I enjoy Treasure Island tremendously! I always liked it when I was a child but I could never wrap my head around it. Thanks to the Evercade, I managed to finish it for the first time.
Very detailed and thoughtful review. I'm not from the UK, so I could understand this perspective on things. I like when games have their own peculiar vibe, which these do, but I have zero nostalgia related to these.
Treasure Island was actually meant to have 3 lives but they realised when testing the game that if you dropped the snorkel in the water the game spawned you in the same place and killed you instantly so they decided to make it a one life thing. Personally I love Treasure Island and it's one of my favourites but Dizzy seems to be a lot more loved in Europe then the US.
Re: Platformers - I am not a point scoring fanatic; what I AM is an explorer. I want to explore every part of the level and find all the secrets. Maybe it's the fact that I was really big into Sonic and Mario back in the day, two game series that very much reward exploration and discovery.
Nice review! I'm pleased you done your homework. All the reworks and renaming of the original versions to the NES is massively confusing to me. You might be a bit harsh on Treasure Island Dizzy... try playing this on a C64 without saves states! No idea how I managed that!
Interesting that all of the included games were published by Codemasters in the U.K., and Camerica in the U.S. I have some of the Camerica carts. It's just been announced that there will be at least two Intellivision Collection releases for the Evercade. I believe each collection will have 11 games. Already announced for Collection 1 are Astroblast, Night Stalker, and Frog Pond. Collection 1 will release near the end of 2021, and Collection 2 will release some time in 2022.
These are some good analyses! You managed to explain why I was never too sure how to approach Dreamworld Pogie. From what I've seen, the Evercade didn't get the Aladdin version of The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy but a _third_ version that only came out in Europe! That's why it's got a language selection now. Once you're through with that version, you should definitely try your gold cartridge for a tough new challenge. Mystery World Dizzy is certainly an odd duck for which games it grabs assets and ideas from. Just try its bizarre "two-player mode"... And its "Casual" mode only gives you another two lives instead of infinite? I remember reading a rumor that The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy was first conceived as a remake of Fantasy World Dizzy, so I wonder if Mystery World Dizzy branched off from that as something the Oliver Twins kept working on off-and-on between other games. Unlike all the other games released after Dizzy the Adventurer, it still uses the "bad" NES color for black! It's also funny that the game Wonderland Dizzy was based on came out before the game Dizzy the Adventurer was based on, and the game Mystery World Dizzy was based on came out before the game Wonderland Dizzy was based on (and before The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy for that matter, which seemed to be going back to concepts from the first two computer games in places.) But I don't know that the Dizzy series has the kind of continuity to make the order really matter. Panic Dizzy is interesting in that it actually got released in 1993 on the Game Gear as part of The Excellent Dizzy Collection. (The Genesis was supposed to get those games too according to videos of some prototypes made, but those prototypes haven't been seen in a while...) That collection had some silly little differences compared to the NES versions, like Dizzy the Adventurer actually contained roaming enemies to avoid, and Go Dizzy Go had an entirely different soundtrack, seemed to give you the screen-edge-wrapping ability by default, and swapped Denzil for Daisy as the second playable character, though I don't know if it had an actual two-player simultaneous mode. I discovered Match More is called that because you can match as many as 6 at a time, though that requires a bit of setup for filling in the split between 3 and 2 so you don't match 4 first. Puzzle Path is indeed an odd one: I first saw the concept in The Ultimate Stuntman, so I guess they just copied it here for some extra content to throw in, but I also saw a recent homebrew game that used that concept for a full game. Apparently the Game Gear version of Panic Dizzy made you unlock Zaks by achieving a high enough score and reduced the number of puzzles in Picture Perfect in accordance with your difficulty level. It didn't have Four Suits or Puzzle Path, either. A fun fact about the spikes in Super Robin Hood is that you can see where they come from by the floor/ceiling having red pixels in place of black... which usually doesn't help me much because my eyes are weak at seeing small amounts of red, but there you go. Another funny thing is that the game got renamed Robin Hood: Legend Quest for its computer ports because it ended up on the same computers that had the original Super Robin Hood. Now I read in the original manual for FireHawk that you're supposed to be able to return to the carrier mid-mission for small refills but "Don't rely on it," and indeed I managed to return a couple of times to receive just one missile, but I don't know the exact deal with that yet. I did discover that getting too many paratroopers killed mid-flight along with you in your previous extra lives can make you fail the mission even if you finish! And check out some high score names with special effects like "DIZZY" if you're bored...
I just watched another play of FireHawk where the player returned to the carrier a couple of times and also got a shield (hit point) back each time along with the ammo. I don't know how much is affected by dropping off paratroopers, but dropping them off individually could also be a good strategy for keeping more of them alive!
...So I took another look at the manual, and what we were missing was the Select button. Select switches your targeting sight to a square that points toward the carrier, and only in that mode will you land on the carrier. I was triggering it on accident by seeing if the A+B+Select+Start reset code worked, which it doesn't. I'm finding that each paratrooper dropped off refills a quarter of everything, so that must be why you can carry four! The manual also says you can use Select to abort a rescue, so you're not totally helpless if you run out of ammo there. The later levels have the enemy helicopters fly by ridiculously fast there while your rescuee takes longer than ever, so it's easy to underestimate how much ammo you need, but at least they gave one way to get out of that jam for a minute.
Having owned most of the Dizzy games on the ZX Spectrum, I still after all these years feel a bit confused looking at the console ports. I would have loved to of had the Spectrum versions of these games on the evercade cartridge.
The treasure Island Dizzy inventory system was definitely intended to be a puzzel. It was the first computer game I ever brought with my pocket money back in 1988.
@@CrowContinuum Although you could use a joystick with the home computer version, it was probably intended for keyboard. Z and X for left and right, space bar to jump and Enter to pick up items. Probably feels less natural on control pad.
@@CrowContinuum I thought the whole "Dodge everything, you can't fight back" conceit was another thing that was popular in British computer games but very foreign to American console gamers, so you see a lot of hate for Quattro Adventure for three of its four games being like that. It's a little sad that the very first Dizzy game was never remade for later systems, because that game actually let Dizzy destroy every enemy just by carrying the appropriate object! Maybe too much backtracking with that single inventory slot, though.
As a general rule, I hate all of the adventure style Dizzy games, but I love most of the puzzle / arcade games. Go Dizzy Go was by far my favourite from this lot. Just finishing Yosh's Story on the N64 was very boring, I found it a far more enjoyable game when trying to do a "full watermelon" run on every stage.
I’m still on the fence on this one. As an American, I didn’t grow up with these games, so they don’t hold nostalgia. As a lover of gaming history though, I feel like it is probably worth the 20 dollars just to try these out and have the collection on my shelf.
I didn't think this collection would be good enough for me, as I never grew up with the Dizzy series. And I guess I was right. Thanks for the review Crow. Still waiting for Funstock to deliver those cartridges I ordered from them during the past few months.
@@CrowContinuum Apparently the Atari Lynx cartridges got lost in the mail. So I contacted Funstock, and they were able to send out new copies, which thankfully came in the mail a week or two later. At least you have the option to buy them from Amazon. I'm an international buyer from Australia, so I have no other options.
I have watched every one of your Evercade videos, brilliant work, thank you! You deserve a LOT more views
I want a mastertronic collection ... i love Finders Keepers, Manic Miner and Phantoms O T A among others
Such a great series of video. Really informative and your summary on each title is just right. Great work.
Thanks for explaining how to play each game. I had no idea what was going on in any of them at first to be fair.
If they had a collection like this for Kings Quest on the Evercade, I'd lose my sh*t.
I enjoy Treasure Island tremendously! I always liked it when I was a child but I could never wrap my head around it. Thanks to the Evercade, I managed to finish it for the first time.
As a kid I bought dizzy, it was on aTengen cartridge. I hated it so took it back a bought Bucky o'hare , glad I did!.
Very detailed and thoughtful review. I'm not from the UK, so I could understand this perspective on things. I like when games have their own peculiar vibe, which these do, but I have zero nostalgia related to these.
Treasure Island was actually meant to have 3 lives but they realised when testing the game that if you dropped the snorkel in the water the game spawned you in the same place and killed you instantly so they decided to make it a one life thing. Personally I love Treasure Island and it's one of my favourites but Dizzy seems to be a lot more loved in Europe then the US.
I grew up playing dizzy games, love them, I'm from the UK
Re: Platformers - I am not a point scoring fanatic; what I AM is an explorer. I want to explore every part of the level and find all the secrets. Maybe it's the fact that I was really big into Sonic and Mario back in the day, two game series that very much reward exploration and discovery.
Nice review! I'm pleased you done your homework. All the reworks and renaming of the original versions to the NES is massively confusing to me. You might be a bit harsh on Treasure Island Dizzy... try playing this on a C64 without saves states! No idea how I managed that!
Interesting that all of the included games were published by Codemasters in the U.K., and Camerica in the U.S. I have some of the Camerica carts.
It's just been announced that there will be at least two Intellivision Collection releases for the Evercade. I believe each collection will have 11 games. Already announced for Collection 1 are Astroblast, Night Stalker, and Frog Pond. Collection 1 will release near the end of 2021, and Collection 2 will release some time in 2022.
@@CrowContinuum lol. I believe it was his video that I saw, where he interviewed a rep from Intellivision and one from Blaze Entertainment.
I noticed that in Wonderland Dizzy, The Cheshire Cat is orange like a tabby.
These are some good analyses! You managed to explain why I was never too sure how to approach Dreamworld Pogie.
From what I've seen, the Evercade didn't get the Aladdin version of The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy but a _third_ version that only came out in Europe! That's why it's got a language selection now. Once you're through with that version, you should definitely try your gold cartridge for a tough new challenge.
Mystery World Dizzy is certainly an odd duck for which games it grabs assets and ideas from. Just try its bizarre "two-player mode"... And its "Casual" mode only gives you another two lives instead of infinite? I remember reading a rumor that The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy was first conceived as a remake of Fantasy World Dizzy, so I wonder if Mystery World Dizzy branched off from that as something the Oliver Twins kept working on off-and-on between other games. Unlike all the other games released after Dizzy the Adventurer, it still uses the "bad" NES color for black! It's also funny that the game Wonderland Dizzy was based on came out before the game Dizzy the Adventurer was based on, and the game Mystery World Dizzy was based on came out before the game Wonderland Dizzy was based on (and before The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy for that matter, which seemed to be going back to concepts from the first two computer games in places.) But I don't know that the Dizzy series has the kind of continuity to make the order really matter.
Panic Dizzy is interesting in that it actually got released in 1993 on the Game Gear as part of The Excellent Dizzy Collection. (The Genesis was supposed to get those games too according to videos of some prototypes made, but those prototypes haven't been seen in a while...) That collection had some silly little differences compared to the NES versions, like Dizzy the Adventurer actually contained roaming enemies to avoid, and Go Dizzy Go had an entirely different soundtrack, seemed to give you the screen-edge-wrapping ability by default, and swapped Denzil for Daisy as the second playable character, though I don't know if it had an actual two-player simultaneous mode.
I discovered Match More is called that because you can match as many as 6 at a time, though that requires a bit of setup for filling in the split between 3 and 2 so you don't match 4 first. Puzzle Path is indeed an odd one: I first saw the concept in The Ultimate Stuntman, so I guess they just copied it here for some extra content to throw in, but I also saw a recent homebrew game that used that concept for a full game. Apparently the Game Gear version of Panic Dizzy made you unlock Zaks by achieving a high enough score and reduced the number of puzzles in Picture Perfect in accordance with your difficulty level. It didn't have Four Suits or Puzzle Path, either.
A fun fact about the spikes in Super Robin Hood is that you can see where they come from by the floor/ceiling having red pixels in place of black... which usually doesn't help me much because my eyes are weak at seeing small amounts of red, but there you go. Another funny thing is that the game got renamed Robin Hood: Legend Quest for its computer ports because it ended up on the same computers that had the original Super Robin Hood.
Now I read in the original manual for FireHawk that you're supposed to be able to return to the carrier mid-mission for small refills but "Don't rely on it," and indeed I managed to return a couple of times to receive just one missile, but I don't know the exact deal with that yet. I did discover that getting too many paratroopers killed mid-flight along with you in your previous extra lives can make you fail the mission even if you finish! And check out some high score names with special effects like "DIZZY" if you're bored...
I just watched another play of FireHawk where the player returned to the carrier a couple of times and also got a shield (hit point) back each time along with the ammo. I don't know how much is affected by dropping off paratroopers, but dropping them off individually could also be a good strategy for keeping more of them alive!
...So I took another look at the manual, and what we were missing was the Select button. Select switches your targeting sight to a square that points toward the carrier, and only in that mode will you land on the carrier. I was triggering it on accident by seeing if the A+B+Select+Start reset code worked, which it doesn't. I'm finding that each paratrooper dropped off refills a quarter of everything, so that must be why you can carry four!
The manual also says you can use Select to abort a rescue, so you're not totally helpless if you run out of ammo there. The later levels have the enemy helicopters fly by ridiculously fast there while your rescuee takes longer than ever, so it's easy to underestimate how much ammo you need, but at least they gave one way to get out of that jam for a minute.
I was waiting for this review from you 🙂 thank you
Have you done a recent ranking video of all the different carts so far? I know you did 1-10 carts a while ago
@@CrowContinuum cool. Just interested in how the last years rank against one another. Keep making great videos 👍🏻
Having owned most of the Dizzy games on the ZX Spectrum, I still after all these years feel a bit confused looking at the console ports.
I would have loved to of had the Spectrum versions of these games on the evercade cartridge.
I for one would have enjoyed the Amiga ports and the Mega drive ports.
The treasure Island Dizzy inventory system was definitely intended to be a puzzel. It was the first computer game I ever brought with my pocket money back in 1988.
@@CrowContinuum Although you could use a joystick with the home computer version, it was probably intended for keyboard.
Z and X for left and right, space bar to jump and Enter to pick up items.
Probably feels less natural on control pad.
@@CrowContinuum I thought the whole "Dodge everything, you can't fight back" conceit was another thing that was popular in British computer games but very foreign to American console gamers, so you see a lot of hate for Quattro Adventure for three of its four games being like that. It's a little sad that the very first Dizzy game was never remade for later systems, because that game actually let Dizzy destroy every enemy just by carrying the appropriate object! Maybe too much backtracking with that single inventory slot, though.
I could never get into any Dizzy game.
It’s all gone a bit confusing with changing some of the names
As a general rule, I hate all of the adventure style Dizzy games, but I love most of the puzzle / arcade games. Go Dizzy Go was by far my favourite from this lot.
Just finishing Yosh's Story on the N64 was very boring, I found it a far more enjoyable game when trying to do a "full watermelon" run on every stage.
Good vid Crow.
I’m still on the fence on this one. As an American, I didn’t grow up with these games, so they don’t hold nostalgia. As a lover of gaming history though, I feel like it is probably worth the 20 dollars just to try these out and have the collection on my shelf.
I get dizzy of this video ;)
I didn't think this collection would be good enough for me, as I never grew up with the Dizzy series. And I guess I was right. Thanks for the review Crow.
Still waiting for Funstock to deliver those cartridges I ordered from them during the past few months.
@@CrowContinuum Apparently the Atari Lynx cartridges got lost in the mail. So I contacted Funstock, and they were able to send out new copies, which thankfully came in the mail a week or two later.
At least you have the option to buy them from Amazon. I'm an international buyer from Australia, so I have no other options.
I'm really disappointed,I want the original karate Champ,and c64 exploding fist.
I disliked all the Dizzy games with a passion - walk here, pick this up, walk there, put it down, repeat.
I've only seen shity NES games not enough arcade games.
god i hated dizzy