FIENDISH FREDDY'S BIG TOP O' FUN

 FIENDISH FREDDY'S BIG TOP O' FUN is a cartoon-quality arcade game from Gray
Matter and Mindscape. It offers terrific sound and graphics, outstanding
animation, six events, multiple difficulty levels, practice mode, a slapstick
sense of humor, and no copy protection. (This review is based on the Atari ST
version; IBM-PC version notes follow.)

 FREDDY looks great, sounds great, and plays very well. It's so much fun to
watch that deliberately screwing up an event provides laughter and not one iota
of guilt. Unfortunately, disk access and swaps fall just short of completely
destroying Gray Matter's fabulous work. Access and swaps are understandable,
what with all the graphics and sound files, but Mindscape's latest idea of no
copy protection makes installation of the game on a hard drive -- where FREDDY
belongs -- more or less impossible. More on this later.

 The small circus you own and operate has run into hard times. It's about to be
absorbed by an unscrupulous bank; in order to save your enterprise, you have one
night in which to raise $10,000. This can be accomplished only through the work
of your performers in six events: High Dive, Juggling, Trapeze, Knife Throw,
Tightrope Walk, and Cannonball Shoot. Under normal conditions, none of these
events would cause problems. But the bank has real estate on its mind, and has
hired Fiendish Freddy, a cackling and demented little Bozo, to sabotage your
efforts.

 In the High Dive event, Horace pushes off the platform, runs through a series
of dive poses (swan, pike, yoga, ballet, etc.), and splashes into a container
(wooden tub, pail) of water. The more poses Horace performs during each dive,
the more money you'll earn. Each successful dive raises the platform for the
next dive. Take too long to strike a pose, and Freddy drops by with an
industrial-size fan and blows you off course.

 Jeffy-Joe rides a unicycle and juggles the items (rubber balls, bowling pins,
flaming sticks, knives, even a baby) tossed to him by his seal assistant. You
must juggle as many items as possible in the allotted time. Freddy enters
periodically, bribes the assistant, and throw bombs (which you can toss back) or
missiles (which you can juggle). Drop five items or a bomb and the event ends.

 Finola of the Flying Fuller Family is a trapeze artist whom you must guide from
bar to bar, through targets and flaming hoops. Wasting too much time before
flipping to the next bar allows Freddy to fly into the scene and cut the ropes
with a pair of scissors.

 Knancy Knife is blindfolded and manacled to a rotating wheel that's festooned
with balloons. For this event, you must throw knives and break the balloons.
Both time and knives are finite. Freddy makes things difficult by tossing smokes
bombs to obscure your aim and shake the spinning target.

 Tony Tiptoe walks the tightrope, and it's your job to get him from platform to
platform. He carries a balance bar, and his left/right leans must be corrected
promptly. If you take too long to cross the wire to the opposite platform,
Freddy arrives and tries to push Tony off, perhaps with a cannon or with saw
blades.

 In the Cannonball Shoot, you must select the angle and target distance so that
Fernando's trajectory takes him into the target: It all depends on how much
gunpowder the Lovely Lisa pours into the cannon. If you wait too long to fire
the cannon, Freddy will jam a cork in it, which leads to a funny conclusion, but
does nothing to raise money.

 Practice mode lets you perform each event over and over; no money is earned and
you can perfect the work of each performer. In Game mode, the events play
sequentially; in multi-player games, at the end of an event, each performer will
be awarded money by an occasionally bored, occasionally hyperactive panel of
judges. If you fail to earn the $10,000 needed to cover an outstanding loan, the
big top will be replaced by, uh, something obscene.

 The ST graphics display consists of a human-like cartoon performer and the
circus trappings of the event: Every facet of each event looks just as you'd
imagine. The animation is smooth and perfectly paced; the screen scrolls in
every direction; screen flickers and glitches are noticeably absent. Botched
events lead to a plethora of sound and visual effects: screams, booms, boinks,
whistles, thuds, puffs of dust, clouds of smoke, flattened bodies, horrified
spectators, and all kinds of goofy and humorous details. The Lovely Lisa spills
out of her costume; Knancy Knife is a voluptuous dream babe who squeals when a
knife hits her; the judges perform a variety of slapstick routines; and Finola's
trapeze act is so amazingly human it would make Infogrames, the masters of
lifelike animation, look twice.

 FREDDY runs on any ST with 512K, a color monitor, and a joystick. As many as
five can play. You'll understand the joystick's functions better by reading the
manual (which takes six pages to explain the events and how to control them).
They aren't especially difficult to learn -- all involve precise timing -- but
Jeffy-Joe's Juggling is a tough act, since you must toss the items not only into
the air but from hand to hand.

 The FIENDISH FREDDY package comes with five disks. They're not copy-protected,
so you can make backups, but this is where the problems begin. Because the disks
are not the standard 360K format, you'll need a utility. What I did was format
five 400K disks with "Twister" (available directly from Antic, or downloadable
from CompuServe); then I copied FREDDY's nine zillion files from the Desktop to
the floppies. As far as swaps and access are concerned, it doesn't matter if the
game is protected or not. You have to swap disks before and after each event
(more so during multi-player games, due to the animated antics of the judges),
at which time the program accesses the disks; the disks are also accessed
occasionally during an event.

 Mindscape recommends two drives; I'd recommend five, but that many aren't
supported. While two drives do cut down on swaps, disk access is unavoidable. A
hard drive would naturally eliminate the swapping and take the edge off disk
access. Theoretically, FREDDY supports one; reality is harsher: The folders on
each of the five disks have the same names, as do some of the files within them.
You can get around an identical folder-name conflict, but a filename conflict is
a more fiendish problem, especially on older, buggy STs.

 It seems obvious that Mindscape's technical support staff (1-708-480-8715) will
be busy for at least the half-life of carbon 14. I used backup floppies to play
FREDDY and recited Amway distribution statistics during the constant disk
activity, a boring but decidedly better alternative to watching a 20-Meg Supra
eat itself alive.

 I sincerely appreciate and greatly admire Gray Matter's efforts. But I'm not
happy about the horrendous disk access and the constant swapping, which all but
totally unhinge the game. If Mindscape really meant to get rid of copy
protection, FREDDY would be on my hard drive right now. If ever there were a
game destined for a hard drive, this is it. However, Mindscape seems to have
gone out of its way to make installation difficult.

 So...a hard drive is of no consequence. ST users with a single-drive system
should either buy another drive or avoid FREDDY, and ST users with any other
setup should playtest the game first, if possible. Freddy the Saboteur is a vile
creep, but FREDDY the Game is a marvel that does not deserve instant dismissal.

 IBM-PC VERSION NOTES

 The features and sequences in this version of FREDDY are identical to those
described in the main review above. Most games on the IBM don't sound very good
through the stock speaker, but this one is an exception; it's a pleasure _not_
to have to turn off the speaker while playing. And you'll be astounded by the
amazing detail and animation contained in the graphics.

 Controlling your characters is a breeze. I recommend using the joystick; the
keyboard becomes a bit tiresome, and you don't seem to have as much control.

 FIENDISH FREDDY for the IBM comes with a 14-page manual and five (count 'em)
5-1/4" disks. The program runs on IBM and 100% compatible computers, and
requires 512K of RAM. It supports EGA, MCGA/VGA, and Tandy 16-color modes, as
well as the Ad Lib sound card. Note that it is recommended for faster (286 and
up) machines. There is no copy protection, either on disk or off.

 According to Lisa A. Petrison, Mindscape's Public Relations Manager, the
problems encountered in copying the Atari ST program files to a hard drive are
_not_ present in any other version. But if you don't have a hard drive (or at
least high-density floppies), the disk swapping will drive you crazy.

 Apart from that one drawback, this game is wonderful!

 FIENDISH FREDDY'S BIG TOP O' FUN is published and distributed by Mindscape.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253