ClayFighter 63 1/3

"Delightfully Tacky, Yet Unrefined"

Introduction

One game and one series dares to cross a line that not many other games would dare risk doing. And in doing so these doers of doing what no other fighting game on Nintendo could ever dare do do exactly what they are best at doing! Clayfighter 63 1/3 is a spoof on just about every possible fighting game to date. The spoofs are in the relatively short, but comical approach that Clayfighter takes in the way this game is played. Fans of the Street Fighter series, Mortal Kombat, and Killer Instinct will all notice the jabs taken at each game through the fighting style of the twelve vicious and malicious fighters ranging from a piece of Taffy to one angry Santa! Some of the hometown heroes of the Clayfighter of yester years are back along with quite a few new additions including the awesome, the incredible, the spineless Earthworm Jim! So with all of the traits of your favorite fighting games combined along with a few favorite heroes and the outstanding announcing of Michael Buffer (Let's get ready to crumble!) does this game really come out a strong win? Well not really.

Tournament

On some crazy island a mad doctor named Dr. Kiln has set up some diabolical scheme on an island that somehow all of the Clayfighters end up at in some odd fashion. Each fighter has a spot on the map where he has a hometown domain (sort of) and you advance by taking an opponent's health bar down twice. Three special bars will allow you to unleash combo mayhem on your opponent, which the fight announcer will taunt you by the number of hits you get in. The controls are fairly simple although the combos and other certain moves require you to memorize button mashing sequences. The right hit will have your opponent on his knees with a small time frame to finish him or it off with a Claytality (an ode to fatality). There are nine characters and three special unlockable characters with Bad Mr. Frosty, Blob, Ickybod Clay, Bonker, and Taffy rounding out the original cast list and Hoppy from C2: Judgment Clay make up the veterans. The new guys are Kung Pow, a former chef turned psycho martial artists and is a caricature of a buck toothed Bruce Lee. You also have Houngan who has some of the memorable taunts in the game. Well known as a voodoo Jamaican warrior, he carries a rubber chicken around as a weapon. Earthworm Jim also makes his debut in the tournament as he learns his rival Boogerman has made his way to the island that Jim was going to make as a nice place for a vacation. Boogerman is all that is flatulence and snotty noses as Sumo Santa is all that is gross obesity. Bad Mr. Frosty and Sumo Santa have an ongoing feud as to who is going to own the North Pole.

The moves are basically the same with any arcade fighting style with your high punch, low punch, etc. It is very easy to learn to master the moves and with the brevity of Clayfighter it gets repetitive really quick. Clayfighter goes really quick since you do not fight all of the characters in the game in the tournament and the matches do not take as long as well.

Graphics/Sound

The Clayfighters do make a nice transition from 2-D to 3-D on the Nintendo 64. The characters are still developed with the use of claymation so you will notice how the characters do not really fit into the arena they are fighting in. It's kind of like how the characters in Mortal Kombat look like they were copy and pasted into the fighting arena. While I do like the appealing graphics and the smooth transition for the Clayfighters to 3-D, the environments and backgrounds are not all that great. There are no favorite maps that I would like to fight on and although the different environments reflect the characters' personalities the maps just don't do much for you. Sure you can fight into other areas of an arena and knock or be knocked through a wall or door, but there really isn't a need to do so. Unlike the MK series or even Street Fighter series, the backdrops to these fights are either concealed in mystery or have some sort of activity going on. In the case of Clayfighter, everything is just dull and lifeless.

Clayfighter may have its flaws, but it is one of the most memorable N64 games with its voice dialogue. Even Dan Castellaneta does the voice for Earthworm Jim. There is a lot of professional voice dialogue and this is what makes the game. If you have ever played this game then you can probably remember a character's catchphrase, especially anything Houngan says. The Clayfighters are rude, crude, and ready to bruise and some of the lines delivered in this game will have you laughing all the way through a fight.

Final Recommendation 6/10

I hate to have to give Clayfighter 63 1/3 such a low score, but the truth is that this game was not only rushed to be developed, but also would have been better off as an arcade game than a console game. The reason I say it should be an arcade game is because the game is very short and there is just not that much to do once you have beaten this game and unlocked all of the characters. Clayfighter was also rushed, and you can always a expect a mediocre game when developers have rushed a game. Clayfighter had missed its first deadline, and when it was finally released you could tell no more work was put into making this game much more than what it could have been. It is a great game, but there are much better fighting games out there and the spoofs of other games do not draw any laughs.

Is it a buy? Well it just depends. If you are a fan of Clayfighter or miss Earthworm Jim, then hey go ahead and find it. Otherwise this is not a game I would suggest as I had only bought it to add to my Nintendo 64 collection and did not really know what to expect from this game.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/29/08

Game Release: ClayFighter 63 1/3 (US, 09/30/97)