What happens when you have a Famicom kusoge that's barely known in Japan and is in fact much more famous to Americans? That's A Week of Garfield. Nobody knows why someone decided to make a Japan-exclusive Garfield game in a market where the property is little-known but there we go. Control Garfield through seven platforming levels each representing a day of the week fighting various enemies and acquiring health and power ups. The basic weapon is kicking an enemy but you can get the other weapons through acquiring ammo for them. Best weapon is the pie which shoots exploding shots (huh?) There's also a lasagna whose graphic was clearly drawn by a Japanese guy who has never seen a lasagna in his life. If the title screen didn't have a 1989 copyright date you would swear this thing was from 1986 because it looks and sounds so backward for when it came out. The horrible part about this game is that enemies instantly knock out like 50% of your health so you will die very quickly and there doesn't seem to be any way to actually defeat the bosses (however there is a cheat code on the title screen that lets you start at any of the seven levels you want).It's a matter of debate as to whether A Week of Garfield was meant for a North American release or not especially as the game text is all in English. It could well be that it was skipped because Paws, Inc. had pretty strict Q/C standards for Garfield products and the game may have been considered too shitty for their approval.
>>10915970booted this up on my Everdrive once. i had no clue what to do and quickly died.
There are no good Garfield games outside the PC version of Caught in the Act.
>>10915970It looks like a student's programming project.
>>10915976This game kicked my ass as a kid. It was kind of spooky too for some reason.
>>10915981There was also a Game Gear port; the PC and GG versions each have an extra level they couldn't fit on the Mega Drive due to memory constraints.
>>10915970If I remember, PAWS didn't exist yet in 1989. Garfield was still handled by the United Features Syndicate, so there was definitely no quality-control on any merchandise yet.
>>10915970>It could well be that it was skipped because Paws, Inc. had pretty strict Q/C standards for Garfield products andThere's a story that some company rep was showing Jim Davis a Garfield alarm clock they were planning on producing and he disliked the design of it and said they should go back and redo it. He said "I told him 'But they already have the plastic molds made up. We'd have to call up the factory in China and have them redo the molds from scratch at extra expense. And he looked at me with this expression on his face like 'So what?'"
I don’t understand why this game is memed
>>10916010this and Transformers are quite legendary for having never been released in the West.
>>10915985Goes to show you how far PCs evolved since the Mega Drive's launch in '88. Back then you just had some awful clunky EGA 286 PC speaker shit and by the time GCITA was out PC hardware had well surpassed the Mega Drive.
don't think the Japanese "got" Garfield and this game proves it
>>10915987Double-checked, and while PAWS was around by '89 (my mistake), this game was released under the copyright of United Features Syndicate. PAWS wouldn't take absolute control over the Garfield franchise until 1994.
This is missing from Bootgod's site but it's an MMC1 cart with 160k of ROM. Yeah only 32k of CHR ROM so it's not exactly graphics-diverse.
>>10915970Developer is something called Mars Corp. which was probably just some students who made the game as a summer job.
>>10915998lal
>>10916034nips love mondays
God this game is so bad. Even such basic stuff like knockback or temporary invincibility when hit by an enemy is absent.
>>10915970It might not have been well known, but it's been a collectors item in Japan for quite some time. I remember CIB copies being rather expensive, even in Japan, back in the early 2000s.
>>10916095that could be why Bootgod didn't have the cartridge
OP has a few facts mixed up.>the lasagna gives you temporary invincibility>the power ups are the dog bone, pie, and a bowl of cereal which lets you spray projectiles (the manual claims it's a bowl of cereal with raisins and Garfield hates raisins so he spits them out, I shit you not)>and it's so nice that it doesn't tell you how much ammo the weapons have so you have to just guess or try to remember
>>10916016...Are you sure they're not legendary for being shit instead?
>>10916074they probably hate lasagna too, too much lactose
>>10916245That's part of it, but Garfield being Famicom-only certainly adds to the "charm." Garfield is such an American property that you wouldn't expect it to have a videogame which was only released in Japan. I have to imagine that it was developed with an American audience in mind, and it probably was something like Jim Davis disliking it which resulted in it only being released overseas. There's no real evidence of this, though, so who knows.
>>10916325Garfield is very popular in East Asia. I don't know how or why it caught on, but the Chinese are big on Garfield shit too.
>>10916275It's Rana's favorite food
>>10916010youtubers probably
>>10916245that'sthejoke.gif
>>10915976>Caught in the ActIt's the most beautiful-looking Garfield game ever, and is probably the only Garfield game with the actual effort put into it. But the difficulty and level design is all over the place.Recently I saw a video on Youtube with all Garfield games listed from worst to best. While i am ABSOLUTELY not agree with Garfield Kart 2 being among the best, I must say that Lasagna World Tour on PS2 looks mildly decent. Maybe I'll play it someday.
>>10916010Because Garfield himself is a meme.The entire franchise is depiction of a "soulless" and something that is cheesy as fuck.Bad Japanese-exclusive game is just an icing on top.
There were a couple Euro home computer ones as well.
>>10916715
In some alternate universe, there's a Garfield & Friends platformer for the NES developed by Konami, with stages alternating between Garfield levels and US Acres levels.
>>10916715But there’s just so much licensed crap out there, so why this one?But you’re right, Garfield himself is memed
>>10916026Yes, anything to push your retarded agenda. Garfield games, first and foremost, are prime examples of proof of your retarded PC MASHTUR RACE ideology.
>>10917003There aren't too many Famicom games based on US comics/cartoons which were never released in the USA.
I was the absolute biggest Garfield nut as a kid.
My pet theory is that it was meant as a North American exclusive but the game got rejected by Jim Davis or somebody else for being a piece of crap so they were stuck with it and had no choice but to do a Japanese release so they could make back their production costs.
>>10918238The most likely outcome is that United Features Syndicate whored the license out behind Jim's back for a fast buck and he didn't even know the game existed.
>>10918238It might have been really easy to get permission to make a garfield game in japan, they might have used an existing character instead of something new because it's "easier".
>>10916010Because you were born after 9-11/PatriotAct and will never understand what SOUL truly means.
