Garfield: Big Fat Hairy Deal is a 1987 platform-adventure game developed and published by The Edge. It was released multiplatform, for the Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and Amiga.
Garfield has to save Arlene from the pound, venturing around his house, the neighborhood, and into the sewers. A notable mechanic in this game is that Garfield has an ever-depleting health meter, and if it goes empty, it's Game Over. If he's holding an item — food or not — it will be eaten and the health restored.
Garfield: Big Fat Hairy Deal contains examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Beneath Jon's house and near the town is a gigantic, sprawling sewer system with many rooms.
- All There in the Manual: This game simply drops you into Jon's house with no instructions of what you have to do or where to go. Only in supporting material does it tell you the plot.
- A Winner Is You: The game's ending in the Amiga version is that Garfield finally reunites with Arlene, the screen explodes with flowers, and they walk away to the text "SEE YOU IN PARADISE." The C64 version is even worse, as it has Garfield walking across a black screen with text saying that the Monday wasn't so bad after all.
- Blackout Basement: The sewer system is dark and nearly impossible to navigate unless Garfield has a flashlight or a lantern, depending on the game version. In case of the Amiga version, it also blacks out the heads up display.
- Collision Damage: Being in contact with Odie advances the sleepyness meter, or hunger meter in the Amiga version.
- Damsel in Distress: Arlene, Garfield's love interest who is trapped in the pound.
- Demoted to Extra: Jon only appears sitting at the dinner table, despite being a major character in the comic strip. Odie at least appears in multiple rooms and can be interacted with to open a shortcut.
- Down the Drain: Garfield can go down into the sewers from both downtown and his house. It's a very large area, with the only points of interest being Nermal and the rat with the treasure chest.
- Extreme Omnivore: Whatever Garfield is holding at the time, he will eat when the meter goes down. This includes wind-up mice, shovels, bones, keys, and money.
- Hating on Monday: One of Garfield's random quips at the bottom of the screen is talking about how much he hates Monday. Inverted when completing the C64 version, where Garfield admits that something good actually happened on a Monday.
- Inventory Management Puzzle: Garfield can only hold one item at a time. It's important to strategically place items around the map, so you have something to go back to when your hunger is low. Sometimes, it's better to wait for the timer to decrease and eat an item so you have full time to do whatever you need next.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: Since the game has very little instructional text and no hints, it's almost impossible to figure out without a guide.
- How do you get rid of the rat in the basement? Find Nermal in the sewers, kick him and collect a wind-up mouse, drop it on the desk of the health food store so you can scare the owner and steal a spinach donut, then feed that to the rat.
- Then there's the question of how Garfield is supposed to get to the pound. You find a trowel in Jon's garden, sell it at the hardware store, buy birdseed, go to the park and drop it so a giant duck will fly you over there.
- One-Hit Kill: Running into the rat in the basement will knock Garfield out for an instant Game Over.
- Pounds Are Animal Prisons: Arlene is trapped in the pound, so it's up to Garfield to break her out.
- Red Herring: The game has a lot of items that serve no real purpose, such as the aniseed balls near the start or the bone you find inside the chest.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: There's a rat Garfield's size roaming around in the basement. It guards a treasure chest.
- Timed Mission: The Amiga version has 60 minutes.
- Unwinnable by Design:
- Garfield will automatically eat a carried item when he's hungry, and even if prepared for that, it's hard to figure out what you actually need and what's just there to refill the hunger meter. There's no indication when Garfield eats something important, so you're doomed to wander around until you run out of items to eat.
- In the Amiga or Atari ST version, getting trapped in the dark sewer area and not being able to return.
- Wizard Needs Food Badly: Garfield becomes hungry over time with a slowly advancing meter. If he's hungry, he will automatically eat the item he's holding. In the Amiga/Atari ST version, not having food causes Garfield to sleep, advancing the clock by 10 minutes.
- You Shouldn't Know This Already: Averted. It's possible to navigate the dark sewers and even kick Nermal even though you can't see where anything is, provided you know the layout.
