"Only arcade game I ever owned....no wonder my family got rid of it."

Back in 1980, before a home video game system was ever created, the old company Sega created a carnival simulator. Keeping true to the roots of the standard 'shoot stuff' game at the carnival before rifles and whatnot were taken away from the carnival games, Sega's carnival simulator actually held up pretty good...until the invention of GOOD arcade games like Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, and Tetris.

So how come this game wasn't that great? It had all the effects of a real carnival game, minus the score system and bullet eating ducks. What went wrong?

Simple: it was a Galaga clone. All of the aliens and whatnot that made Galaga such an awesome game were reused in Sega's Carnival, only with a stranger button layout and other similar stuff.

Controls
Since this section is really short, and there's nothing special about it, I'll do this one first for once. There are exactly three buttons on this machine: Left, Right, and Shoot. Really, there is no explanation needed. Left moves you left, Right moves you right, and shoot fires your gun. Real brain busting material here.

Music
Another really short category this time around. There's only one tune in this whole game, and it's the stereotypical carnival music. I'm pretty sure you've heard it on an episode of Looney Tunes or something, so you really aren't missing out on anything. You would have at least expected Sega to put in a bullet sound or something, but no!

Gameplay
You are in control of a rifle that you just paid a quarter for! Nice! Too bad you can only aim it at the target animals. Bummer.

As for the gameplay, the screen is a never changing wheel of excitement. On exactly three rows, animals of all sorts will be scrolling across the screen and you need to shoot them down before you run out of bullets and time! Your remaining bullets remain on the bottom of the screen, while your gun lays right on top of them. If you get really annoyed by the music, you can sacrifice a bullet and shoot the music box on the right side of the screen. Periodically, the left side of the screen will have a box that will either add to your score or bullets, or deduct from them. This can be bad if you happen to be shooting at ducks on that side of the screen, you miss and hit a -5 bullets box and lose the game. In the middle of the top of the screen, there is a Ferris wheel (called pipes for some reason). If you can shoot down all of the spinning cars before the score bonus vanishes, then you can gain some extra points.

As well as the scrolling animals on the screen, there are also the letters B,O,N,U,S, which you can already guess score you some bonus points. Pretty handy if you can shoot them all in order, but if you screw up a letter, you ain't getting squat. As well as those, there are also boxes with a number in them. Shoot one of these bad boys and you will gain that many bullets back. Good deal, seeing how this keeps you in the game longer.

The only real enemy in this game is your remaining bullets and those damn ducks. If you let a duck get down to the third row, they will jump off and start heading down towards your gun. If they manage to make it to your rifle zone before you shoot it down, you're going to lose a bunch of bullets.

Last but not least, after you beat a level or two, you'll be put in a bonus stage where you shoot the hell out of a bear. The more you shoot it, the higher your score goes. Sweet!

Graphics
Well, it's the 1980's, so what do you expect? Final Fantasy: Spirits Within graphics? Yeah right! This game is above the Atari 2600, and you would think that they could have done a better job, but then again, look at Donkey Kong. Old DK only came out a year later and looked a whole lot better than this one. Graphical techniqualities aside, Carnival does achieve victory by showing exactly what each thing is.

Worth the quarter?
If you find this in a place where you can't find another game for a quarter, then by all means give it a shot. If you see this right next to a Galaga machine, you'd be better off putting the quarter into the Galaga machine though, seeing how unlimited time and ammo for relatively the same game is definitely much better.

Thinking back on it, I really wish my parents didn't get rid of this machine, because I could have put it out in the College Dorm and charged cash to play it. I could have made fifty cents! Darn!

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/01/05