For the first time ever a budget compilation makes it to the front end of Amiga Power. Why's this? Because it's such an 'excellent' deal, that's why...

Excellent!

Will that do? [No, course it bloody won't. Get on with it. And while I'm at it, don't you think the old 'Oh well, I suppose I'd better write a bit more then' gambit is getting just a little tired by now? I mean, can't you come up with something just a little bit more original once in a while? It's not much to ask, especially when there's so much potential here to be eggsploited - arf! See, there's crap egg-type puns for a start, millions of 'em. So get cracking! Arf! Even when you've finished those, there's tons of stuff for a hard-boiled - arf! - reviewer to get stuck into in this compilation of five - count 'em! - gorgeous Dizzy games, only one of which has previously been available anywhere else. I mean to say, you could easily start off with a quick recap on Kwik Snax, which we covered as part of the Dizzy Collection compilation back in issue eight's compilation special, where we called it 'tricky, pretty and entertaining' and gave it four - count 'em! - stars. You could tell anyone who didn't remember that it's a slickly presented and unusual puzzle game, with elements of the ancient coin-op game Pengo and really cute graphics. You could say that, taken individually as a game that effectively costs a fiver, it'd easily be worth, say, 80 percent. - Ed]

But - [And after that, you could perhaps, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, write just a few words about the other arcade puzzle game on the compilation, Panic Dizzy. You could note that it's been improved from the iffy 8-bit versions for the Amiga release, most crucially by the addition of a two-player head-to-head competition mode, which adds a bit of lastability to what's otherwise a pretty limited and repetitive game where there seems to be very little opportunity to bring any skill to bear on the game's outcome. And if I know your reviewing style, you'd probably conclude with something along the lines that the almost total reliance on chance - and the fact that once things start to go wrong, your chances of putting them right again decrease very rapidly - meant that the game wasn't really worth more than a few occasional plays. Still, I know you don't like to be too mean to the Codies - did this month's cheque come through okay, incidentally? - so you'd more than likely give it a pretty sort mark considering it was only £5, say somewhere in the vicinity of 56 percent - Ed]

Yeah, but - [Of course, anyone with any journalistic training at all would probably take the opportunity for a slick link into Bubble Dizzy at this point, noting the progression from puzzle game with arcade overtones - i.e. Kwik Snax - to arcade reaction-test game with puzzle overtones - i.e. Panic Dizzy - to pure arcade game with just a hint of a puzzle, as in Bubble Dizzy. That same hypothetical person would almost certainly chuck in a couple of throwaway plot lines about how this game fills in the missing link between Treasure Island Dizzy and Fantasy World Dizzy, covering the bit where Diz had to swim to Fantasy World after being forced to walk the plank by nasty pirate Captain Blackheart following his escape from Treasure Island.

Then they'd probably go on to describe the incredibly simple and yet highly addictive gameplay, which involves Dizzy standing on air bubbles rising from the bottom of the sea and jumping between bubbles and ledges to avoid falling back down when the bubbles randomly burst, at the same time avoiding deadly marine life, collecting oxygen to survive longer and picking up pearls to repair the necklace for Dizzy's sweetheart Daisy that had been scattered when Cap'n Blackheart threw our hero overboard. If they were really on the case this person might then draw comparisons with the central gameplay concepts of Rainbow Islands, Nebulus and the legendary Speccy classic Underwurlde, and conclude that this was a brilliant little game whose appeal might perhaps wane a little after all the levels had been completed - probably not all that mammoth a task - but that it was the kind of thing that absolutely everyone would enjoy in the meantime, especially if they turned up the fabby calypso music while they played. This imaginary reviewer would quite possibly feel moved by the same criteria as before to award Bubble Dizzy a mark in the region of, ooh, 85 percent - Ed]

Okay, so - [I can't believe that you couldn't find anything interesting to say about Spellbound Dizzy, either. Okay, so it's another game in the classic Dizzy formula, with lots of platform-leaping and puzzle-solving as seen before in Treasure Island, Fantasy World and Magicland, but this one's bigger than the last two put together, so there's at least one interesting point to latch onto straight away. You could show how the character of Dizzy has been developed a little in this game, with lots of little animations and pirouetting jumps and so on, although admittedly after that you'd probably have to slip into the old tried-and-trusted "Well, it's not really very different from the others, except in the slightly-less-cutesy-cartoony visual department, so if you liked that kind of thing, this would be the kind of thing you'd like." Still, on the grounds of size, I would imagine you'd still be looking at a score around the 76-ish mark. - Ed]

Look, can I - [Fair enough, I guess that'd leave you a little bit stuck for constructive comment on the final game in the pack, Dizzy: Prince Of The Yolk Folk. Still, you could always waffle on a bit to fill space at the start, maybe drop into one of your usual gratuitous ranting bits about something connected to the game only in some impossibly tenuous way, or perhaps relate some implausible anecdote about how you were walking down the street the other day when you bumped into Paul Gascoigne or someone like that, who said "Why aye Stu, have you heard about the latest Dizzy game? I've just been playing it and I must say it's probably the nicest one yet, with really atmospheric graphics, (albeit that they could have come from any one of the three previous Dizzy arcade adventures), and that great mix of platform action and brain-teasing that's made the other games in the series so popular". By the time it came around to the conclusion, you'd only have to say that this was probably the second-best game on the pack after Bubble Dizzy, although maybe the formula was beginning to show its age, but at the end of the day the kids would go for this one in a big way again like they did all the other times, so it was worth a good 82 percent or thereabouts, and the review would be finished! So stop complaining and get reviewing, why don't you? - Ed]

Er, okay, then. Dizzy's Excellent Adventures - [Snip! - Ed]

Uppers: A good varied mix of game styles, and certainly not lacking in the value-for-money department. Even the weakest title (Panic Dizzy) is worth a good few plays, and the best one (Bubble Dizzy) is a pure arcade game up there with the best of 'em.

Downers: Um... well, I daresay some of you out there would rather have one really stunning full-price game than fity nifty but not quite so astonishing cheapies. But - hey! - it's a free country.

A great compilation, and even the one previously-available game deserves a wider audience than it had before, so, er, why not go out and buy it? (Basically.) And on the grounds of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, I'm going to give it...