"Strange and unique; challenging and entertaining."

~ Review in Short ~

Gameplay: Platformer-style building climbing. Plays oddly and difficultly, but is fun.
Story: There isn't much of one.
Graphics: Standard NES graphics in quality and variety. Nothing special.
Sound and Music: Background music is rare here; sound effects are repetitive.
Play Time: Can last from two to ten hours, depending on your own skill.
Replayability: High. It can be entertaining and challenging each time you play.
Recommendation: Taken altogether, Crazy Climber is quite the nice game. While most platformer games that are relatively unheard of, such as this, tend to be monotonous, uninspired, or boring, Crazy Climber changes it up. It requires an intense amount of patience, practice, and skill to complete. While the aesthetic qualities tend to not leave and impression, it is the gameplay that is truly amazing in this game. I would greatly recommend it to anyone.



~ Review in Long ~

Crazy Climber is one of a greatly-proliferated genre of 2D platformer games. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of games have been released in this genre. On the NES, there was the notable Super Mario Bros. series, which has spawned a series spanning over 28 years to this date. Super Mario Bros. and its successors did more than present a "you start here, go right for a while and dodge a few enemies" format, but also threw in extra, albeit minor, sidequests and immense potential in challenge playthroughs. Then there is also the Bubble Bobble series on the GameBoy, a fun platformer in which you progress by defeating every enemy in many levels.

But then there are those other platformers, like the Taz-Mania series on the GameBoy, Earthworm Jim across many consoles, and a larger number of other games, which can show how bad some 2D platformers can go. 2D platformer games can have as many permutations as role-playing games can, if not more.

So, the question is, does Crazy Climber belong at the top with the relatively few excellent platformers, or at the bottom in the bargain bin?

GAME HISTORY:
Crazy Climber originally began in Japan as a simple arcade game. It relied on a similar concept and control system as its NES port does. The NES port of the game, released in 1986, continued the concept and extended upon the original with more levels and the addition of special levels that can only be unlocked after meeting certain tasks. It has also been rumored that there will be ports of the game to the Wii Virtual Console, if they haven't happened yet. Crazy Climber was created by the Nihon Bussan company.

GAMEPLAY: 9/10.
"Do I need to know Japanese?"
An important question to you is probably whether you need to know Japanese to play this, primarily because most people that have English as their first language can't speak or read Japanese. (Kudos to you if you can, though!) Anyways, to answer your question, there is no need to know Japanese in even an infinitesimal amount. The whole game is written in English - at least, what relatively little text there even is - and the only noticeable thing is some slightly bad grammar towards the end of the game.

Concept:
This game takes place in a 2D platformer format, but not in the way you'd think. While most such platformers usually involve going across platforms as you progress to the right, or sometimes upward. In Crazy Climber, you control a character moving upward by climbing the ledges next to the windows on a skyscraper. You can usually imagine the building like a piece of gridded paper upon which the building is drawn. You can only move from ledge to ledge (square to square), so long as there's actually a ledge there to climb onto. Yes, that's right, not all buildings are simply rectangular-shaped with a spire at the top like most people imagine skyscrapers. Some of the buildings are intentionally designed to be physics-defying so as to provide greater challenge to you. Your goal is to make it to the top of the building.

Along the way are a number of hazards. Perhaps the most common are people. They'll poke their heads out of the windows and throw trash down. If this hits you, you can possibly fall off of the building, which, as one could only expect, would kill you. There are a number of other similar obstacles - birds that can sling feces and random falling swarms of barbells and girders, primarily. These tend to be the simpler obstacles to avoid, though there are specific instances in the levels that make them perhaps the most annoying things you'll see in the game.

There are also other obstacles that instantly kill you - falling signs, electrified signs, falling balls-and-chains, falling explosives, and swinging wrecking balls. This can comprise some of the more complicated puzzles in the game. These puzzles can typically rely on your ability to react quickly, as some of the aforementioned dangers can occur in swarms, and you'll definitely not want to get hit by, say, exploding dynamite. Others can more intellectual and relying on either planning ahead, or, in other cases, your ability to grab the various power-ups in the levels to meet your needs.

Levels in the Game:
In all, there are twelve levels in the game, each of which takes place on a building of about 200 stories of ledges. Each and every one of them has its own intricate puzzles for you to solve. Perhaps most impressive is the medal system, though. In the first eight levels of the game - well, most of the levels - are keys, each hidden on a certain ledge of the level in some particular way. These keys can open up the door to what you'd expect of a 2D platformer stage. There, you can obtain medals and return to the main levels. However, if you don't get eight medals by the end of the eighth level, you will continue to loop through the levels you've yet to obtain medals on until you get the eight medals to head on to the final four levels.

The Odd Control System:
Most video games require the use of only one controller to play. Crazy Climber is a bit different. You could imagine the system like that presented in The Adventures of Cookie and Cream for the PlayStation 2.

In Crazy Climber, you need to use two NES controllers at once, even in one-player mode. It is preferred to have them connected with the special bridging attachment that is supposed to be included with the game, though it doesn't seem to be a requirement. You will then proceed to rotate the controllers ninety degrees clockwise so that the D-Pad is at the top. From there, you have the general idea of the control system in this game, which was obviously a blatant attempt to emulate the system in the arcade game. You use alternating combinations of Down and Up on the D-Pads of both controllers to go up, and, since each controller only controls one arm, you can set up a rhythm to go faster.

You also need to use the D-Pad to go left and right along the building. However, you need to mash them simultaneously and hold them to move properly. It often doesn't work as desired, but that can usually be ignored due to the relative lack of necessary in dangerous situations.

My Overall Opinion:
Crazy Climber plays fairly nicely. The control system is a little odd, but not too hard to get used to after a few levels. The game offers a nice level of variety and challenge and it doesn't have that monotonous feel that most platformers tend to generate. You'll need a lot of patience to play this, but, in the end, it's quite entertaining.

GRAPHICS: 6/10
To put it briefly, the graphics in Crazy Climber are nothing to get excited about. They're about what you'd expect as the average for the NES-era games. It's 8-bit and the pixilation and blockiness is quite obvious on even smaller television sets. The variety is fairly decent early on, but, as time goes on, it slowly drains into repetitivity and monotony. The animations do hold up smoothly under even the greatest of stress for the game, though. But, all in all, the graphics are unimpressive, both by modern standards and by 1986 standards.

SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC: 3/10.
As far as the background music can be concerned, the title screen is of a misleading nature. While you have a nice, catchy 8-bit theme there, that's pretty much where it ends. For the almost the entire remainder of the game, you won't have a single background theme. This draws slightly from the gameplay by making it a little bit boring at times. This ties into the sound effects as well. While, sure, you have those, they repeat too often and have almost no variety. By the time you finish the first level, you've probably heard all you need to hear for the rest of the game. Altogether, the audio in this game is just an utter disappointment.

PLAY TIME: 8/10.
Your initial playthrough of the game can vary greatly. While you can easily finish the whole game in about two or three hours, so long as you know what to do. But, then again, that's pretty rare. It took me somewhere around fifteen hours to beat the game fully on my first time through. In the end, it mostly depends on your own skill. You'll have to beat eight levels and find all of the keys in the proper levels. This latter task is easier said than done, as you are on a timer throughout the levels and pretty much need to check every single tile, which often can lead to death. Even then, you might accidentally miss the keys and end needing to replay levels. So, in the end, it's quite variable.

REPLAYABILITY: 8.5/10.
This game replays fairly well - more than most games. Despite the linearity in its gameplay and uninspired (and sometimes nonexistent) aesthetic qualities, it mostly comes in from the challenge. This game offers such a level of challenge that it's easy to go ahead and replay the game, so long as you don't use a walkthrough of any sort to find the keys all over again. Admittedly, you'll still go through the same levels and the same challenges in probably the same order, but the game is fun to play and, in this case, that's all that really matters.

THE END. Overall score: 8.5/10.
All said and done, Crazy Climber is a decent game. It has a rather unique concept for a 2D platformer, and provides a level of challenge and entertainment that most such games fail to provide, even in modern times. While, sure, there are a number of things that could be improved - primarily the graphics and audio - they do not subtract from the game as a whole in a way that make it worth missing.

I would recommend this game to almost anyone. The main thing to beware of, when buying this, is patience. You will need to be patient to play this, because it can be difficult and time-consuming, and often even live-consuming (in the game, of course), to search every tile in every level to find the keys and the corresponding medals. Then there are the difficult challenges that can often require many tries to complete. But it's a fun challenge and, in the end, Crazy Climber is one of the few platformers I've found during an FAQ completion project that I can truly say I've wholesomely enjoyed.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10 | Originally Posted: 02/06/13

Game Release: Crazy Climber (JP, 12/26/86)

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