Clay Fighter 63 1/3 Review

Last week I talked about one of the best parody games around. Clay Fighter eventually found its way onto the Sega Genesis after a run on the Super NES. Then it was beefed up for an upgrade release on the Super NES. The game I covered the last week. After that game came Clay Fighter 2: Judgment Clay, which not only lampooned fighting games, but the Terminator sequel. Unfortunately I won’t be talking about it any time soon as I don’t have a copy. But I do have one of the final versions of Clay Fighter. (Until the recently announced reboot sees daylight.) Which is what we’ll cover today.

PROS: Increased goofiness. Claytalities. A host of top name voice talent.

CONS: Poor graphics. New fighting system.

REALLY?: One character is a very bad stereotype. Oh yeah. Really.

Clay Fighter 63 1/3 makes some big changes to the Clay Fighter formula. Some are alright. Others not so much. One of the most noteworthy changes is the move from a Street Fighter inspired fighting system to a Killer Instinct fighting system. Oh sure, you still have your weak, medium, fierce button layouts, but the organic play is changed. As in Killer Instinct, later Mortal Kombat games, and a host of other fighters you’ll have a host of Dial-a-Combos. But where Killer Instinct merged these predetermined combos with some level of self-reliance, this game doesn’t. At least it doesn’t succeed in its attempt. The problem is that the movement speed of the characters doesn’t entirely meld with the timing needed. So while there is a little bit more depth here than in something like War Gods, you still have many moments where things feel clunky. Chaining moves with these Dial-a-Combos doesn’t feel as smooth as it does in Killer Instinct.

The game also implements the Street Fighter Combo meter. You can fill up to three bars, choose to either use them one at a time, or use all three when filled. Be that as it may, this Clay Fighter entry still does a few things right. This is one of the earliest fighting games to give us transitioning backgrounds. All of the stages are tied together in some way. Every stage has a secret entrance to another stage. As you fight, if you pull off a hard enough attack near one of these segments you can knock your opponent into another stage. Things continue to borrow from Killer Instinct as you play. Backgrounds rotate during your battles. Each player has two life bars. There are even Fatalities in this entry. They’re called Claytalities, and most of them are pretty funny the first few times you see them. The game even introduces a couple of secret characters. This brings the total number of characters to 12. Many of the characters from earlier games return here. Bad Mr. Frosty, Bonker, Taffy, and Ickybod Clay are here. Earthworm Jim is also here as a cameo along with Boogerman, a character from one of Interplay’s platformers.

A lot of the best voice actors around are here. Dan Castanella known for his role as Homer Simpson is here. Jim Cummings of Darkwing Duck fame is here. Even Rob Paulsen of Pinky, and The Brain had a hand in the game’s voice over. All of whom put in some great work here. It would have been easy to phone in a few lines of dialogue, but they treated it like any of their other projects. But there is one character in particular who was, and is very divisive. Kung Pow. Kung Pow is every bad Chinese stereotype rolled into one character. Many will be upset, a few might laugh, but no one will argue it is in poor taste. He speaks in broken English, all of his moves are named after Chinese restaurant meals, and have animations to match.They even designed him with the stereotypical over bite, and bowl hair cut. Even during release people were asking “Really?”.

On top of the blight that is a character made for pure shock value, the game doesn’t have the memorable look of the original game. While characters are, once again sprites made from stop motion animation, backgrounds are another story. Everything has a dim, muddy look to it. Geometry. Textures. Everything looks bland, dull, and lifeless. Gone are the hilarious, and fun backgrounds from the Super NES. Even though there are a number of stage transitions they all suffer the same boring feel. Boring  is not the vibe you want from your parody game. Sadly, that’s what the game becomes. The comedy that is here does wane pretty quickly. The change in the fighting system does little to keep you playing. Clay Fighter 63 1/3 doesn’t have much in the way of multiplayer either. You have the standard 2 player Vs. mode, and that’s… about it.

Aside from the secret characters, the game does have a handful of hidden things in it. There is a secret menu you can pull up, that will let you turn off the Claytality timer, scale the size of the characters, and other minor changes. There is also an option for someone to control the game’s camera with a controller in port 4. Beyond that, there’s a cheat code to enable well.. cheats. Ultimately, Clay Fighter 63 1/3 isn’t as fun, funny or as memorable as the original Clay Fighter. In spite of having a lot of great voice talent, and improved models, it still falls short on all of those fronts. The most interesting thing about the game is that like Clay Fighter Tournament Edition, it does have an upgrade.

One many will probably never see. And in the unlikely event that you do see it in person, it will be fairly expensive to take home. Clay Fighter Sculptor’s Cut came out a short time after 63 1/3 failed to make an impact. It fixes some (not all) of the sluggish problems in the fighting engine. It adds one of the characters who was cut from 63 1/3, and a couple of new characters. Presumably because of the lower than expected sales of the base game, Sculptor’s Cut became an exclusive rental. Blockbuster Video was the only vendor to get copies, and it was rarely sold until they began to scuttle their retail locations. The few copies in the wild fetch a high price due to their rarity. If you’re especially lucky enough to find a copy with a manual, and box hang onto it very tightly.

As for the game itself, it is only slightly better than the base game. If you’re a fan of the general concept, and characters Clay Fighter introduced to fighting games Clay Fighter 63 1/3 might be worth owning. If only because of the historical aspect behind it. It isn’t a horrible game, but it isn’t particularly great either. The controversial Kung Pow character also doesn’t help its case. It is an interesting game in the sense of analyzing a misfire. But it isn’t something that will keep you busy for years. It never hits the un-functional levels of Dark Rift, but it isn’t going to give you the replay value the original did either. It’s average. Boring, and painfully at times. It’s been revealed there are plans for a new entry in the long dormant series. Hopefully that game will take its cues from the Super NES cult favorite. Not this swing, and a miss sequel.

Final Score: 5 out of 10

Clay Fighter Tournament Edition Review

Ah, 1991. Capcom had given us the glorious Street Fighter II. A sequel to a ho-hum, tournament fighting game. It created a host of clones, while reinvigorating both fighting games, and arcades. Nearly every fighting game that has followed owes at least something to Street Fighter II. But with every popular idea, there is usually a parody waiting.

PROS: Nice graphics. Decent animation. Good play control. Funny!

CONS: Some of the humor dates itself. Not as fun as Street Fighter II Turbo.

THEME SONG: As iconic as Street Fighter II’s introduction music.

Clay Fighter Tournament Edition isn’t the first Clay Fighter. It’s technically an upgrade of the first game. It works in the vein of a Street Fighter II Turbo. Expanding the content, along with some tweaks. But just like the original vanilla version, it’s a parody of Street Fighter II. It also has a few jabs at Mortal Kombat, although there aren’t any fatalities to speak of. Actually, as you’ll see it mocks the entire fighting game genre.

Clay Fighter TE has its own storyline. It’s silly, and preposterous but gives you a reason as to why these characters exist. As well as why they’re beating up each other. One day a meteor falls from the sky, and completely levels a carnival. When this happens, all of the various performers are mutated into stop motion behemoths. Each of them are stand ins for the archetypes you see in other fighting games.

Bad Mr. Frosty is Clay Fighter’s Ryu. He is a snow man who spreads pain rather than joy. He is the flagship character of the series, appearing in every iteration. There are a host of other favorites like Helga, the opera singer. Taffy, who is made of, well, taffy. Bonker is a psychotic clown character. Because you can’t have a carnival or circus theme without one. But he’s honestly a pretty fun character here. There’s Ickybod Clay, a reference to Sleepy Hollow. There’s Elvis Presley impersonator Blue Suede Goo.  There’s Tiny, who of course is not tiny at all. He’s the game’s Zangief. Rounding it out you have The Blob. Who is quite literally a blob of clay.

The art, and general look of Clay Fighter is awesome. Each character has gone through a painstaking creation process. They were modeled in clay, then animated in stop motion, and then the animated frames were scanned into the game. The finished product looks somewhere between Street Fighter’s airbrushed look, and Mortal Kombat’s digitized actors. It would have been easy for Visual Concepts (Yes. That Visual Concepts) to have slapped some clones together or digitize their own actors. But the extra effort goes a long way here.

Stage backgrounds are also really cool. As with the characters themselves, the stages are mostly clay models that were photographed, and placed in the game. You can tell which parts were drawn in to go along with the photos, which can be a little jarring. But for all intents, and purposes these are some well crafted backgrounds. Moreover, the fighting system in Clay Fighter TE is pretty good. It’s clear the designers knew eventually the jokes would stop being funny. So they had to keep you playing. Rather than do it with more gimmicks, they built a solid game underneath it all. There is definitely enough here to make you fire it up every now, and again.

The fighting system does borrow a lot from Street Fighter II. Most of the characters moves are performed with similar quarter circle movements, or back, and forward charges. As for the regular moves it also borrows Capcom’s 6 button layout. There are weak, medium, and strong attacks for both kicks, and punches. Tournament Edition also takes a page from SFII Turbo by implementing a speed feature. So if you’re used to zany speeds in your fighters there’s something here for you. With that said, the game’s mechanics aren’t quite up to the level of Street Fighter II. The hit boxes around characters are a little bit more forgiving, and some characters have special moves with very similar inputs. Sometimes you might want to have Bad Mr. Frosty throw a snowball fist, only to perform his ice breath instead.

While that is certainly bad news, it isn’t so bad that it takes away from the fun. The moves do work, but you’ll have to learn the specific  differences in their commands. This way you’re consistently doing the special moves you want, instead of accidentally doing the ones you don’t. The game also does let you get in a number of combos, and two in one attacks. While you wouldn’t think a parody game could be competitive, Clay Fighter Tournament Edition actually can be. Even if it isn’t likely to be in a high-profile tournament these days. Those who simply love the fighting game genre should still find some fun in it.

Clay Fighter Tournament Edition has your basic modes. There is the standard arcade mode where you have to beat the roster, then a boss. Strangely, the game will have you re match three characters once you beat the roster. Once you’ve done that, then you can go up against the final boss. The game’s boss is a little bit underwhelming though. It is just a bunch of clay balls animated to make out a face. It can use all of the characters’ various projectile moves. On higher difficulties the boss, and the game in general is a challenge. Often times things veer into cheap territory. But if you want the game’s best endings you’ll want to play the game through on its harder settings.

Beyond the arcade ladder is the standard 1 on 1 Vs. mode. Each player picks a character, the number of rounds needed to win, and their handicap. Aside from that there is also the Tournament ladder. Here you can have up to 8 people play through a bracket to get to the top spot. Handy for the odd time you have a number of people over.

Overall, Clay Fighter TE holds up pretty well. It has a goofy charm to its silliness. The fighting system is pretty good, and it is still fun to play. It might not be able to captivate you very long in today’s crowded crop of excellent fighters. But it is a fun diversion. Plus its still miles ahead of the mediocre fighters we’ve seen over the last 20 years. If you find a copy in your area pick it up. If you have a Wii, the original is also on the Shop Channel.

Final Score: 7 out of 10