• Finished 12th June 2023
  6/10

An absolute fever dream that was often hard to follow. Plot holes and motivations unexplained and yet somehow satisfying. Gameplay is shallow but the real joy is the journey it takes you on. I don't think I've ever been so utterly baffled with twists and silly turns that come out of nowhere. It felt like it was written by a room of people who were all not allowed to say "no" to anything suggested. Would I have been happy for full RRP at launch? No. Am I happy for 300 yen now? Very

• Finished 3rd August 2023
  7/10

Lovely music. Very charming whimsical game much like its setting in a picture book. I loved the worlds and creativity and some of the puzzles but i think there was an abundance of confusing items and the method to get the good ending is too difficult and you are really just resigning yourself to a very unsatisfying bad ending on your first playthrough. Want to reply but the amount of repeated text and slow controls puts me off.

• Finished 25th February 2024
  4/10

Really didn't vibe with this one. Feels like a downgrade in every aspect compared to the first game. Frustrating combat, mostly pointless weapons, far too many mechanics to remember for puzzles and a pretty uninteresting story with poor character development and forgettable villains. Felt like a previous gen game except inferior to its predecessor tbh. Very disappointed as I loved the original so very much.

• Finished 25th February 2024
  9/10

Had alot of fun with this one, probably one of my favourites in the series. Big colourful graphics and the commentary while you play makes me chuckle often. Some annoying choke points and a few slow bosses that are frustrating to keep repeating the first phases on aside it was a good time. So much personality crammed into one game.

• Finished 7th July 2025
  8/10

Whizz is a surprisingly fun game that gives a terrible first impression. The first of the four worlds was the weakest and had a very sort of pedestrian feel. Even the music was nothing more than a rearrangement of London Bridge. From the next world on the music appears to be original and is much better for it. The level design was also more interesting and coherent as a theme. The levels felt tighter especially in the third world.

I imagine a lot of people dismiss this game after playing for 15 minutes, not really getting used to the gameplay and quickly deciding its jank and moving on never to look back again. Once you’re start to realise how the game wants it to be played, it becomes quite addictive and fun. The main thing to know is that this game wants you to play it fast. That’s the real meaning of Whizz. You need to play the game as fast as possible.

It looks like any other isometric action Platformer, but it’s really a race against the clock to get to the end in the quickest route takings few detours as possible. The levels even have a start and finish line suggesting this. It’s quite fun to replay levels again getting a little bit closer as you learn to optimally use the time pickups and map out which way to go first.

At first the controls seem clunky, but once you get used to only running in four directions isometrically it actually becomes very easy to control. Learning how to use to the attack is also going to be important, instinctively you want to jump into an enemy spinning but this is not the best way to do it simply running forwards and spinning without interrupting your flow at the right moment will usually hit any enemy without you taking damage in return.

The enemies alternate between dropping health pickups and some poison pickups but this is always on a fixed pattern so you always know what the next drop will be. The first world focused more around block key mechanics to unlock gates and there was a certain randomness to which key appears where depending on which you picked up first. I don’t think this was a strong part of the game and it got much better later on when it moves away from this formula.

The game is also really good at committing each world’s theme, with a lot of variety in each location. For example, on the beach you use a surfboard, a boat and a submarine to move across sections, I feel like other games would’ve only used one and recycled this. The casino level has lots of personality from flying across a gap on a dart, walking over coin bridges from slot machines and even playing a game of higher or lower. Navigating moving chessboards and crossing a checker board. and the game just oozes charm. I just wish there had been more of it, I felt there should have been at least 2 more worlds.

The game doesn’t really push the Saturn much but looking at footage on other platforms there’s certainly improvements and the game has a really solid fast performance with no slowdown I ever encountered. On the other hand, in 1997 I’m not sure this would have been such a great additional to your new growing next gen library but in 2025 playing games of all eras it’s really nice to look back too and is probably the more optimal way to play this game now.