Magicland Dizzy – Retro Roots

Welcome to our second ‘Retro Roots’ blog post and this game certainly is retro. Magicland Dizzy and most of the Dizzy games were favourites of my brothers and mine in the late 80s and early 90s. A series initially created by the Oliver Twins and published by Codemasters that we enjoyed in all its green-screen glory (we didn’t have a colour screen or modulator) on our Amstrad CPC-464.

The premise of this side-scroller was quite simple. You are Dizzy, an anthropomorphised egg, who needs to find and help his friends who have had some sort of magic spell put on them. The gameplay consisted of platforming, finding items, and solving puzzles of where to use the items. Often backtracking was required and new ways leading to much needed objects were opened when puzzles elsewhere were solved. Finding a belt to fasten an alligator’s mouth shut and subsequently allowing you to use the alligator as a stepping-stone over a previously uncrossable lake was common fair.

Dizzy near the family tree-house.

As kids the game really got my brothers and me thinking, trying to find solutions to the puzzles and save Dizzy’s friends, all this from a game with no shooting or fighting. The game has an obvious similarity with The Flawless: Art’s Tale; it is a side-scroller but this is not where the inspiration came from. We really want to incorporate an item system that makes players think about where they can use their items. Like Dizzy we want items used in one area to affect things in other areas sometimes quite drastically.

Goats, trolls, bridges, and diamonds in Magicland Dizzy


You may pass an interesting looking locked door at some point and the game keeps bringing your thoughts back to it, but it’s not until a later area where you solve a puzzle that the door unlocks. This makes backtracking more exciting, making the world seem more ‘world-like’. It also helps to keep the player thinking about every locked door, every strange item, and every unsolved puzzle. Well The Flawless: Art’s Tale won’t make itself, best crack on. For those interesting in seeing more of the Dizzy series here’s a complete playthrough of Magicland Dizzy on Youtube in full colour (well jel).

We will have loads more information about ‘The Flawless: Art’s Tale’ very soon along with a load of screenshots, animated GIFs, and videos of the new art-style. Until then you can keep up to date with all things Flawless and Bare Knuckle on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google+.

#RetroRoots #FlawlessTheGame

Ste Wilson is a director, game developer, and programmer at Bare Knuckle Development Ltd. When not coding away on BKD games he can be found playing video games on console and PC. He also makes music under the music maker name of ‘Electric Fan Death’ and loves playing guitar, writing tunes, and producing music.

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