Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O' Fun is a game originally developed for the 16bit Atari ST, IBM PC and Commodore Amiga and later ported to the 8bit ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC home computers. Its funny and unique gameplay made it really popular, although it's significantly tough to complete the stunts!
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O' Fun is a nice black-humor sports game to play. A corrupt businessman, to whom the circus that the player owns owes $10k, arrives on the scene with the intention to demolish the circus and plans to build an array of luxury hotels on the terrain, unless our hero can pay up the debt. In a fit of desperation, the show-master organizes a display of six events to raise money for the doomed circus: diving, juggling, trapeze, knife throwing, tightrope and the human cannonball. The performance in each event is judged by five clown judges who offer money depending on the quality of the show. The businessman has no intention of letting the circus raise the cash though, and he sets his lackey, the evil Fiendish Freddy, loose to steal the show.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The CPC version has nice and colorful graphics, although a drawback would be the slow action and the limited frame-rate during gameplay. The introductory theme is good and funny while the game includes a few funny sound effects and music during gameplay. All tunes are taken from the original release.
CPU: ZiLOG Z80 4MHZ MEMORY: 64 KB or 128 KB of RAM depending on the model (capable of being expanded to 512k using memory extension boards) GRAPHICS: Motorola 6845 address generator, Mode 0: 160x200 / 16 colors, Mode 1: 320x200 / 4 colors, Mode 2: 640x200 / 2 colors, A colour palette of 27 colors was supported SOUND: The CPC used the General Instrument AY-3-8912 sound chip, providing 3 channels Mono Sound (via internal speaker) but capable to offer Stereo Sound provided through a 3.5 mm headphones jack (with pretty impressive outcome!). Also, it is possible to play back digital sound samples at a resolution of approximately 5bit. This technique is very processor-intensive though.