“...I've been working since 2008 with Ruby / Ruby on Rails, love a bit of Elixir / Phoenix and learning Rust. I also poke through other people's code and make PRs for OpenSource Ruby projects that sometimes make it. Currently working for InPay who are based in Denmark...”

Rob Lacey
Senior Software Engineer, Copenhagen, Denmark

Codemaster's Dizzy returns

Old blog posts I never published, except I have now #5

The first time I used a computer I was about 7 I think. My mum was always ahead of her time and I actually cite her (or blame her) for being such a geek and getting interested in computers in the first place. She bought me my first computer the Amstrad CPC 6128. We got it 2nd hand I remember going round to the owners house and leaving with a pile of boxes of bits, games, manuals and other books.

I don’t recall the time I bought Treasure Island Dizzy but I remember being completely immersed in it, the puzzles and going back and forth trying to work out which items I’d need to get past each stage and open those locked rooms. I might even say this encouraged me to pay attention to detail at such a young age.

After so many years of 3D games. I’ve played them and I just don’t get on with them. Mario 64 on the Nintendo DS just annoyed me. I think World Of Warcraft is the only one I’ve stuck with. I really miss the 2D platform games I enjoyed during my formative years and I wish they still made them. I am so pleased to see now that Dizzy is making a comeback on iPhone, iPad and Android platforms. I did a little dance and I hunted high and low for information on the old games. I found the fabulous YolkFolk Dizzy fan site which has basically everything you need.

It seems also you can get Dizzy clones of the original games (as close to the original as possible) with Spectrum graphics. Presumably they are cloned to avoid copyright issues. There is even a Dizzy game engine named Dizzy Age which programmers can build their own Dizzy games with, and it was this engine that was used to build the clones of the original games.

Getting back on track, the lovely people at Codemasters have brought Dizzy back to life with a remake of Dizzy – Prince of the YolkFolk for modern mobile platforms. It’s between £1.49 and £2.49 depending on what your platform of choice is. I need to pinch Kat’s Motorla Xoom in order to play as my HTC isn’t supported. Dang.

They are running ongoing competitions on their Dizzy Game Facebook page which you should checkout. Always enter competitions…because even I managed to win myself some badges which I can wear with pride down the pub.