Garfield

"One To Make You Say"

There was a day that if a person thought ''Hey, let's make a really terrible game starring a famous name.'', that person would be made the head of a video game company. And Garfield, my friends, would be one of the many spawn of this concept.

Every game needs a premise... You are Garfield, and it's your mission to save Nermal from the flying hamburgers and potted plants, obviously placed across a line of fencing by evil alien conquerors. Rescuing Nermal from certain doom is a perilous adventure indeed, so it's fortunate that Odie will follow Garfield along, cloning himself, and allow you to stand atop his head. Garfield, you must destroy the invaders! You're the world's best, and only, hope!

...I can pretend, can't I?

In any case, you have to navigate Garfield across fences and atop houses to eventually get to the end of the stage and touch Nermal, only to repeat this all over again. Along the way, you'll have to eat the flying hamburgers (or just let them collide with your head, either one works) and avoid potted plants, and even dodge Odie who miraculously pops out of chimneys. Doing so is far easier than it may sound, trust me. To move Garfield, you simply hit the fire button, which hops him forward one space. The only other control is pushing the joystick down, causing him to duck.

This is all well and good, with about as much complexity as one would expect from an Atari game. However, there's one thing I haven't mentioned yet... the part that really irks me. In total, there are a massive 6 different screens on the cart. There's the ''Infinite Flying Hamburger'' screen, the ''Perpetually Hovering Death Plant'' screen, the ''Touch Nermal and Go To The Quote Unquote Next Board'' screen, the ''Roof Of House With Chimney Climbing Odie Who Maliciously Kills You Upon Contact'' screen, and my personal favourite... the ''Mirror Image Screen Of Garfrield Bouncing Across Dozens of Odies''. One with Death Plants, one with Infinite Burgers. No, I don't know why Odie replaces the fence posts on the screen, and no, I'm really not sure why the game shows two exact mirror images, one above another. Oddly enough, scoring's exactly the same... These 6 screens are mashed together and repeated for all infinity. And yes, you can technically score any amount of points on the infinite burger screen... but they don't do anything. No extra lives. No game over. No secret area with Pookey the Teddy Bear break dancing. Trust me, I looked.

Graphically, you're given everything you'd expect. The main title screen actually has a blotch of pixels which resembles a medium sized Garfield... if Garfield were brown and unstriped. The game sprite is just the same. If a hamburger is near, Garfield opens up his mouth wide and is degenerated into a brown misshapen Pac-Man. And upon death, he expands and then disappears... Garfield imploding is a sight that no man should have to bear witness to. I must admit that Odie and Nermal are quite close to their actual images, though, and that the background and foreground screens are about as high quality as I've seen on an Atari cart. Sounds are laughable. A blip for eating burgers, a static whurr for death, and a combination of beeps when you touch Nermal.

And so, after ranting for a bit longer than the cart deserves, time to wrap things up. This excessively obscure game leaves just about everything to be desired. No additional difficulty levels, and no actual goal, aside from mindlessly racking up useless points. A poor use of a franchise not at all geared for video games in any decade. Garfield fans may want it out of novelty, and it isn't hard to find, as the official Garfield site freely releases it. Still, as a game, worthless.

And I mean really, everyone knows Garfield eats LASAGNA, not hamburgers...

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 03/02/02, Updated 03/02/02