Whizz - Sega Saturn - Intro, attract and playthrough isometric platformer [UHD 4K50]
23Full longplay / playthrough / walkthrough / trueplay of Whizz a PAL and NTSC/J only released retro platformer from 1996/1997. First released on the Amiga, PC and Amiga CD32 in 1994, the consoles versions of Whizz were much later with the SNES, Saturn and PlayStation 1 all seeing ports. Each of these ports is slightly different to one another and it's quite interesting to see the changes between them.
This video is of the PAL Saturn version, but the Japanese version appears to have some added changes and the PS1 version has something similar. With the Japanese versions having extra power ups including a running shoe that speeds up Whizz. The game was never released in North America and it was likely down to the strange no 2D policies of Bernie Stolar, which he put in place at both Sega and Sony of America.
Whizz is a rather short isometric platformer with only ten stages split across four worlds named Grassy plains, Arctic tundra, Tropical beach and Gamesville. From the get go this was one dated games, its not terrible, but it is just so very average and could have been a better game with some design changes. There are no end of world bosses and the game just ends after finishing 4-2. Your only objective is to score points and finish the stage before the timer runs out and time is something the game gives you very little off. You can unlock extra continues by finding the four rockets on each stage, doing so after you have earning the max three continues grants a bonus score award. Whizz is more fun on easy mode as all the difficulty does is reduce the time so much, you can't explore levels to earn bonus score and the level are surprisingly big.
Finding the four rockets is actually quite fun as often you need to find special items to find them, fish to feed the whale or the key codes to unlock a vault. Had the developers given Whizz an over world map screen, removed the timer and instead have the player look for the rockets in order to progress between the worlds and win the balloon would have made it more fun and interesting.
There is little in the way of story, but this is what the game includes on the disc in the bibliography file. Whizz is involved in a balloon race with his old adversary Ratty. Being a sneaky character Ratty bursts Whizz's balloon at the start of each level, forcing him to battle his way to the end of each level on foot.
The Saturn version adds in a CD soundtrack (the first world song is a remix of the nursery rhyme London Bridge Is Falling Down), some ugly CGI intros (which look worse than the pixel art original intros in the Amiga version) and some nicer background art. There are a few changes with the PlayStation version and we think the PS1 looks like it has the edge with the presentation being a touch better. There was a unreleased Mega Drive port and we suspect this version, may be based on that code.
If your an American Saturn owner and for some reason want to play Whizz grab a copy of the NTSC/J version as the PAL one is optimised to play smoothly at 50Hz and shows flicking and graphical glitches when run in 60Hz.
Seeing as we could find no site mention of them on the internet these are the level passwords for the Sega Saturn versions:
World 2 - CBAACA
World 3 - BCBAAB
World 4 - CACBBA
Also know as: アクピョン・ゲーム ウィズ(Japan)
Release: 1996/1997 (Original game 1994)
Developer: Flair Software
Publisher: Konami (Europe) B-Factory (Japan)
Format: Sega Saturn (SS) / セガサターン
Whizz was released on Amiga, PC, Amiga CD32, SNES, Mega Drive, Saturn and PlayStation 1, but no version is currently available to buy on modern systems.
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Footage is captured directly from original hardware in this case a PAL Sega Saturn console, via RGB Scart captured via Elgato Game Capture HD60 Pro using a open source scan convertor (OSSC). Upscaled to 4K to improve the video bit rate.