Spellbound Dizzy (ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC)

Spellbound Dizzy is the 5th numbered game in the Dizzy adventure platformer series and perhaps the most polarizing one. While some are fans of the game's technological ambitions, expanded scope and experimental environments, others dislike the game's tedious and frustrating gameplay elements and relatively bland screen design. All in all it's certainly a remarkable game in the series.

Cheat Menu#

After the game has loaded, enter IWANTANOMLETTE (sic) on the keyboard to activate the cheat, which will be confirmed by the border flashing. This works on the 128k mode of the ZX Spectrum version, but not on the 48k mode.

Start the game and press C to open up the cheat menu. Additionally, some textboxes will be populated by extra messages.

Features present here are:

• Move - Lets you press Z or X to go left or right, and K or M to go up or down through the game's map. Pressing Space allows you to drop into that part of the map.
• Invent - Lets you scroll through all of the game's items by pressing A or S. Pressing Space allows you to add the specified item to the inventory.
• Lives - Restores the player's lives to the maximum 3.
• 5 Stars - Adds 5 stars to the counter (the amount required for Theo the wizard to rescue a given character)
• Rescue 7 - Sets the flags of all characters to having been rescued.
• PDS - This option crashes the game in the final version. The likely purpose was to hook into external development kit hardware.
• Screenshot - Pauses the game on a freeze frame until Space is pressed, so that magazines could take clean-looking screenshots of the game.

Unused Room#

To the left of "THE SCALES" is a room that cannot be accessed without using the screen movement option on the aforementioned cheat menu. This room has a textbox that states that it was only put into the game so that the opening message of the game (promising 105 rooms) is true and has a good-looking number in it. This room was made accessible through a fake wall in the Amiga and Atari ST conversions, in which it was populated by several food pickups and a different text message.

References#