Crystal Kingdom Dizzy

Spectrum 128k (Dizzy VII)

The sun does not always shine in the Yolkfolk village. In fact, this
particular day is looking remarkably grim. Stormy clouds thunder
across the sky, the rain hammers down, the electricity flickers and,
to top it all, Grand Dizzy is in an awful mood.

The source of Grand Dizzy's bad mood is his egg-ache. The old duffer
had been practising his somersaults in the kitchen and slipped on the
wet floor. "What do you think you're doing bouncing around like that
at your age?!" groaned Dizzy under the strain of picking up the old
egg. "You'll give yourself a nasty crack on the head."

"It's the temple in the Crystal Kingdom," spluttered Grand Dizzy,
"it's been robbed. Every egg knows that if the crystal sword, chalice
and crown are removed from the temple, strange things will happen to
the Yolkfolk!"

Dizzy looked outside. Things did look decidedly bad. "It still doesn't
explain why you were jumping off the kitchen chair, Grand Dizzy" said
Dizzy. "Well, young fella-m'-egg," said Grand Dizzy puffing himself up
slightly, "I'm sick and tired of you always sorting things out. I'm
going to get into shape, pack my knapsack and save the Yolkfolk
myself. I was really heroic in my day, y'know."

A salty tear formed in Dizzy's eye. "I don't know, Grand Dizzy, what
are we going to do with you?" gushed Dizzy in his best sympathetic,
yet caring, voice.

Grand Dizzy was packed off to bed. But the moment everyone's back was
turned, he jumped up and continued to whinge loudly at anything he
could find that would listen.

Dizzy decided that he must begin his trek to retrieve the Yolkfolk's
treasure. He packed his knapsack and popped on his new safari
hat. Dizzy grimaced and, through his gritted teeth, dramatically
declared "Don't fear, Grand Dizzy! The lost treasures of the Yolkfolk
will soon be found!". And so Dizzy began a whole new adventure -
can our hero succeed again?
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Seventh and last game in the dizzy series on the Spectrum. This game was by a new developer to the series without much input from the Oliver Twins (original developers of dizzy series). The game mechanics have had quite a change from all the previous games in the series.

The game is split up into 4 levels each with there own passcode do you can start each with full lives and energy. The levels are quite short and much easier to memorise than any other dizzy game before it. The extra collectables serve only to add score and are not required to complete the game. This is one of the last games I ever bought for the spectrum before moving onto the amiga and was the first dizzy game I could complete with no guides from the spectrum magazines of the day.

There are more than a few differing tape dumps of this game out there each appearing as a different point in the development cycle. I will call the original retail release v1.0. The game version I used was dated 2009 so I longplayed assuming it was the most recent version of the game found (It is actually a newer version which has been worked on). It has many changes compared to the original release. Even Granddad and doras kitchen got redrawn.

I did also longplay one listed as v1.5 but it appeared more like v0.5 to me. In that version many rock tiles were simply wrong, the water was recolored, and chapter4 crystal colours were completely wrong. In this longplay the crystal colours are removed compared with v1.0 version. The magenta instead of red on the tree trunks is the most obvious change though as well as the Hud. (It turns out that this was an updated version in the process of a gfx overhaul)l.

Regarding the hud though, there also exists a Russian translation of the game and the Hud looks even better than here, although the game area seems to still use the assets of the 1.0 release.