Scarfman

The Good
Ideas wise this is Pac Man, so in theory what is not to like? As a Pac Man clone this was always going to be reasonably playable, as long as certain rules are followed, such as making it not too difficult or easy and having reasonable collision detection and the right number of ghosts. This game scores pretty well in those terms, but that is about as good as it gets.

The Bad
Ghost attack is of a similar era for the same 6809 platforms, and despite being in low resolution mode actually manages to be considerably more impressive than Scarfman in every respect. It is hard to pinpoint why- the green colour-set, whilst lurid, does not normally get in the way of the best Dragon/Co-Co games, and indeed could in theory lend itself very well to this particular game. so I don't think the blame can be laid at that door. Instead I feel the main issue is that even for its time there is very limited sound, no music to speak of, a rudimentary C shaped Pac Man (sorry, I mean Scarfman) and a general feeling that they could have just done more. The game does not really escalate in hardness, each screen being almost the same as the last, and there is no sense of challenge whilst the threats to Scarfman are devoid of personality. Each screen is an endless trudge to the next insipid offering.

The Bottom Line
You would be probably better off with its Dragon Data contemporary Ghost Attack or one of the later produced Pac Man clone games that were not afraid to improvise and attempt to improve upon the original. The nostalgia feeling for this game is quite strong among Co-Co users, being one of the earlier offerings, but for Dragon users this is one of those games that helped cement the ill-deserved reputation of the Dragon as a poor games machine, and Microdeal should have known better.