Old Aladdin Deck Enhancer flyer
Started by Adam Markey on 10 June 2022 • 3,789 views
I agree with you that Adventure World Dizzy was probably Mystery World Dizzy. This NESWorld article has a bit of inside information on what the unreleased games would have been like. The Lost Media Wiki article collects a few images of Metal Man and Team Sports Basketball. So Dizzy Pinball was probably never even started, but Puzzled remains more of a mystery. More recently I found a video that purported to contain footage of Puzzled, but it turned out to be Idea-Tek's sliding puzzle game Puzzle. Another NESWorld article claims that Team Sports Basketball evolved into Team Sports Challenge and lists the four sports games it would contain... So I'm not sure why that ad lists both Basketball and a five-pack of sports. I'm also unsure why three of the Quattro Arcade titles were listed as separate releases when Adventure and Sports were already produced as 4-in-1s for Aladdin, but NESWorld did report that they would cost a couple dollars less than other titles!
(I'm doubtful of the claims on Lost Media Wiki of a standalone Go Dizzy Go ROM existing, though. I suspect what's going on is that the "Golden Four" multicart for the Pegasus famiclone doesn't run right on many emulators and will boot directly into Go Dizzy Go by mistake.)
That mention of a different Dizzy the Adventurer label reminds me of something I found when I was researching the timeline of Aladdin and Plug-thru games: Nintendo Game Zone issue 1 previewed the Plug-Thru cartridge design with a picture of a black cartridge with the Dizzy the Adventurer logo and background color on the label but with the Dizzy art that was used on the Aladdin Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy label (rather than the Crystal Kingdom Dizzy art)! Do you think Dizzy the Adventurer really was being put onto a Plug-thru cartridge at one point?
Every NES project by Oliver Twins has a main file in which other files are included. This main file also starts by starting a project name and. Since I was working on Mystery World Dizzy revival, I can confirm that the project main file (named "AWDIZZY.PRJ") had a project name of "Adventure World Dizzy". Interestingly, there was an older main file called "FANTASY.PRJ" and its project name was "Fantasy World Dizzy".
In regards of Puzzled: I did receive source code for it. It was never made past pitch phase. IIRC, when I asked Twins about it, they stated it was pitched to Codemasters but got rejected and they turned to other projects.
The game is a topdown puzzle game starring Pogie, it has 3 maps, two of which are pretty much unfinished mess. Third is clearly a mechanic testing map, although not all code was in there yet. There is no music or soundfx.
I proposed to finish the project while also creating a write up of new\finishing mechanics, and Twins did agree. We asked Jarrod Bentley to do the art, which he agreed to initially but ended up never doing it as he was busy with art for Wonderful Dizzy.
Chip Jockey was asked to do the music for the game, of which he did finish few tracks.
I tackled the coding for it. The game never went too far, though.
Other stuff like releasing Panic Dizzy took priority and eventually we all forgot about it.
In regards of Pinball Dizzy: Never heard of it. Nesworld quotes Philip Oliver saying it was there to fill a slot for potential games list. Although...they might have just mispelled it.
In regards to Go Dizzy Go: I think I did come across ROMs that has only this one game on it, so its not just the "Golden Four" situation.
The Adventure World Dizzy you described is most likely the Mystery World Dizzy. This article from NESWorld reveals some details about the games that were scrapped before they were launched. Several Metal Man and Team Sports Basketball artworks are compiled in this Lost Media Wiki article.
