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Two designers have come up with an idea to fully automate fast food restaurants and are trying to sell the idea to the president of "Big" (Best In Gastronomy) restaurants - the largest chain in the world. The idea is to develop a complete robot kitchen but, as the prototype is too expensive a compromise is agreed - a small robot will be built first to see how a robot copes with the hungry public.

Enter Floyd II, a robot capable of performing such feats as fast frying, preparing vegetables *and* filling glasses. He has one week to get on top of the job and convince everybody that he is worthy of further development.

Training is an important part of the job and Floyd must learn various recipes and where the ingredients are stored. Apart from the food itself, there are spices, sauces and a drinks fountain to be negotiated, as well as hot plates for cooking.

Controlling Floyd is a matter of positioning him in the right place and the operating one of his two arms. The appropriate action, such as collecting a Big box for serving the meal, or putting a hamburger on the hotplate is then carried out automatically. The various foodstuffs are selected from a menu and can be stored - up to four ingredients - in Floyd's internal fridge. Items have to be cooked for a certain length of time otherwise they spoil and have to be thrown away.

Also, if a customer feels he's been waitint too long, he may get abusive and start throwng the furniture around. In such an emergency, it is possible for Floyd to serve a previously prepared TV dinner, but he only has three o these.

To save time, you can program Floyd to perform a certain number of tasks in sequence. The problem here is that he remembers everything you have taught him *including* the mistakes, so you need to be pretty certain that you can teach him without making mistakes.

The Big Deal is a strange sort of game. Highly original, it is not something that you can play well straight away. Everything takes a lot of practice and the first few times you play, everything around you will be chaotic. It reminds me of Hacker II - first there is bewilderment, then interest, as you discover what you can and can't do, but neither game has lasting appeal.