I never was a very big Dizzy fan. I don't know what it was about the Dizzy games, they just never really interested me all that much. I tried playing several of them, but I just never found the games to be all that engaging. The earlier Dizzy games also looked too “Spectrum-y” to me. I do know that they were pretty popular in the British market and probably Codemasters' most popular game franchise.

Recently, I happened to stumble across this 1990 Codemasters' game, Kwik Snax, created by Jason Benham. Out of curiosity, I decided to give it a try and, right from the start, I was hooked by the game-play. It wasn't until my second or third round of play did I realise that this game was, indeed, a Dizzy game!

In Kwik Snax, you must gather together and lead a number of “lemmings” through the level maze to safety, which is a treasure chest of sorts. While you traverse the maze, you must avoid the enemy monsters trying to track you down. Get all the lemming-things to the chest and the level is complete.

I found the game-play to be intuitive, very easy to just pick up and start playing, and addicting. The controls are smooth and responsive, the game mechanics are well executed and the graphics are colourful and well designed. I was quite impressed.

It amazes me that, after all of this time, I'm still stumbling across these really fun games for the C64 that I never even heard of before. Why is it that games like the Dizzy franchise got so much publicity, back in the day, but little gems like Kwik Snax never seemed to get the recognition I think they deserved? They're not even discussed very much by the Commodore community today. Turbo the Tortoise was another one of these hidden gems I've reviewed not too long ago.

If you like simple collection / maze-chase games, I highly recommend you give Kwik Snax a try. I think it's the best of the Dizzy themed games and a pretty good maze-chase game in it's own right.

KwikSnax.d64
KwikSnax.cjm

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