CRAZZY CLOWNZ (ARCADE)

No, I haven’t broken the Z key on my keyboard, today’s game really is called Crazzy Clownz. Released in 2001 by Leisure and Allied Industries – a company name that just screams fun – Crazzy Clownz is a ticket-dispensing arcade machine featuring clownz of varying degrees of crazziness. Whether the extra Zs are supposed to denote heightened levels of craziness or a game so boring it’ll put you to sleep is yet to be revealed, although I’ve got a strong guess about which one of those is the case. Something that definitely won’t put you to sleep, and indeed may eliminate the very concept of sleep from your psyche, is the title screen.

For pity’s sake, clown, you’ve got company. Put a shirt on or something. Notice that this clown has no eyelids, presumably having sliced them off with a razor so he can see all things at once, never resting for a moment. He looks bad enough as a still image, but just wait until you get a load of him in motion.

Dear Lord, that’s not pleasant. Someone sat down and made that, you know. Human effort was expended on its creation. Mankind has wrought some truly bizarre things during the course of history – the Sphinx, a financial crash based on tulips, the career of Jedward – and this clown is right up there with the most baffling. Why has he replaced his hair with a crystalline candy floss substitute? Why does he only have one tooth? Has he been eating his own rock-candy hair, and that’s why he’s only got one tooth? There are no answers to these questions, of course. Normally this is where I’d describe how sinister this clown is, but honestly he’s so ugly that I just feel sorry for him. That’s not to say there’s nothing sinister about Crazzy Clownz, mind you: I managed to find a sales brochure for the game and two of its selling points are listed as “design that attracts children” and “luring circus theme music,” so if you’re looking for a hook for your horror novel then there you go.

Here’s the gameplay. It’s your standard Breakout / Arkanoid clone with a circus twist: the bricks are balloons, the paddle is a trampoline and the ball is replaced by a shirtless clown in hideous trousers, a phrase that also works as my plan to make the sport of golf more interesting. The balloons have points on them, and the more points you get the more tickets the machine will give you at the end, because Crazzy Clownz is a redemption game. You know the kind, it gives you tickets that can then be exchanged for prizes if you take them to a small booth staffed by a bored teenager with a name like Ricky or Shannon. The gameplay is just about okay, in an ultra-basic kind of way, and you’ve got some degree of control over where the clown flies depending on which part of the trampoline he lands on. You don’t lose a life if the clown misses the trampoline or anything, you just lose a bit of time as you wait for him to recover from shattering his coccyx and climbing back into action. The most notable thing about the gameplay is that you control the trampoline with a physical steering wheel for no real reason that I can discern. If you told me the developers had a surplus of small steering wheels kicking around the office, I’d have no trouble believing you.

The only other thing to pay attention to are the special “TICKETS” balloons. Each one’s got a letter of the word “tickets” written on it, and if you collect all the letters you get a jackpot bonus and some extra tickets. I’m sorry I don’t have anything more interesting to say about this aspect of Crazzy Clownz.

I thought I’d done okay, but my efforts (my efforts to stay awake, mostly) only netted me a measly three tickets. What the hell can I get with three tickets, beside a look of contempt from Ricky in the prize booth? One of those plastic moustaches that you clip to your septum in a manner that’s both uncomfortable and unhygienic? Half of a pencil eraser shaped like an ice cream? You know what, forget this – I’m going back in and I’m not coming out until I’ve collected all the “TICKETS” balloons and won the jackpot.

It turns out I had to cheat by giving myself some extra time in order to win the jackpot. Funnily enough, the final letter always seems to appear just as the timer runs out. There’s a random element to the placement of the letters and I’m sure it’s set up in such a way that every now and then they appear at a rate that allows you to collect them all, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to play Crazzy Clownz long enough for that mythical moment to roll around. Not because the gameplay is boring and unchanging, although it is, and not because I have better things to do with my time, because let’s be honest, I don’t, but because the game plays “Entrance of the Gladiators” on a constant loop even during the never-more-inaccurately-named attract mode. I could feel the music making me a worse person with every iteration. Any further exposure, and I’d have been finding out what happens when you forego “guilty” or “not guilty” and enter a plea of “clown music” during a murder trial.

There, I won the jackpot. Now I can afford a light-up yo-yo that doesn’t light up or an oversized novelty pencil. I am satiated.
And there you have it, that’s the entirety of Crazzy Clownz. A mediocre Breakout knock-off with only one stage, a repellent coating of clownosity and the vague feeling that you’re being cheated while you’re playing it. Why did I even bother writing about it? It’s an equal mix between believing that all games should be remembered even if they’re ugly, joyless nonentities, a strange fascination with the not-really-videogames nature of redemption machines and the chance to say “look at this clown, he’s ugly as balls.” I’m sure I’ll write about a “proper” videogame next time, but I had fun delving into the existence of these crazzy clownz and sending my spellchecker into fits in the process. I did learn some things about Leisure and Allied Industries, the creators of this game: they’re based in south-east Asia and Australia, which explains why the clown in the game has an Australian accent. They operate a chain of family fun zone places, referred to on their website by the almost heart-stoppingly exciting title of “video amusement facilities,” called Timezone. They also put out another ticket game called Ripper Ribbit. I will never be playing that game, because it cannot possibly live up to my mental image of a cartoon frog stalking his victims through the foggy streets of Victorian London.

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CLOWNS

My antipathy towards clowns has become something of a running theme here at VGJunk, a situation that is not helped by clowns being in so many videogames. Heroes, villains, fighting game combatants, cannon-fodder enemies, those daffy, laffy, ghost-faced agents of darkness have played every role, terrorizing children and adults alike with their rigor-mortis grins and baggy trousers that conceal god knows what. Now, I'm not actually scared of clowns, but they are sort of unsettling and because they come in so many different varieties there's definitely a spectrum of Clown Creeposity, which is what I'll be looking at today - a selection of jesters, jackanapes and jokers, roughly arranged in order of how little you'd like to run into them in a dark alley.

Circus Charlie, arcade

The star of Konami's arcade game of the same name, Circus Charlie is quite likely the least menacing videogame clown ever created. Why, he's downright adorable! Forcing a lion to jump through flaming hoops might provoke cries of "animal cruelty," but that's the worst thing you could accuse Charlie of and I don't think that particular act was even his idea. That's one of the reasons Charlie lacks the menace of other clowns - he evokes feelings of sympathy, because he's a child who's forced to ride a lion through flaming hoops and jump from trampoline to trampoline while the other circus folk throw knives at him.
Creepy Clown Rating: 0

Sweet Tooth, Twisted Metal, various

Equally unthreatening but for different reasons is Sweet Tooth, mascot of the Twisted Metal series of vehicular combat games. He's a serial killer in a clown mask who drives an ice cream truck. Oh, and his head is permanently on fire thanks to a curse. Before anyone complains, I'm aware that "Sweet Tooth" is the name of his truck, and that the character's name is Needles Kane. Needles Kane. This is why Sweet Tooth is about as scary as basket of kittens: he's so obvious. If he wasn't the star of Twisted Metal, he'd be the main character in a 14-year-old Juggalo's poorly-drawn webcomic. Did I mention that his head is permanently on fire? I just think it's a wonderful touch. "This psychotic, murderous, irredeemably evil clown simply isn't scary enough. I know, what if his head was on fire, like, all the time? Yes, that's it, that's the final detail!"
Creepy Clown Rating: 1, but only because I worry about dental hygiene and those teeth look like they'd be a nightmare to keep clean.

Kid Klown in Krazy Chase, SNES

Kid Clown in Krazy Chase is a game about a clown kid who chases things. It's pretty crazy, although perhaps not crazy enough to warrant crazy being spelled with a K. Honestly, I'm more scared for Kid Klown than I am scared of him - the poor chap looks as though his heart is about to explode like an overfilled bouncy castle at any moment.

The Klown King, on the other hand, he's a good sight more unnerving, flopping around like a giant slug, his ermine robes replaced by a duvet. His flesh-coloured lips make it seem like the clowns in this universe don't wear make up - their faces just look like that. Eww.
Creepy Clown Rating (Kid Klown): 2, because I'm worried he might snap under the pressure and go on a rampage.
Creepy Clown Rating (King Klown): 5, rising to six if my hunch is correct and there's nothing under that duvet but a swirling portal to cosmic oblivion.

Pierre, Fighters Destiny, Nintendo 64

Not so much scary as really, really smug. What have you got to be so smug about, Pierre? What do you know that we don't? Are you wearing something scandalous underneath your clown suit?

He looks even worse in Fighter Destiny 2. The horns are a strong indicator of his demonic nature, but that haircut seals the deal. No right-minded person would cut their hair into the shape of a horsehoe crab.
Creepy Clown Rating: 4.

Kid Klown in Night Mayor World, NES

A different Kid Klown than the one previously mentioned, this one is more of a goofy lunkhead, well-meaning but ultimately not a very good clown. Hey, Kid Klown, your makeup is supposed to be red lips with a white face, you dolt, not the other way around. If it wasn't for the red nose he wouldn't look much like a clown at all. In fact...

With some very minor editing, Kid Klown becomes a bootleg Sonic the Hedgehog, and no-one's scared of Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic's more ardent internet fans, sure, but not Sonic himself.

Then we meet Kid Klown's family and things take a turn for the sinister as we see mum, dad and the kids standing outside in the driving rain. Mrs. Klown has, erm, one heck of physique. You could moor ships in the harbour by tying them to Mrs. Klown, I reckon. Mr. Klown ponders where his life went wrong, ruing his decison to name his children "Kid" and "Baby". "What happens if we have another baby?", he thinks. "Are we going to call it Baby 2? I should have stayed on that plumber's apprenticeship but no, I had to dop out and enter clown college. What the hell was I thinking?"
Creepy Clown Rating: 4 for Kid Klown, 6 for the crushing misery of the family scene.

Skelly, Chrono Cross, PS1.

A skeleton clown, a thing I love (skeletons) mixed with a thing I really don't (huge and extremely cumbersome gloves. Oh, and clowns). An undead clown may be creepy enough on its own, but the really dark thing about Skelly is that you recruit him into your party by collecting his bones, which have been scattered around the world. You've got a universe to save, but there's always time to ferret around each location looking for a discarded pelvis.
Creepy Clown Rating: 5, would be higher if his feet weren't shackled together, thus making your escape easier.

Clown-O-Mania, Amiga

Clown-o-mania: a mental illness resulting in the compulsion to abduct children and feast on the raw flesh of human beings.
The actual clown in this one is too boring to be creepy, but is that a floating, bloodstained razor blade floating next to him? There are drops of blood flying through the air, too, and some leaking out of that small mound on the floor. This twisted hellscape is so bizarre it's even freaking that clown out, so you know it's not a good place to be.
Creepy Clown Rating: 6 for the background, which may be a special pocket dimension specifically created to imprison rogue clowns.

Mad Clown, Super Punch Out, SNES

We're getting to the more unpleasant clowns now, and this pugilistic pagliaccio summons feelings of fear for two reasons. One is that of all the clowns featured here, he looks the most like John Wayne Gacy.

Secondly, you're trapped in the ring with him. There's no escape, nowhere to hide, the Mad Clown has one mission and that's to keep punching you until you stop moving. He cheats, too. Typical clown behaviour. It starts off as mischief, moves into wilfull dickery and then becomes full-on sociopathy as the fumes of the greasepaint and the chemicals in their wigs seep into their brains.
Creepy Clown Rating: 7, which is how many showers you'll need to feel clean again once Mad Clown has sweated all over you.

Jaxson de Box, Snacks'N Jaxson, arcade

Aaahhhh! What the hell is that? Why does it have a single tooth growing out of its top lip? That's not just a clown, it's wino clown who's been huffing white spraypaint. All the kids love solvent-addled, alcoholic derelicts! "Hey kid, wanna see a magic trick?" slurs Jaxson, before vomiting into his own coat pocket and mumbling "ta-dah!"
Creepy Clown Rating: 8, unless he's mournfully playing a harmonica, in which case it drops to seven (because the music serves as a warning for you to run away).

Mr. Do!, arcade

Surely Mr. Do is too tiny for a reasonable assement of his terrifying nature to be made? Well, yes, in his original incarnation. However, Mr. Do was later revived to appear in the Neo Geo game Neo Mr. Do!

"Hi, kids! They took Mr. Do's eyes, and now he's going to take yours! Honk honk!"
I can't help but imagine the flaps of skin at the side of Mr. Do's cross-shaped eye slits peeling back to reveal... something. Something so disgusting I can't even envisage it.

"TAKING powerful hallucinogens! THROWING up in a ditch! CRUSHING his victims beneath the oversized wheels of his clown car! MR. DO IS VERY ACTIVE, and the police have issued an emergency warning advising citizens to stay inside and lock their doors and windows!"
Creepy Clown Rating: 8

Joker, Savage Reign, arcade.

Oh god, this clown is wearing a metal codpiece. That's something I could have lived my life without seeing. Oh, and a dog collar too, how nice. It's Spanko the fetish clown! Hang on, just let me write that that phrase down in my big book of terms to never, ever do a Google search for.
On a physical level, Joker is just plain distressing to look at. His outfit that's seemingly designed to purposefully focus your attention on his groin, his lanky, unnatural frame, his curiously striated musculature. It might just be that he's wearing four-fingered gloves, but I reckon his lost a couple of digits to appease the notorious Cirque du Soleil mafia.
It's not just the way he looks, either:

Joker beats up women and then declares that they're his girlfriend, which is so deeply unpleasant that you're surprised even a clown could stoop that low.
Creepy Clown Rating: 9. He's a multi-level creep: creepy because he's a weird clown and creepy because he's a massive creep!

Killer Clown, A.B. Cop, arcade

Finally for today, there's Killer Clown from Sega's arcade jet-bike-em-up A.B. Cop. Killer Clown sells girls into slavery. Given that his name is "Killer Clown" and not "Slave Trade Clown", he also murders people... and he just looks like a normal clown. A regular, everyday clown who just so happens to be utterly without morals or compassion, a malign force in the world who hides behind his oversized trousers and painted face. That's why clowns are creepy. They all end up having the same face. They cross societal boundaries and laugh it off as harmless fun, interfering with people by throwing buckets of water - oh no wait, it's confetti - at people and squirting them with flowers, and if they can ignore the rules of human interaction like that then there's no telling what they're capable of. Why does the Killer Clown even dress like a clown? We may never know. Possibly we can't know, because a mind as dark and sinister as his cannot be understood by ordinary men.
Creepy Clown Rating: 10 out of 10, shoot on sight, raise preparedness condition to DEFCLOWN 1.

This just a small sampling of videogame clowns - I could have included many, many more, but I think this serves as a good overview and honestly I'm starting to feel uncomfortable looking at all these horrible harlequins. What can we learn from this, then? Well, I'd say that the more a clown tries to be creepy the less creepy it is. Just look at Sweet Tooth next to Mr. Do and his missing eyeballs: I know which one I'd be more worried about seeing at the end of my bed in the middle of the night. That said, I would be worried about Sweet Tooth setting fire to by bedclothes with his ridiculous flaming head.

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NINJA CLOWNS

Everybody likes ninjas. Conversely, no-one likes clowns. So, if you combine the two you should get something that is the very essence of averageness, right? Well, let's find out by playing Incredible Technologies' 1991 circus of horrors, Ninja Clowns.


Yep, this game is called Ninja Clowns. No, I have no idea why they chose to combine ninjas and clowns. Ninjas are stern, silent, invisible warriors who have been trained to kill without mercy. Clowns are jolly, noisy, gaudy fools who have been trained to kill without mercy. There's not much overlap between the two, is there? Well, it doesn't matter, because Ninja Clowns has nothing to do with ninjas at all. Just clowns. Clowns only. Clowns, clowns, clowns. Ugh. The only reason they called it Ninja Clowns is because Clowns is a very dull title.
Ninja Clowns is a side-scrolling beat-em-up, so the first thing to find out is why, as a simple jester, you have been thrust into this world of violent madness. Kidnapped daughter? Animals in danger? Well, not quite:

Nope, today's reason for punching everything in sight is Killer Zombie Clones, produced in a lab by Twisto the Evil Clown. I don't know why I specified that he's an evil clown; he's a clown, it should be taken as read that he's also evil.
The terrified populace's response to this threat? They summon another clown. You know, like the one that's kidnapped them. Maybe they know that, like ninjas, only a clown can defeat a clown. Although on closer inspection of the villain's silhouette, it appears he's not a clown and he's actually Bowser. I have my fingers crossed that this is the case and his evil plan is actually some complex plot to kidnap Princess Peach.

You're plonked in a dismal street area, with various scumbags for company. As this is a beat-'em-up, you're probably going to want to, you know, beat 'em up, and that's where things get a little tricky. Ninja Clowns has a strange control system in that, unlike almost every other side-scrolling beat-'em-up, there's no jump button. You've got punch, kick and what I think is supposed to be a block but which can't block atacks. Pressing punch and kick together lets you spin around, which is simple enough, but other combinations lead to ever-more unpredicatble results. P+K and left or right makes you do a flying kick, diagonal-down and K makes you roll around, there's a strange jumping move where our hero tries to climb an invisible rope... There's a lot going on, and while it sounds like a good thing to have so many moves, they all feel very counter-intuitive to use, and you keep performing them by accident, not helped by the jerky animation and general feeling of distance between your input and the actions of the white-faced freak you're "controlling".
As you can see, the enemies are a motley bunch, and the first stage is mostly filled with angry cops who throw doughnuts at you and 80's business men who you can pretend are Patrick Bateman. Quite why Twisto wants to take over this town is beyond me, because it's a bit of a shithole. The first stage flies by quickly, with two interesting things to note: One, you can collect a boxing glove on a spring to use against your foes. Anyone who has ever watched a Looney Tunes cartoon knows that a boxing glove on a spring is the deadliest weapon in the universe. The power of a thousand gods courses through your veins as soon as you collect it, and no man can stand against its awesome power. Secondly, Ninja Clowns appears to have pre-empted the pop-culture shitecloud that is the Twilight series by a good fourteen years: there's a sign in the background for a movie called "Dead Teens In Love". There is no possible way it could be worse than Twilight.

Soon you're fighting the boss, who is pictured above. He's a bowler, and he likes to bowl things at you and... that's about it. He's significantly more difficult than the rest of the stage, but once he's defeated, you do get the pleasure of seeing him explode in strangely grotesque manner:

Look at that goddamn clown, watching a man explode with a calm smile on his face. The sick fuck.
After that, there's a brief interlude where you have smash up a lab in an impossibly short time limit, although it's only for points so it doesn't matter. Twisto appears again to curse you. His silhouette looks more like Bowser than ever.

The next stage takes you to the funfair... of TERROR. That's to be expected though, because funfairs exude terror in the same way that girls who wear berets exude insanity.

New enemies abound, including bearded ladies who projectile vomit at you. At least I think they're bearded women, but then again there's nothing to say that they aren't just very nauseous transvestites. There're also Elvis impersonators. They've got accordions, you know, just like Elvis was famous for playing! Most importantly, there are mimes. Mimes that can be punched. Indeed, you are encouraged to punch them because they drop health when you do. As I may have mentioned before, attacking a mime is a rare pleasure that should be savoured like a fine wine, and by including this feature Ninja Clowns has earned itself a gold star.
There are a few more weapons to collect, including (of course) throwing pies and (of course) seltzer sprayers, which is nice. Something that isn't nice is the music, which mostly consists of "circus music" set to grating, painful beats that sound like a calliope being forced to breed with a trash compactor. It's a shame I didn't know about it in time for the Hallowe'en playlists, really.
So, what will the boss of the carnival stage be, do you think? Samson the Strong-man? Siamese twins? Jojo the Dog-Faced Boy? No, no and no.

The boss is a chicken in thigh-high kinky boots and with a rack that makes Kelly Brook look like a twelve-year-old boy. It is, I fear, supposed to be a Sexy Chicken. Welcome to Nightmare Town! It gets worse, though. This Sex-Chicken has to attack you somehow. What's that you say? It could use eggs to attack? Why, of course it could!

OH SWEET JESUS.
Yes, the slutty hen bends over and fires eggs out out it's... area at you. Even worse, the best time to attack the chicken is after it has bent over but before it fires the egg, so you essentially defeat it by repeatedly jamming your fist/foot up its exposed cloaca.
I don't think I'll ever feel clean again. If you manage to interact your fist with the chicken's arse enough times, then you move onto stage three.
Stage three is back on the mean streets, by which I mean the exact same mean streets as stage one, because they just reused the backgrounds. I guess after Sexy Chicken they were too traumatised to come up with anything else. Nothing much is new apart from some different enemies, mostly skinheads and (surprisingly powerful) Girl Scouts. The boss is...

I have no idea what the boss is, or rather I do, but I'm not sure I understand why. He's a roller-skating helium canister with a severed head placed on top as a grisly trophy, and he attacks with balloon poodles. After the last boss, he's almost comforting.

The next stage is set in the Big Top, and the punishing circus music is back with a vengeance. It's mostly filled with earlier enemies, although there are some midget clowns for those of you with coulrophobia and achondroplasiaphobia to enjoy. The boss is a rather mundane-looking magician:

I do like the expression on that rabbit's face.
The next stage is on the streets, again, and they've used the same background, again.

It really does count against Ninja Clowns that're you're just replaying the same stage. I think I'm going to have to rescind my gold star. New enemies are in the form of hippies this time, and they shout such well-known hippy catchphrases as "Wow, man" and "Woodstock, man"; you will tire of this very quickly. The first time I saw their placards I thought it was a picture of a chicken, and they were protesting against the Sexy Chicken. Just as I was about to embrace their cause, I realised it was a mushroom cloud and I started punching them instead. They're pretty violent for pacifists, and quite hard to beat. They killed me a lot, which means this is a good time to mention our hero's death pose:

He may be dead, but his enormous erection will live on! Maybe he's thinking about Sexy Chicken.
The boss approaches, and he's a more old-fashioned kind of nightmare fuel.

Cabbage/bagpipe/clown interbreeding has reached a terrifying new level! Our hero actually looks genuinely pleased to see it, though, and that's possibly because he already knows that once defeated, the boss will turn out to be full of popcorn. Of course.

"Darn! No butter." Wait... were you going to eat the popcorn out of the dead spider-monster's skull? Clowns, everybody. Look upon them and know true fear.
Ninja Clowns is heating up now, and it's onto the final full stage: the Funhouse.

The name "Funhouse" is as misleading as you might expect. It's a constant, groin-crushingly tedious stream of unicycle-riding killer clowns, and the best way to defeat them is to keep doing the spin move repeatedly as they slowly haul themselves out of the floor. The blue-and-orange checks on our hero's trousers, much like the midday sun, should not be looked at directly. Serious eye damage will occur.
There was a boss here, a burly Sinbad type with a scimitar, but I defeated him so quickly that I forgot to get a screenshot. Oops. Anyway, he was just the warm up! It's time for the final showdown with Twisto!

His lack of resemblance to Bowser is bitterly disappointing. That said, I actually really like his sprite, and if you're looking for a fearsome end-of-game boss, a three-headed demon clown is a good choice. He really isn't that tough, with the spin move once again proving the most effective method of killing clowns. That's information that may well come in handy one day. Once he's defeated, Twisto is revealed to be a tiny little clown who was using some kind of super-suit or something, and our hero defeats him by using the famous "hold them at arm's length so they can't reach you" technique that is so beloved of older brothers the world over.
So, Twisto goes to jail, and you can settle down for the long and satisfying ending sequence.

Oh wait, that's it. One still frame. Thanks, Incredible Technologies. The name of your company is a holow mockery, if not a downright lie. Twisto's spell is broken, and everyone is happy and friendly once more. Except the hippies, who will no doubt be continuing with their campaign of harassment against poor, defenceless nuclear power. And what the hell is going on with the sky in that last panel? I think the sun saw the clown driving toward it and turned off all the lights so he could hide.
Welp, that's Ninja Clowns. An odd game, to be sure. Not a good game: the controls are to imprecise, there's too much repetition and the music is too dreadful for it to be considered good. But there are some nice ideas in it, and a few nice graphical touches. I think it's main problem is that is didn't go far enough in embracing the horror element of the game. If the whole think had been some kind of Lovecraftian, Sexy Chicken-filled constant nightmare, it'd have been... better. It's pretty short too, so if you're interested, give it a quick go: you'll probably be able to complete it in half an hour. Just don't expect anything even vaguely ninja-related.