I found some floppy disks in the attic and decided to dedicate an evening to closing one of the pending accounts with my gaming childhood: Ziu Zizzu. There’s a legend that says it’s possible to finish the game without using any cheats. But let’s be clear, that’s just a myth. In reality, it’s not possible.
Ziu Zizzu is a platform game with a Sardinian setting, released in 1997 for PC, which achieved great success in Sardinia while remaining almost completely unknown outside the island’s borders. It’s the first (I believe) video game produced by Polgames, a small software house based in Bonarcado, in the province of Oristano.
I played it for the first time a few years after its release. I remember the frustration of not being able to get past even the first levels of the game, but also the amazement of seeing monuments and streets that were part of my daily life in a video game. And I think part of the game’s success is due to the fact that it was the first time the Sardinian imagery of biddas (small villages) was transported into a completely new context.
Story
Zizzu, our hero and main character, must reach his beloved one by undertaking a long journey through a Sardinia full of dangers and enemies.
His desire for love will lead him to explore places and customs of the Island, and to cross the sea on a raft to distant Egypt, navigating through ferocious animals, stone-throwing, unstable hay bale piles, and dangerous cliffs. During the journey, he’ll have to collect Sardinian delicacies, including the inevitable casu marzu (cheese with worms) and proccheddusu (roasted pigs).
His only weapon: the fart. Yes, you read that right. Zizzu can emit loud farts to defeat enemies.
As if all this weren’t enough, know that our protagonist will have to use a different means of transportation for each level. From skateboard to bicycle, to off-road vehicle, to flying carpet, to the World War I biplane equipped with reverse gear.
At first, I tried to recover the game from the original floppy disks I kept in the attic, but without success, because two of the five game disks were no longer readable. After a brief web search, I found a special version made for codda.org (one day I’ll have to talk about this site too). Apart from the logo on the initial screen, the game seemed identical to the original, so I started the emulator and began my run.
The game is exactly as I remembered it: impossible.
After several hours of sudden deaths, objects that seem to provide bonuses but kill you, enemies camouflaged in the backgrounds, approximate jumps, fart shooting that changes from level to level, alienating and repetitive Sardinian MIDI music, I was about to give up.
And I decide to do the only possible thing in these cases: cheat.
I discover that you can exploit a bug between the fifth and sixth level (minute 1:26 of the video) to get practically infinite lives. So be it. Also, it’s possible to skip (literally) levels simply by spamming the jump button. This way, Zizzu will disappear from the upper edge of the screen and can make a suborbital flight to the next level, avoiding ditches, enemies, and various dangers. Even with the infinite lives cheat, this was the only way I managed to get past the raft level.
In the end, after many hours and over 20 (yes, 20) years since the first time I tried, I succeeded in the feat.
What else to say. Beyond the bugs, the disjointed level design, and the poor playability, I constantly had the impression that whoever thought up and developed the game put all the enthusiasm they were capable of into it. Moreover, the concept itself isn’t bad, and credit must be given to Polgames for being the first to associate the term video game with something related to Sardinia.
And if any other timid attempts have been made to bring Sardinia to a video game, we’re probably still far from electing a successor to that old, buggy, and viral platform game that was Ziu Zizzu.