Producer: The Edge
Retail Price: £8.99
Author: Steve Cargill

That fat, overblown, waddling, lazy scoundrel of a cat Garfield is out to do his good deed for the day - his feline friend Arlene has been taken to the local pound, and it's all down to Garfield to pluck his true love from her imprisonment. But first he must get out of the house, and that won't be easy.

Garfield, the comic-strip cat brought to the Spectrum screen for his tenth birthday (see panel), has two appetites - one for food and the other for rest. So this heroic ball of fluff must keep on consuming food, or he'll become very tired, drop off to sleep and leave Arlene languishing in the pound.

But at least there's more to eat than dry meal. There's his 'master' Jon's coffee, for a start; and later on Garfield can scoff a string of sausages and numerous other scraps. And this cat has a helpful digestive system - watch out for the Snack Attack warnings which appear periodically below the main screen. When there's a Snack Attack on, the flabby beast can nosh practically anything.

Garfield can be helped or hindered by his ever-present pooch Odie. Our hero doesn't really deserve this faithful dog as a friend - a well-aimed swipe at Odie earns points for the callous cat. Still, Odie doesn't seem to mind this mistreatment, for he always bounds back for more.

Garfield can also get help from his nephew, Nermal, the cutest little kitten ever - if he can find him.

Now Garfield is not the most house-proud or best behaved of cats - given half a chance, he likes nothing better than to tear the best chair's upholstery apart and add a stack of points to his collection. Still, the purple Dralon never did look too good on the three-piece suite, did it?

Messages at the foot of the screen keep up a running commentary, and useful objects lie around for Garfield to gather. There are newspapers, dog bowls, bones, towels and tin cans - but it takes some experimentation to find out what they're used for.

And if he does make it out of the house into the bright light of day, Garfield will be distracted all the way to the pound by useful places such as butchers' shops - in fact, they may prove so diverting that the fat cat never gets to free his long-suffering Arlene at all.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: very close to Jim Davis's comic-strip originals; monochromatic playing area
Sound: nothing but walking effects
Options: definable keys

Big, Fat, Hairy Deal is brilliant! It's totally addictive, with perfectly-animated cartoon characters, jokes and surprises around every corner and the joy of kicking Odie up the rump every now and then. The excellent graphics have some really effective shading, and all that lets the game down is the lack of colour and sound - a tune would have cheered it up a bit. Our lasagne-loving friend leaps and bounds around the screen in a genuinely cat-like way with Odie following close behind - but if Odie touches Garfield the cat gets very tired, so the best idea is to give him the boot. There's a serious aspect to the game, though, and the puzzles get more involving as you progress. This is a great game, full of fun and frolics, so get down to your local software shop and have a Big, Fat, Hairy Deal!
NICK [92%]

Big, Fat, Hairy Deal captures exactly the combination of sardonicism and wit found in the cartoon strip. All the characters are superbly animated, making full use of the Spectrum's high-resolution graphics; Odie is my favourite, bouncing happily around the screen with his tongue hanging out. And Garfield's expressions are simply brilliant - he veers from wide-eyed surprise to a fantastic toothy grimace to a cynical grin. The monochromatic graphics suit the cartoon style perfectly (the colourful information panel detracts from it, if anything). And though some backgrounds lack detail, others - such as the park and the sewers - are very good. The messages really add to the atmosphere of humour and laziness, and it's very satisfying to be able to kick Odie away if he's bothering you! There are a couple of very minor faults: a bit of colour clash, and an inexplicable change of direction when you're in the street. Forget them; though this is in a simple arcade adventure format, it's been made into something really special.
GORDON [89%]

This is a really good laugh! The graphics are very good; some of the characters and animations belong in On The Screen, though the monochrome display is a bit disappointing. Big, Fat, Hairy Deal is a must for Garfield fans, simply because it recreates the comic's characters so well. Odie is very annoying - that's true to the original, I suppose, but he does tend to get on the nerves more than he should. Still, there's lots to do and I'm still trying to work out what loads of things can be used for. And the lack of sound is no problem when a game's as addictive as this.
MIKE [89%]

The Edge
£8.99
Reviewer: Phil South

Hah! I think I know why they gave me this game to review. It might have something to do with the fact that the hero is a fat lazy slob, with a liking for coffee, snoozing and large amounts of nosh. First person to draw comparisons with me is looking for a typewriter in the gob! Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the game.

There's usually two ways a game based on a well known and loved cartoon strip can go; either brilliant or complete trash. You run the risk of not doing the character justice, annoying fans of the strip, and more often than not doing a sub-standard rush job into the bargain. So where does Garfield fit in?

You have to collect items from around your house in order to escape to rescue your true love, Arlene, from the City Pound. In order to keep going in the game, you've got to drink coffee to stay awake and eat to stop yourself getting tired. But as well as this ceaseless drive for nourishment, you have to solve the problems in the game too, like how to stop yourself running out of coffee and food, and how to get to the Pound without nodding off on the way or just getting lost. There are some interesting little twists to the game, like where you find one of the first pieces of food (I defy anyone to find the hidden healthfood store on their first go!) and how to distract the butcher long enough to snatch and eat the sausages, and this all adds to the fun.

There's little or no sound in the game, no music anyway, just the sound of Garfield's paddy paws (cat's don't make a noise when they walk, do they? Ed) on the carpet. I'd have thought it would be better to have a noise in there for when he kicks Odie (the stupid dog) out of the frame, rather than just a constant tick, tick, tick as he walks around. Still, it's not too annoying, and I suppose most of the memory in the computer is being used for the graphics, which in this game are far more important.

I'll have to be honest; I didn't really like this game when I first played it, and I fully intended to slate it completely. But after playing through it and solving two or three puzzles, it started to grow on me quite unexpectedly. I must say I was very impressed by the quality of the graphics; the guy who drew and animated them must be a real Garfield fan, 'cos he's captured the essence of the madcap cat, and squeezed it all into a 48K game. All his famous facial expressions are there, changing along with his moods, and in time with the game action. The gameplay, I thought, was just a tiny bit bland, but I suppose like the music it came second to the fact that the game had to look right, first and foremost.

Label: The Edge
Author: Steve
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

There have been quite a few licences based on cartoon characters and some of the more recent ones have faithfully created the general look of the character - Yogi Bear springs to mind. Garfield goes beyond that. Garfield doesn't just look a bit like Garfield in some general sort of way - Garfield looks exactly, expression by expression, mood by mood, moment by moment, right. The plot is right too - the gameplay has been intelligently based around themes from the cartoon. The overall plot has Garfield trying to rescue his sometime girlfriend Arlene from the city pound. The game requires Garfield a) to stay awake b) to keep eating c) to kick Oddie - the most ludicrous dog in the world and d) to get around to actually figuring things out and finding his way to the city pound. Getting out the front door is going to be a good start... Bewildered owner John is here, ever the innocent he plays almost no part in the plot though, being too stupid to understand the mighty plans of cats and dogs.

Imagine the comic strip brought to life - that's the game, some visual details are sparse but all the graphics are big. Garfield the cartoon is renowned for his wide range of expressive gestures, they're all here - check out the cheesy smile, the gigantic and grotesque 'eating face' (too horrible to be described here - imagine a mouth and nothing else), check out the looks of disgust, of indifference - not Oddie's dumb surprise at being kicked across the room yet again... The game is mostly black and white of course, but there are touches of colour where that doesn't lead to yucky attribute clash.

Garfield the sprite can walk, jump, pick up likely looking objects, use or eat them and kick - this last one is (fortunately) so necessary you have to do it over and over again - watching Oddie hurtle through the air is one of computer software's best violent moments.

There are assorted useful objects around - some of them are obviously for eating (Garfield starts to look very sick if he gets hungry or if he exerts himself too much) others, like the torch, have obvious uses, try it in the cellar which contains other things besides rats... though the rats, it should be said are pretty cute.

Sound effects are goodish, though the game doesn't really require much. I figured out a few things after the first couple of tries - it's important to remember Garfield is lazy - this may be the only game in the history of software where you sometimes have to deliberately rest a bit. There are a number of areas including a street scene you'll discover when you first load it up but it's quite possible to get completely bewildered and feel as though it's not possible to get any further into the game - there is always another exit though you just need to find the right object...

It looks brilliant, it's funny, it contains scenes of gratuitous violence against stupid looking dogs, it's a challenge. It's something like a Classic don't you think? Yep, so do I.