At the end of the day, spending twice as long on a game means it costs (almost) twice as much to make and that means you need to sell a lot more to recoup the costs. Budget games developers were bound to cut every corner to get something "good enough"


Given that, the Dizzy series was actually pretty high quality overall (excluding CKD which, to my mind, was no better despite costing full price)

Well to be fair, the main Dizzy Sprite was just brought over from previous releases right up until Spellbound (and then brought back for POTY), a lot of the backgrounds, trees, railings were already done in Treasure Island and also brought over. In the case of Dizzy, it was more a case of recycling rather than cutting corners.

[Zoe Robinson]

I've changed the speed of dizzy in the game slightly on the Amstrad version, check out these two disc images to see if they feel or play any better for you. 

Oooh, thank you! Yes, that works well. How on Earth did you manage it?

[Phantomz]

Oooh, thank you! Yes, that works well. How on Earth did you manage it?

@Zoe Robinson

It was just a simple case of poking the game, no major work was required, the game could have been released at the speeds I changed it to, maybe they released it slower to make it easier for kids?

The good news is, I can do the same for the original Dizzy game, including the Amstrad action version, and also for Dizzy III - Fantasy World Dizzy, as these games were programmed by the oliver twins so the changes are the same. 

I can upload faster versions of Dizzy, Dizzy AA, and Fantasy World on disc here if you would also like them?

I've already uploaded them in cart versions for the GX4000, but they have a lot more work on those versions, they are joypad only and you can activate the inbuilt cheats through the game pad.

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/games/converted-gx4000-cpr-the-topic/1990/

You might want to get those if you're going to get a C4CPC. 

[Zoe Robinson]

That's pretty cool.

[Shaun M. Neary]

Trying to play Fantasy World Dizzy again on the c64 the other night. What the hell did they do to Dizzy's jump on that format? It's next to impossible to jump without him barrel rolling for about 5 seconds afterwards. Makes crossing the gator next to impossible!