The series was originally developed by the Oliver twins but they had little involvement with this title other than executive sign-off, leaving Big Red Software to redesign the graphics engine and design the game and puzzles.

The gameplay is also complicated by the fact that Dizzy loses health when falling from heights (a feature which was removed from subsequent games).

This level of difficulty made many players cheat by using patches giving Dizzy unlimited lives.

The game also presents slightly different user interface, graphics and concepts that never occurred earlier or later in the series: an inventory with items icons, separated collection (stars) and healing (apples) items (in other games they are always '2 in 1'), hidden passages and dynamic animated set pieces (the travel tunnels, the mining cart, etc.)

The 128k version features richer graphics and animation, extended dialogue and a background music track.