April '94
It's time to PANIC!
Battle alone or against a friend in eggciting 2 player action.
Play as all of the Yolkfolk and for the first time the Evil Wizard Zaks.
You better get crackin’
5 different skill games await you.
FOUR SUITS - MATCH MORE - DIZZY DICE - PUZZLE PATH - PICTURE PERFECT
Panic Dizzy - NES : Kickstarter Launched
8th February ‘19
Back in ‘92, Codemasters suggested they could release our NES games on a Dizzy compilation cartridge. To compliment the adventure games, we decided to add Panic Dizzy, but fully redesigned, from the original 8-bit computer games. We always felt that design didn’t quite work, so with this version we decided to have 5 different puzzle games - hoping that one would find the magic! We feel both Match More and Dizzy Dice worked really well!
Having created Dizzy Panic on the home computers, we were left feeling it could have, and should have, been so much more addictive, but the only solution was to start from scratch.
So the NES game borrowed the name, flipping the order to Panic! Dizzy, and the idea of matching shapes in columns, but nothing else. We managed to re-introduce the original concept of Dizzy running back and forth, but this time at the bottom of the screen, instead of the conveyor belt. This all made a lot more sense and looked better. Then we had to come up with shapes and rules, and we came up with quite a few. On paper, it was difficult to tell what would work best, so we decided we’d put the best 5 in to give real value for money. It was also a way to hopefully ensure that some would work really well if some didn’t.
As it turns out, 2 worked really well - Match More (Shape Shifter) & Dizzy Dice - they both had that special addictive quality, whilst the other 3 added some gameplay and variety. Sadly the game wasn’t released at the time and was released 26 years later thanks to a Kickstarter campaign.
However we did convert the game in ‘93 to the SEGA Master System, Game Gear and MegaDrive, but just kept the best 3 games. It was included as 1 of the 3 games in the last release we had with Codemasters - the Excellent Dizzy Collection. Sadly our relationship was already broken by this point and they decided to duplicate only 5,000 on Master System and Game Gear making them extremely rare. The Megadrive version wasn’t released - especially sad, since it was the last game I wrote (Philip).
