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What Roger Rabbit did for 1930's detective movies, Fiendish Freddy does for Big Top computer games. With a sense of humour dark enough to have been lifted from the Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children comic this show business tale starts with the law film Dewey, Cheatum & Howe delivering some 'Legal Mumbo Jumbo' which means the circus must immediately repay $10,000 to the Big Greedy Bank (headed by I. M. Tightwad).

Your objective is to become a star circus performer, wowing a team of judges to give you lots of dosh for your dazzling execution of six circus events. Striving to see the events execute you, rather than vice versa, is the 'devious, dastardly, diabolical, devilish and demented' Mr. Fiendish Freddy, a singularly vicious clown whose assassination attempts could well have you dying of laughter rather than dynamite, falling from a very great height, having your trapeze out, etc.

Up to five players can take part, taking turns, and any of the events may be practised. The first even is the high dive, where you must dive from an incredibly high pole into an unbelievably small water bucket. Survive that and you must dive from ever higher up the pole into objects such as a tea cup and even an anvil! While diving down, you must waggle the joystick to gain momentum, take up poses such as Yoga and King Tut, and stay on target for your landing (with Freddy trying to blow you off course). Miss the water bucket (or whatever) and that's the end of your diving career!

The next event is juggling on a unicycle. A seal tosses you objects which you juggle by selecting the right hand (with fire) and pressing up to throw. As your time in the spotlight ticks down, Freddy can appear, tossing you bombs for a spectacular finale! After being incinerated by Freddy you can be cut free by him on the trapeze. Besides timing when to let go of one trapeze in order to catch the next swinging trapeze you must look out for burning hoops to fly through with the greatest of unease.

After fear of heights, it's fear of blood, with you as the knife thrower, endangering the life of a curvaceous young blonde spread-eagled on a spinning wheel with brightly coloured balloons which you must burst. Fiendish Freddy throws on smoke bombs to obscure your view as time ticks down and knives run out.

A question of balance is at the heart of the next event - the hire wire act. Push up to go forward, and press left and right to use the pole to keep balanced. Take too long and Freddy blasts you with a cannonball.

The event to bring the house down though, is the human cannonball. Snugly fitted into your cannon by the luscious Miss Bimbo you must first place your safety net based on how much gunpowder has been put in the cannon. Once this is done, the cannon starts to fall, you must press fire at the correct angle or you'll take the most direct route to China!

Chris Gray's presence on the C64 has brought him mega-success. Infiltrator accelerated him to stardom and now he's working he certainly hasn't lost his touch. Fiendish Freddy may be covering old ground (even on the Amiga) but it's the fun of it all that shines through.

The animation is, to say the least, brilliant, with a sense of humour that's very black and very funny to witness in action - I defy you to play the diving event and not come away grinning!

Each event isn't all that demanding but as a whole it's one epic battle to save the big top. Very funny indeed and highly competitive as well. Very much in the Epyx Games style, but much more entertaining.

After the disappointment of Roger Rabbit, Mindscape and programmer Chris Gray gets it right with this truly amazing blend of hilarious animation and fun gameplay. The graphics throughout are of the 'gee-whizz', first-class demo quality while gameplay is hardly any less superb.

The first event is misleadingly easy; after that things get tough but thankfully on some of the harder events you get more lives - up to three on the cannonball event. After despising circuses since being a kid watching those interminable Christmas Specials, I'm a true convert now. Whatever you do, don't miss the Greatest Show On Earth!

I love a good multi-event game and Fiendish Freddy has the added bonus of being side-splittingly funny. All the events are animated in fine comical style - at times it's like watching a cartoon - and you never know just when Freddy's going to pop up to knock you off the tightrope or throw a bomb at you.

The events themselves aren't that complex but always fun to play and beautifully presented with suitably jovial soundtracks playing continuously and some great slapstick sound effects.

My only niggle is that with three disks there's inevitably a lot of disk shuffling with each event taking quite a while to load. But the action is just so uproarious this minor problem doesn't spoil the fun whatsoever.

Presentation 91%
Great intro and varied judging scenes between event, while most disk-accessing/swapping is limited to when advancing to the next event.

Graphics 97%
Technically excellent, but it's the comic imagination behind them which stuns.

Sound 95%
Some good, varied tunes accompany the superlative sound FX.

Hookability 89%
Later events need some mastering, but there's a practice mode and the varied graphic scenes to keep you playing.

Lastability 92%
Six events to master individually, then there's the big show to win $10,000 overall.

Overall 91%
As funny as any Loony Tune cartoon, and an excellent game to boot.