The Meh, The Bad and The Weird: Clayfighter

Last week, I started this column to talk about all the games out there that are either: a) really bad, b) really weird or c) really weird and really bad.

This week, instead of doing a game that is really bad, I'm focusing on one that is actually not that bad, just pretty weird. That game is Clayfighter.

Clayfighter is a game that uses that digitized video technique (like Mortal Kombat), except this uses digitized claymation. So, basically think of it as Sub-Zero meets Wallace and Grommit. One of the weird parts of it is it's plot. It's basically that a meteor hit a circus, gave all the workers clay-based super powers and they all fight to see who will be king of the circus. They've got a Strongman named "Tiny", a Wagneres

Image via Wikipedia

que Opera singer named Helga, an over the top (but pretty funny) Elvis impersonator named "Blue Suade Goo", just to name a few.

The company that made this game, Interplay, made other games too. Some of them include Earthworm Jim and Boogerman (which I will try to do soon), and the company was widely considered the Troma (those people that made Toxic Avenger and Kabukiman) of video game companies.

Back to what I was saying. I remember playing it as a kid, and getting pretty scared from the clowns in it. By today's standards it'd be considered maybe Teen or at least E 10+ but when my mom got me it, it was made before the ESRB was made so it lacked the ratings sticker. I can't honestly blame my mom for getting it, because on the front, it looks like a nice game for kids.

One of the things Clayfighter does differently from other fighting games is the timer. You see, in most fighting games, the timer is a little clock at the top of the screen that's slowly counting down from usually 60. But in Clayfighter, they use a little bomb with a fuse at the bottom. I'm just so used to looking up for the time left, only to be thinking there isn't any time limit.
Something kinda unique it does from other fighting games is that whenever you hit your opponent, a little "POW!" bubble (kinda like the ones in comic books) appears. The whole time I was playing, I kept having flashbacks to the ol' Adam West Batman TV series.



The only major problem with this game is that the final boss character is a massive let down. When you play Street Fighter or DOA, you expect some tough, awesome-looking final boss, right? Not in Clayfighter. You get stuck with "N. Boss" (get it? "N. Boss", "End Boss"? LOLPUN) which is probably a reference also to M. Bison of Street Fighter fame. All N. Boss is, is simply a circle of clay balls with eyes. That's it. No fancy lazer beems, no cutscene long combo attacks, no SNK Boss Syndrome, just a cirlce of clay.

Like it said before, Clayfighter is not a bad game. It's just really weird, and the weirdness is likely intentional.

The next "The Meh, The Bad and The Weird" will be going back to what I did with the first one, and doing bad games this time. I'll give you a hint: it's for the Sega Genesis.

New Feature: The Meh, The Bad, and The Weird

Before I begin, I'd like to explain what exactly “The Meh, The Bad, and The Weird” is. It's similar to what Parp does, except instead of talking about underrated games, I'll be talking about the worst and weirdest games out there. This time, I'm doing Mario's Time Machine.

Is it me, or whenever Nintendo licenses a franchise out to some other company, it always sucks (need I bring up those Philips CD-i Zelda games?) Mario's Time Machine is one of those games. Back in the early Nineties, Nintendo licensed out the Super Mario Bros. franchise out to the company, The Software Toolworks. They made two educational games using Mario and Luigi for the SNES, NES and PC: this one, and Mario is Missing.

The basic premise of Mario's Time Machine is that Bowser has stolen a bunch of stuff from historical figures, and Mario has to return them. When you play, you have to pick up an item, and then fill in blanks to complete a basic synopsis of what they did. Problem is, the questions are sometimes mindlessly simple, like “Leonardo De Vinci takes his name from the small village of ____, where he was born”. Some aren't so hard because of the thing you have to fill in, but because you have a list of words to fill in the blanks with and three chances before you have to start all over again (note: sometimes I have to completely start over, sometimes I don't with it). One of the most annoying situations of that was “and completed the ______ of The Last Supper”. I looked for “painting” on the list – not there. I try looking for “portrait” in the hopes that maybe that might work – not there either. I eventually became so frustrated trying to figure out the answer, I had to consult a walk through. It turns out that the word was “Fresco”. What the hell is a fresco!?!

Now, I will give the game credit, not all the questions are difficult. Though, there are some questions even I can't answer and I'm a huge history dork, and this game is supposed to be for little kids. There's no kid out there that will know what a “fresco” is!

But back to what I was saying. After you fill in all the blanks, you need to set the time machine to the date and then have a surfing minigame. Yes, you read correct – a surfing minigame. Surfing just sounds really out of place from the mild H.G. Wells theme it's got going. In it, you have to collect a bunch of little mushrooms (while avoiding spikes), then go into a whirlpool. “Irritating” would be an understatement for one problem I kept getting. I don't know if it was because of years of abuse of the cartridge or a problem with the game, but sometimes the mushrooms and spikes would randomly disappear. Even worse is that if you touch a spike, you lose all of your mushrooms. When you finally get all the mushrooms, you have to surf into a whirlpool. When I was a kid, I often was stuck there wondering what the hell to do after getting all the mushrooms.

You then appear in whatever time setting you picked, and have to run around trying to find who ever you're looking for. The thing that always makes me laugh is how the people respond to Mario bringing back their stuff. They just say stuff like “Wow, thank you Mario! You are an honorary member of my family. Feel free to call yourself Mario Polo”. If I ever met a guy from the future, the first thing I'd say would be “HOLY DIVER! DON'T KILL ME!!!!”.

I remember growing up as a little kid and trying to figure out what the hell was the point of this game. It eventually became one of those games that I flat-out dread. I kept wondering why my mom even got it for me. The only reason I ever played it was because I kept thinking it was Super Mario World, due to it using the same Mario sprite.