Slightly magic is actually very much like the Dizzy games. It was released on All three major 8 bit formats and both Atari st and Amiga. Ive not played it much because i'm trying to get a hold of a real copy for my Amstrad but have had no luck so far... (was it even sold seperately?)
The puzzles are supposed to be quite easy but from what ive played the game is rock hard because of some tricky jumping onto tiny sparkles you have to do.
It has one of the most upbeat tunes you're ever likely to hear. Ever so slightly different on the Amstrad to other version too for some reason.
It was also available in the Cartoon collections boxset
Yeah the twinkles are quite difficult but you just need to get used to their pattern. There are some very tough sections in the game, I've never finished it - I just get stuck at a point where it seemed like there was nothing to do, I even checked the guide but couldn't get the next step to work. That was on the C64 though.
Nice music indeed, I think I mentioned before there are some similarities between that tune and the title theme for FWD on the Amiga - the tune was written by the same guy, naturally :smile:
This is a fantastic game it does look and plays very similar to Dizzy,but it has got a charm of its own, its just a real shame that it never got a sequel that it rightly deserved.
Yes I vagually remember Slightly Magic. Would love to play this again. Codemasters were on a bit of a high at this point, having already released the Dizzy games, the Seymour games and the CJ the Elephant games, Slightly Magic it seems was the latest in a long line of cartoon game characters; all very much like Dizzy {yolkfolk}:clap:
Yup, it's a Dizzy-like. You have lots of items to find uses for but can only carry a few at a time, with a small twist in the "mixing together spells" concept that sometimes has you transforming your character Slightly. The 8-bit versions made Slightly move very stiffly, only able to just barely jump up one stair when he's standing right in front of it. But while this remake uses the 8-bit graphics, it moves more like the 16-bit versions and has the Amiga soundtrack! I'm pretty sure that's the same soundfont as Fantasy World Dizzy. I wonder, what is the new item carrying capacity? I know it changed with which version you played, being a mere two slots on ZX Spectrum. I also wonder if it keeps all the cheap deaths or removes the banana peels like the 16-bit ports did.
You'll all be pleased to hear i managed to get a copy for my Amstrad, heh. As part of Codemaster's Cartoon collection. Ive also got it on the Amiga now.
The Amstrad version is a little bit of a sloppy port really, The main character walks noticably slower in one direction and there is only a 64k version without any speech. It does have different music than the Spectrum 128k version though for some reason.
Spectrum and Amiga versions were great. C64 version was terrible - it seemed like a very bad port from the Spectrum and had slow screen updates and a very unresponsive "objects held" menu.
A lot of software companies seemed to have a policy of just porting Spectrum games to the C64. Better music in the C64 Dizzy games but shame they couldn't have made more of an effort with the graphics. The C64 versions of things like Spike in Transylvania, Seymour Stuntman and the CJ games show what can be achieved when they make the effort.
It was apparently a lot worse for Amstrad owners because both it and the Speccy used the Z80 CPU and so ports were easier and so a lot of games were just straight ports and not making best use of the Amstrad's capabilities. Didn't bother me as I only had a Speccy and due to its popularity most games started out on it before they were converted. It still makes me laugh seeing how much programmers used to be able to cram into the few Kb available to them on all machines back then, and now even simple apps are many Mb in size.