Clayfighter 63 1/3
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| Released on October 23, 1997 by Interplay Productions for the Nintendo 64, Clay Fighter 63 1/3 features 2D stop-motion clay fighters duking it out in 3D arenas |
In the mid-90's, I made a habit out of buying used SNES games from Blockbuster. It always blew my mind that a game that costs $70 at (now deceased) Toys 'R Us could be found in the used bin at the (also now deceased) video rental chain for under $20, and sometimes under $10. On one of those used bin dives, I picked up a game solely because of how weird its label looked: Interplay's ClayFighter At that point in time I'd already made a vital discovery that will allow me to use a colon in two consecutive sentences: I love fighting games, but I am absolutely terrible at them. Any weird spin on the fighting game genre tickled my fancy back then, and I immediately bought ClayFighter for a low, low price. My little brother and I booted up the game, and got some good laughs out of the ridiculously designed clay characters (mostly Blue Suede Goo and Helga) and their silly sound bytes for about an hour. After that, the game became boring, and I rarely played it again. Several years after selling my SNES for Nintendo 64 money, I got a new SNES and bought back all my old games...except for Clayfighter. I just didn't care enough about it to buy it again.
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| Damn, that's one ugly island. These menu screens are a visual garble. |
When Clayfighter 63 1/3 was announced for the Nintendo 64, I chuckled at the title, but when it was released to negative reviews, just shrugged and forgot it existed. I thought it was ironic that an update of the game was a Blockbuster exclusive, and have found it strange that that same updated game, Clayfighter: Sculptor's Cut, has become the most sought after, rare, and expensive Nintendo 64 title. However, I have made it a point in life to own some version of and to play through every Nintendo 64 game, and that includes Clayfighter 63 1/3 (and soon, Sculptor's Cut). After genuinely attempting to approach 63 1/3 with an open mind, I've found it to be much of the same, yet worse than its Clayfighter predecessors.
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| One thing I can say about this franchise is that it is not not weird |
Story generally doesn't count for much in a fighting game, and it definitely doesn't matter here. The focus of Clayfighter 63 1/3 is that a bunch of weird characters who are made out of clay have come to life and are fighting one another. The graphical design for this game is unique in several ways. The characters, which include an angry snowman, evil clown, Terminator bunny, and ghoul with a Jack-o'-lantern head, among eight others, were created using stop-motion animation and claymation, but then, for some reason, translated into 2D sprites.
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| And then dipped into mud |
This is a Nintendo 64 game, so it's weird that the characters are not actually 3D. However, each character's home arena, while traversed in 2D, is actually a 3D environment. This means you can only move left or right on the screen, but you're essentially circling the environment. The best touch here is that most arenas have multiple areas, meaning if you reach a door, you can knock your opponent--or get knocked yourself--into another room.
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| Pictured: What I did to every snowman my siblings ever made |
The characters look okay, though the 2D sprite effect kind of muddies things. Speaking of mud, these arenas have a generally blurry, messy feel. However, as problems, neither of those compare to Clayfighter 63 1/3's general sluggishness. Characters move slowly, and there's often an input lag to where I often find my character still performing moves seconds after I have taken my hand off the controller.
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| Why yes, it does often feel like this game is fighting itself |
Fighting then becomes a muddled mess, even as the game tries to utilize combo, parrying, and special move techniques straight out of such luminous contemporaries as Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter III. As a subpar fighting gamer, yet huge fan of both of those games, it's hard enough to pull of those techniques in those two games with pitch-perfect controls. In Clayfighter 63 1/3, with the lag and muddy movement, it's a total drag trying to do anything. I often found myself just spamming the heavy punch/kicks until I won, and on the NORMAL difficultly mode, using that fighting style, I never lost. There's always the harder difficulty, but then things just get more frustrating. Also, those cool moments where you can knock your opponent through a door into another room? Better hope they don't crash your game. On my second play through, I knocked Kung Pow through a doorway, the game froze, and I had to turn off and unplug my 64 just to get 63 1/3 going again. The frozen frame is pictured below in excruciating detail.
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| Gross!!! |
Clayfighter 63 1/3's one standout element is its soundtrack, composed by Richard Band and Rick Jackson. This Ricky duo have created a dark, yet whimsical orchestral backing for this game that wouldn't sound out of place in a Tim Burton or darker Pixar film. Their pieces aren't incredibly memorable, but they most definitely create a mood that the rest of the game doesn't capitalize upon. As far as character voices, despite an absolutely top-notch voice-acting cast here, including, somehow, the voice of Homer Simpson, Dan Castellaneta, as guest-starring fighters, Earthworm Jim and Boogerman (from other Interplay games)...okay this is a long sentence. I'll just try again and say, there are great voice actors here, but their characters have to spout unmemorable lines that don't crack me up like the ones for the SNES game did. Several of these characters were absolutely offensive in the 90's and worse now, such as the bucktoothed Chinese chef, Kung Pow, who shouts nuggets of wisdom like "Poopoo Platter!"
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| I don't like this game |
Overall, Clayfighter 63 1/3 is a bust. It includes a two-player versus option, but at the end of the day, you're still playing Clayfighter 63 1/3. It doesn't look great, it's even less fun to play, and it's no wonder the developers wanted to take another shot with Sculptor's Cut...but will that make any difference?
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