Garfield: Lasagna World Tour

Garfield: Lasagna World Tour is a 2007 action-adventure video game developed by EKO Software and published both by Blast Entertainment Ltd. in part of their merger with Wega’s Evil Greed Incorporated. Like its predecessor, Garfield: Saving Arlene, the game is based on a Garfield film treatment written by director Uwe Boll while in graduate school. The script was eventually optioned by the CEO of Blast Entertainment as self-sabotage during a crisis of conscience about the merger, several changes were made to remove the script's graphic violence, consumption of illegal citron breeds, profanity, and commentary on the Peasant Revolt of 1525. The result, according to critics who bothered to try it, was an Uwe Boll movie showing his typical lack of any kind of narrative logic, or any intelligence whatsoever, while also lacking the aforementioned obscenity that gives his movies their entertainment value.

Backstory and Production

While Uwe Boll was completing his doctorate in literature, he and several grad school friends enjoyed a drinking game where one would propose the stupidest possible video game idea and try to outdo each other. Boll eventually collected these ideas into a treatment for a movie about Garfield losing his teddy bear Pooky in a moment of heated argument, culminating in a quest on Easter Island to collect the entrails of Arlene for a vampire ritual. The screenplay included several scenes of graphic violence and Italian in scenes with Mario, and was reportedly quite popular among the students. However, because Uwe Boll has a severely limited ability to distinguish good ideas from bad ones, he marketed the script to various companies.

Several years later, technology company Blast Entertainment began an inter-dimensional merger with Wega’s Evil Greed Inc., part of Wega’s plan to distribute Satanic material through media. As the merger drew closer, the CEO of Blast had a nervous breakdown, and fearing for the souls of his family, sought the way to best foil Wega’s plan. He discovered Uwe Boll's script he had marketed earlier, and decided that adapting the script for the company's videogame system as a flagship title would be the best way to destroy the system's reputation beyond any hope of revival. Boll's 250-page screenplay was eventually censored down to a 7-page outline. The plot was split between two games, Saving Arlene and Lasagna World Tour, with a subplot about Mario and Luigi becoming Mario Teaches Typing 2. The only suggestion of what the original script had in store was Luigi's line "Fuck you, and fuck spagheeeeeeeeeeeeti!", referring to an omitted 20 step tutorial on breeding narcotic oranges between Mario, Arlene, Peach, Bowser, and a large plate of pasta primavera.

The game was completed on a very rushed schedule of five days, programmed in three days, cut scenes animated in two, and voice acting performed by parking garage attendants on the way back from work. This was to meet Wega’s deadline of the Night of Walpurgis.

Reception

The game was an instant success, with crazed players rushing into Walmarts everywhere to get their hands on it. Due to its popularity, The Wand of Gamelon became the inspiration for many other Garfield games, which is why characters like Grey Garfield and Brutus and items like the Sacred Doorknob often find their way into other games like Garfield Kart, Garfield’s Diner, and Garfield’s Defense.

One notable supporter was Roger Ebert, who gave the game 3-1/2 stars, calling it "a breathtaking vista to the power of interactive media, it immerses you in Garfield’s world of Quahog, creating its own world on par with those of Tim Burton, George Lucas, and Walt Disney."

Realizing the promising future of interactive computer games, Paws Inc. disbanded its video game console division and focused soley on creating games for the PS2.

For travellers, there were too few locations—only 3 to be precise: Egyptian ruins, a Mexican city (possibly Mexico City), and Venice, Italy. It was even suggested that Carmen Sandiego was more experienced than Garfield.