Undoubtedly Michael Abrash's masterpiece, and one of my most favorite games of all time, Funtastic's Big Top is an incredibly addictive "ladder" game that adds so many extras and nice touches that set it apart from the likes of Lode Runner.
The goal is straightforward: in each level (called "ring" in the game), you must retrieve all of the circus Ringmasters' hats that are scattered around the level while avoiding evil clowns.
What makes Big Top special is the amazing level design and very good enemy AI -- you'll actually have to think your way through each level to minimize damage, and carefully observe the evil clowns' pattern. The levels, naturally, get more and more difficult, but they also get much bigger.
One of the things I like about the game is how each ring is not only one-screen big, but spans at least 2 screens (e.g. lower and upper level). Like most Michael Abrash's games, Big Top is very immersive-- you'll hold your breath when making seamingly impossible leaps across platforms, and you'll be staying late into the night trying "just one more ring" to see more devious levels where the exit always seem out of reach.
If you like fast, fun arcade games, look no further than Big Top. A true classic in every respect-- two thumbs up!
Review By HOTUD
English 
Comments and reviews
The BIGTOP.IMG 180 KB file is actually a PC Booter image, it boots and runs fine in 86Box.
For anyone tried to run this, just unzip the big-top.img file into a folder, emulate with DOSBOX, mount the folder, and run (without quotes) "boot big-top.img"
The way it works like this is because the game was originally a bootable disk, i.e. it doesn't really need DOS and DOS doesn't know how to run it. Back in the day, I used to insert the floppy and reboot the machine from floppy to make it work.
play on PCem ibm 8088+cga+pc boot
Big. Top. Theand. That's. All
I played Big Top every day when I was a kid and always loved it! Glad to see it on here but couldn't get this one to work. When I try to start in Dosbox it says 'This program does not work with Himem.sys installed. Boot clean and try again.' Is there a fix for this?
Oh man, I used to LOVE this game as a kid
@Calabar:
What? You mean your soldiers liked it?
Great Game of my infantry!
No comment nor review for this game at the moment.