Nails may be hard, but Fantastic Dizzy beats the crap out of hard nails.

I was really young when my Dad and I used to sit around the ZX Spectrum and explore Fantasy World and Treasure Island with Dizzy. These were good times. In particular, Fantasy World Dizzy has always been a favourite of mine. That 8-bit music is still burned in my brain and will be forever. What a delightful, fun little game.

Imagine my surprise years later when I hear Fantastic Dizzy is being released on Mega Drive. I didn’t pay much attention to the Dizzy series after getting a NES and the later 16-bit consoles. I know Dizzy had the same adventure on the NES, but I NEEDED to get the Dizzy game when I heard of it.

I can’t remember if I got it on the release year or year after, but I got it for Christmas one year (amongst other things, my family were not that poor!). We had to go to grandma’s out in the sticks that Christmas, so I packed my Mega Drive and Fantastic Dizzy and thought about the adventure I would be going on while driving the grandma’s.

At got to grandma’s, said “up yours” to Christmas pudding, slammed that cartridge into the Mega Drive, wiped the sweat off my forehead… and two hours later I was wiping tears of anger and sorrow from my eyes.

Now, with the right amount of patience, a few hours to spend doing nothing and a positive “can do attitude”, one could easily complete Fantastic Dizzy. I, however, at the ripe age I once was, could not fathom it. Fantastic Dizzy follows the time tested blueprint for Dizzy games (pick up item, use item here, pick up another item, use item there etc) but man, this game was HUGE in comparison to Fantasy World Dizzy.

Alot of back tracking must be done in order to complete the game. You will have to visit the same areas numerous times. You will have to walk from “A” through “B” to get to “C” countless times. While the train station, graveyard and yolkfolk village are all pleasant to see in 16-bit glory, it becomes a bit of a pain in the ass having to go walk through these locations constantly.

Fantastic Dizzy really needed a save feature or a password feature to let you come back at a later date… because your head would be fried after a 2 hour session. Don’t get me wrong, I love adventuring with Dizzy, but this?? The cart and river mini games are nice and all but not enough to keep you glued.

Oh yeah.. you need to get stars. There’s 250 stars scattered all over the game. ALL OVER. This includes mini games. Miss a star? Get your egg ass back and find it. You can not complete the game without collecting all the stars.

It is nice to see Dizzy all jazzed up in 16-bit. I applaud the Oliver Brothers for getting a game published on Sega’s machine. The game needed a password or save feature. Maybe I got too old at the time and was more interested in blue hedgehogs than I once was in eggs, but this game tries the patience.