Fiendish Freddy's Big Top o' Fun

I got this for free during a giveaway, and while it might have been fine back in 1989, it doesn't have much to offer in the modern gaming era. The background music is just bleep-bloops, though I didn't find it as insufferable as other reviewers, and the entire game is just a series of mini-games, which you have to play in order with only one or two chances at each. After each event, judges will award you a cash prize based on your performance and if you make $10,000 by the end, the circus is saved. If not, it gets paved and up goes a cold, joyless apartment building. Unfortunately, the controls for these games are not great, nor do you get enough time to learn them before some weird unexpected factor comes into play. For example, on the first event, the high dive, you just have to aim for the water basin below, but then a clown comes in with a magnet and pulls you off course. How do you resist it? Beats me. Later, you swing on the flying trapeze, and it takes perfect timing to make it to the next one without falling. Nail the timing, and some kind of barrier appears between trapezes. How do you get past it? I don't know, and the game certainly won't tell me. I had to check other reviews just to discover that the game expects you to use the INSERT key to select your number of players on the main menu, as opposed to, say, the space key, or the enter key, or... I don't know, any key that a human being might guess? Eventually you can probably experiment and figure out how to master these games, but they're not really much fun and not worth the effort when there are literally thousands of better games available. On the plus side, the graphics hold up extremely well. Everything is detailed and colorful and has a great lively circus feel. But put this game low on your priorities if you got it for free, and definitely don't pay more than a dollar for it without knowing exactly what you're getting.

I originally played the game on the Commodore Amiga. The first thing that stood out was the music - which was played from the PC Speaker, which results in all instruments being replaced into one tone trying to simulate multiple notes at once. There may be additional distortion in the music in the emulation, but it was something that could have been played through a sound card if possible. It's possible to disable the music, but makes the game feel much more plain. This game is difficult. Practice from the main menu is therefore required, in preparation of doing all six events, and even so, might be out of reach of most players as the main event requires practically perfect play. If the game was updated relating to modern hardware or if it was a non-DOS version, the rating could have been better.

I haven't played enough to really give a review, but it seems pretty fun and reminds me of Ski or Die. This is more to inform that you don't have to play with the ear piercing PC speaker music, the game does support Adlib music and it isn't very difficult to get going. I've made a short and amateurish "guide" on the forum that hopefully is easy to follow and should enable Adlib music, though the sound effects are still through the PC speaker.

Good job I caught this when it was free........ it's almost £6 when at full price. Utter waste of good money. Don't buy this shovel-of-dogshitware. I ran it for about ten seconds before realising that it wasn't accepting any input. I'm amazed I even got to the main menu to find this out, my ears were screaming at the "PC speaker bleeps and farts" music from second one!!!!!!! Even the escape key wouldn't work, had to ctrl-alt-delete and get to Task Manager to quit it!

A fun setting with great cartoon graphics and funny looking characters, but the game isn’t really playable in today’s setting. The obscure controls and rules of the games are easy enough to learn but the high difficulty and jarring music make for a tough time. With only 6 games to choose from and only 5 buttons to press there’s limited interaction or replay value.