THE EVOLUTION OF DIZZY

It’s fair to say that 1987 was a big year for teenage games developers Philip and Andrew Oliver. By spring, the twins had three successful budget titles on the market: the platformers Super Robin Hood and Ghost Hunters, and the top-down racer Grand Prix Simulator. But for their next game, Dizzy – The Ultimate Adventure, they looked to teatime television and a popular fantasy-themed coin-op for inspiration. “We absolutely loved four o’clock TV,” Philip enthuses. “We would watch things like Danger Mouse, Count Duckula and Scooby Doo, and they definitely inspired Dizzy. In fact, you’ve got to find a vampire dux feather in Dizzy. We also played Gauntlet in the arcades, because that had just come out. We loved that the wizard always needed food – the narrator was always saying, ‘Wizard needs food, badly!’”

Another influence was the Olivers’ previously mentioned platform titles, but where they had locks and keys – literally or figuratively, Dizzy was instead based around related objects and obstacles. “With the idea was to make the locks and keys part of lock-and-key problems, but dress them up,” Andrew points out. “So you could have a rope, and you would have to find scissors to cut it. Then we realised that was pushing the game into a narrative – there just had to be something that stopped you until you found something to overcome it, and that made a story.”