GOOD RETRO GAME WEEK SPECIAL, huh?
Here's what I've got for you. An excellent game for the Commodore Amiga 500 with pretty, smooth-scrolling graphics and unforgettable music.
Before we go any further, you should know that one of the best things about Wiz 'n' Liz is finding all the silly stuff for yourself. This post includes screenshots of some of the bosses and sub-games that you would normally have to go out of your way to find.
This the between levels intermission level! You can spend as much time as you want here, practising the controls, jumping on trees and running about the place. Before we can continue to the game proper, we have to learn how to mix a spell to open the door out of here.
At the top of the screen is the password for my current level. You can play along at home! I'm playing on the highest difficulty because I'm super hip.
To mix a spell, jump into the fruit to get it to follow you, then jump into the cauldron to add it to the mixture. All we've got here at the moment is an apple and a strawberry. In you go!
Jump into the floating spinny doorway and we're onto the level select. Here we go!
You know, I've mixed together apples and strawberries before in real life and I've never gotten a magic doorway to appear. Maybe I wasn't doing it right. Then again, they didn't have eyes so I should really be thankful.
We've got Dead Land, Desert Land, Grass Land, Lunar Land, Mine Land, Snow Land, Temple Land and Wood Land.
Grass Land is closer!
The exit doesn't appear until you've collect all the letters of the magic word at the top of the screen, so you've gotta find 'em all fast! Until the magic word has been found, INFINITE WABBITS appear! RUN! RUN!
With the magic word found, the flow of wabbits to the area has been stopped. All that remains is to scoop up all the ones left lying around.
Don't stop! Run! Collect everything!
That pumpkin thing following me is actually a magic orange. In each level, there's a random fruit you can collect to use later when you're back at Wizzy's hut. But never mind that now! You've got to get into the exit door!
The levels in Wiz 'n' Liz loop horizontally, and there's no unmakeable jumps or bottomless pits. There's no way to lose except for running out of time! You're going to need every second you can get your hands on, because there's still thousands of wabbits yet to find.
This game loves to give you points. You get points for grabbing the rabbits, for grabbing the fruit and grabbing extra time... and then when you win the level you get bonus points for it again!
I know it's not going to open the door to the level select because we've already done that.
Pop! 40 seconds extra time! That will do nicely!
Your remaining time is carried over from level to level, so you really have to be super fast in the levels. Speaking of levels, we're off to...
Each Land has its own music and it's always peppy stuff. It doesn't get old, but you're not really supposed to be in a level long enough for it to get old. The loud and clear sound effects suit the game perfectly and they're distinct enough to help you make sense of the action.
Ignore that big wabbit! He can take care of himself! Run, Wizzy!
Mixing together an apple and a banana opens the shop next to Wizzy's hut. You're usually given a banana and an apple several times near the start of the game, especially on the easier difficulties, so you're bound to come up with it sooner or later.
Anyway, enough talk about that. What's for sale?
There's 14 different spell ingredients in Wiz 'n' Liz. With two ingredients for each spell, that gives 105 possible spell combinations! We know two now, so there's only 103 left to find!
But... what do the spells do?
There's no way to know except buy something and chuck it in the pot!
These guys made Puggsy, an Amiga platform adventure where you play as that blob fellow hanging on the right. There's a secret level in Puggsy (Wikipedia link) where you can shoot Wiz 'n' Liz wabbits with a gun.
The bonuses fly out of the top wabbits when you collect them, so hopping and bounding everywhere is the best way to go.
The most frustrating thing is that there never seems to be enough wabbits on screen at once. Before you collect the word, there's a constant flow of wabbits, but there only seems to be about a dozen present on the level at a time. Unless you're very familiar with the levels, it's easy to lose or run past the last few wabbits.
One thing that I can't express in these screenshots is how awesome Wizzy's motion is. He's like a crazy bouncy ball through all of these levels, but he's never uncontrollable. If you've played Dizzy, you'll know how awful platforming motion can be. Wiz 'n' Liz is the opposite of that. It's dreamy.
Hell no. All that was a prelude to the boss battle that comes after you've finished all eight Lands.
PREPARE TO MEET - THE SAVAGE PUMPKIN.
In a complete change from the rest of the game, we're stuck in a single non-scrolling screen locked in mortal combat against a giant pumpkin. Either he dies, or we do. His attack is to fall from the sky and try to squash me. Wiz has a magic beam that automatically damages the nearest weak point on the boss' body.
Oodles of wabbits rain from the sky and everybody is happy.
Wouldn't be much of a guide if I failed on the first boss, would I?
There's a whole new level designs for all eight lands, this time with three rounds each. I hope you like collecting wabbits, because you're going to be doing it a lot.
So why keep playing?
Even after seeing all the effects, I enjoyed working out ways to skip all the levels and get straight to the boss. There's no straightforward 'get to the boss' or 'get loads of stars' spell, and you can't simply go to the shop and buy loads of the same thing if there were because the shop only sells you so much of one thing at a time.
When you've mastered the spells and can freely create extra time, the wabbit levels are not much of a challenge and you can choose which ones to play and which ones to skip. If you were to be a overly practical bore, you could say the whole point of the game is to prepare yourself for the bosses by getting extra lives. But you can play it however you like! It's possible to play the entire game without even opening the shop!
I didn't enjoy playing Wiz 'n' Liz today. I've completely played it out. Even though the last time I'd played the game was many, many years ago, I could recall every level, every piece of music, every sound effect and every spell clearly. There's nothing new for me to see and the wabbit catching kinda got old. It took ten years, but it finally got old.
And that's okay. It is a kids game, after all, or maybe it's a family game. It's a game for everybody!
There's multiple difficulty levels, so the wabbit catching can be as easy or as hard as it needs to be. I found the bosses really hard when I was younger, but now I can beat them easily.
And speaking of the bosses. On the back of the box for the Genesis version, the game is described as a non-violent adventure. (Mobygames link)
Hey, you know, I've never played the Genesis version of Wiz 'n' Liz! Let's have a look at that.
Wiz 'n Liz (Sega Genesis / Sega Mega Drive)
It's got a slightly more flashy intro with a different title screen. If you press Start it's got the same title screen as before.
Wiz 'n Liz (Sega Genesis / Sega Mega Drive)
It's... the exact same...!
There's a completely different arrangement of the music. It's peppier and got the typical Genesis bassy sound to it, making the Amiga version sound weedy by comparison. The sound effects are even better than before!
Wiz 'n Liz (Sega Genesis / Sega Mega Drive)
There's very minor graphical effects (for example, the letters have wings in this version) and the background isn't bright dark blue, but that's it. The most noticeable change is everything seems a lot faster! The lack of loading times makes the game fly by.
Wiz 'n Liz (Sega Genesis / Sega Mega Drive)
And what the devil is this? NEW MINIGAMES?! Ye gods!
I tried a few other spells and they all seemed to be the same. There's a new one that makes Lemmings walk around the levels with you... strange thing to have on a Sega version and not on the Amiga version.
I'm honestly very shocked. I always thought that Wiz 'n' Liz was a cool secret Amiga gem and the Sega version was a lousy knock-off. But it turns out that the Genesis version was made at the same time and if anything it has the 'original' music.
I prefer the Amiga version because it's easier to control; I prefer the Zipstik to the Sega pad. I find that fire to jump and hold down-fire to go through platforms is easier than A to fall and B to jump on the Genesis. The Amiga version might be a bit slower, but you can see more. I don't know if I like the music on the Genesis version as much as the Amiga, but it's nice to hear new music.
Man, two awesome versions of an awesome game! Aren't you lucky!
Even better, you can go to the Bizarre Creations web page for Wiz 'n' Liz, and download the Mega Drive version for free, and show everyone you know! It's even got a neat two-player versus mode!
Well, you could have done, if Bizarre hadn't made a terrible racing game and ruined everything.
For my money, the Megadrive/Genesis version is the best platformer (well, it's sort of a platformer anyway!) on the system. The Amuga one felt a bit janky coming to it after years of playing the Megadrive and I much prefer the Megadrive music, but maybe it depends which you're used to! I wrote about the soundtrack to the game actually a few years back, it definitely has more of a traditional "chiptune" sound than most MD music and you're not wrong about the bass... I'd describeit as "boingy" :) Here's the piece if you're interested! http://sega-addicts.com/2010/07/06/the-sonic-head-jog-wiz-n-liz/
ReplyDeleteWow, first you misspell Amiga, then you start promoting your own articles in my comments box!
DeleteThat was a good read actually, and it's gotten me clicking through Mega Drive tunes when I should be replying to comments so thanks for that.