The game I'm talking about it Dreamworld Pogie, an unlicensed and unreleased game, programmed by the Oliver Twins for Codemasters and to be published in America and Canada by Camerica for the Aladdin Deck Enhancer, a gadget for the Nintendo Entertainment System, also made by Codemasters and published by Camerica.

The main character in Dreamworld Pogie, Pogie, is actually a character from the Dizzy series, he's a co-called Fluffle and is actually Dizzy's pet. So Dizzy's pet was supposed to have its own game, how awesome? As already mentioned, it was originally supposed to be released for the Aladdin Deck Enhancer as yet another Compact Cartridge and was even advertised as comming soon, along with a small screenshot, on the back of the Aladdin Deck Enhancer box.

But things doesn't always go as planned and Camerica, the publisher, supposedly went bankrupt before the game was finished - rumors years ago said that the game only reached alpha stage. Dreamworld Pogie looked like a cute platformer along the lines of Super Mario Bros. and it was probably my most wanted game to play out of the unreleased Aladdin Deck Enhancer games.

Now fast forward to June 30, 2011 - the year Dizzy had his 25th anniversary as a videogame character. Dizzy fansite yolkfolk.com posted a set of various pictures and unreleased music for the SEGA Megadrive (Genesis)... and what was thought to be the source code for Dreamworld Pogie. It only took a Dizzy fan a few hours to figure out that the 8 files included in the archive actually were binaries that could be merged into a fully playable version of Dreamworld Pogie.

What's even better, the floppy disk the files came from, dated 18th October 1993, also stated that this was a "nearly finished" version of the game, it was so close to being finished and published.

The floppy also revealed a cheat for the game. Accoring to the label you would get 40 lives if you hold A while pressing start to play the game, I tried and only got 9 lives though.

Dreamworld Pogie is indeed a platformer in the style of Super Mario Bros, and takes place in Candyland. It features a cutesy main character that has to make his way through a variety of levels while picking up stars, which will add much needed extra lives.

You start off with only 3 lives and with those you have to pass all sorts of enemies without any type of weapon. Pogie can however turn into a "monsterfluffle" which works pretty much like the star in Super Mario that makes you invincible for a short time.

At first the game may seem super easy, but once you're a few levels "in", the game goes from cutesy to pretty brutal. It features some 15 levels, but rumor has it that the game sadly has a bug that sometimes prevents Pogie from exiting a level, nothing I've experienced sofar though. Controlls can be a little "stiff" at times, making is tough to to control Pogie.

Now I did say that this game had to be played using a Flash cartridge or an emulator as no real cartridge exists. The only real thing to do though is to make an Aladdin Deck Enhancer Compact Cart and play it the way it was meant to be played. The easiest thing to do it getting a donor Compact Cart, which could be any but the multicart releases as they use a different board. Then remove the ROM and replace it with a Dreamworld Pogie EPROM and get gaming.

Or you could take it a step further and make a reproduction PCB and 3D print your own shell, that way no Aladdin Deck Enhancer games were harmed. :-)

Dreamworld is an excellent little game, sadly it only has 15 stages and that in the same Candyland theme although there is variety through out the game, and the last 5 stages are *H*A*R*D* :-)

The prototype build released seems pretty much complete, there's even an ending to the game. All in all a fun little game that could've made a great addition to the Aladdin Deck Enhancer.

Oh yeah, Game Genie codemaestro himself, Hydro, has also made a few codes for Dreamworld Pogie.

Infinite Lives SZONIEVK Start on Level 2 PEUKSGAA Start on Level 3 ZEUKSGAA Start on Level 4 LEUKSGAA Start on Level 5 GEUKSGAA Start on Level 6 IEUKSGAA Start on Level 7 TEUKSGAA Start on Level 8 YEUKSGAA Start on Level 9 AEUKSGAE Start on Level 10 PEUKSGAE Start on Level 11 ZEUKSGAE Start on Level 12 LEUKSGAE Start on Level 13 GEUKSGAE Start on Level 14 IEUKSGAE Start on Level 15 TEUKSGAE

December 15th 2016 a Kickstarter campaign launched with the aim to sell a few hundred Physical DreamWorld Pogie cartridges, with the option of box and manual as well. The ROM for DreamWorld Pogie was as mentioned earlier already available on the internet, made public by yolkfolk.com, but the old release had a few bugs that had been fixed along with a bit of polishing to the game, all done to present the game better.

The Kickstarter ended one month later with no less than 601 backers, a massive success compared to the Wonderland Dizzy campaign that only sold some 84'ish cartridges, but then again the Wonderland Dizzy kickstarter was different as it was sold as an option for a book called "The story of the Oliver Twins", a book well worth reading by the way... I usually never read books as I quickly get bored, but this one was an exception :-)

Anyway along with the kickstarter a website also launched, called dreamworldpogie.com where the new and improved ROM was, and still is, available for free.

More on the release of DreamWorld Pogie when it arrives, until then I'll have to settle with my homemade Aladdin Deck Enhancer cartridge :-)