Larrie and the Robbery of the Ardies

Larrie and the Robbery of the Ardies is an arcade game created by Capital Software for the Amiga. It was published in 1988 by Kingsoft.

The game, also known as Larrie & The Ardies, designed and programmed by Steve Vanderhorst, is a variant of the coin-op Mappy. For those unfamiliar, Mappy is an old Namco arcade game (Namco is the company that created Pac-Man). Mappy, released in 1983, is a horizontal scrolling platformer, a characteristic uncommon at the time. The protagonist was a police mouse who had to recover stolen artwork and other objects, all while avoiding cats and using trampolines to jump and climb on various platforms. During the jump on the trampoline, the mouse could not be caught by the cats even if touched, unlike when he is on the platforms—simple but fun mechanics.

Larrie and the Robbery of the Ardies reflects the original mechanics but replaces the protagonist with a bird that closely resembles Looney Tunes' Tweety Bird (but is a duck and, on the game's cover, looks like Howard the Duck). The enemies are the infamous Ardies, thieves, of course. In this case, they actually seem to be ducklings, but perhaps they are not, given the science fiction scenario.

Like in Mappy, Larrie must avoid enemies, jump on the trampolines to reach platforms (and escape the Ardies), and retrieve stolen goods. Some power-ups also allow him to scare away enemies without avoiding them. Compared to the original game, we have horizontal screens instead of vertical ones we see in the arcade, but this is a very accurate and well-made variant.