Clu Clu Land

Name: Clu Clu Land

Year: 1985

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo

Genre: Arcade

Hours Played: 4

Beaten: N/A

Imagine being an early NES adopter in 1985.  You're impressed by Super Mario Bros, you buy the system, and now you're ready to get some more games.  Of course, for an entire year there's only sixteen games to choose from.  Excite Bike is a classic, and I personally enjoy Balloon Fight, but past that, what else is there?  Urban Champions?  Ice Climbers?  Golf?  Well, any of them would be infinitely better choices then Clu Clu Land.

I'm just going to say it now: Clu Clu Land is a terrible, terrible game.  At first glance, it's pretty similar in concept to Pac-Man: you constantly move forward through maze in a top-down perspective, outrunning enemies, picking up fruit, and trying to clear the board.  Instead of eating yellow dots, you run over spaces to reveal hidden gems, and when all the gems are uncovered, you've beaten the level.  Their aren't gems in every space, though, so you have to remember where you've already been.  When all the gems are revealed, they form a picture.  This is suppose to help you figure out where the gems you're missing are, but since they didn't bother localizing it, the pictures are often Japanese symbols or letters and thus aren't a whole lot of help.

The biggest deal breaker here is the controls.  In Pac-Man, you hold left to turn left, and the next time he passes a left-facing passageway, he turns.  Not so here.  When you hold left, you're character (no idea what his name is) holds out a hand (flipper?), and the next time you pass a pole, he grabs onto it and swings leftward.  Only, if you don't let go of the button, he continues to rotate.  Ever hit the left button and end up going right?  Because it happens pretty frequently in this game!  But if you do find yourself going in an unexpected direction, don't worry; if you hit a wall, you bounce off and reverse direction!!  The result is you're always flying across the screen in random directions.  You can also shoot a stun beam at your enemies, but I played for over an hour before I ever remembered to do that because I was so busy fighting the controls.  I ended up playing a total of four hours just to get to the point where the levels start repeating (only five levels) and the controls still don't feel natural.

There are some games where the controls are meant to be part of the challenge.  For instance, in Super Monkey Ball, the controls are so precise, you're constantly teetering across narrow ledges trying to not fall off.  In works in that game because whenever you die, you feel like it was your fault, not because you couldn't make the game do what you wanted.  Here, the controls are just a disaster.  It might work in a slow-paced game where you can think about each move, but instead you're constantly moving forward, trying to remember which spaces you haven't moved over yet, and trying to respond to enemies and (here's the worst part) bumpers that appear out of nowhere.  As well as gems, you can also uncover hidden bumpers, which will reverse your direction as soon as they appear.  Having your direction reversed unexpectedly is so much worse then it sounds, because not only do you have to plan every move out in advanced, but the swinging mechanic prevents you from reversing back; you have to either slam into a wall or another bumper, or "circle the block" like you would in a car.

In short, this is possibly the worst game ever put out by Nintendo; the best thing I can say about it is it didn't make me do any math.

Graphics & Animation: 1 (Bad)
I will admit that these are not the worse graphics I've seen on the NES.  The main character and enemies are nicely animated, and the graphics are initially intriguing if only because the enemies and gems bear such a close resemblance to The Legend of Zelda's graphics.  Now, I have no real idea what anything is suppose to be, but I'll save that for story & presentation.

Music & Sounds: (0) Awful
I've had to play this game for several hours to beat the first five levels (they start repeating after that) so I could consider the game "beaten", and sitting here right now, I can't even remember for sure if music plays during the levels.  I think so?  It's very forgettable, is what I'm trying to suggest.

Controls & Level Design: 0 (Awful)
Is there a score lower then zero?  No, seriously, can I make up a score lower then zero, just for the controls in this game?  The controls in this game get a minus one.  There, I did it.

Story & Presentation: 0 (Awful)
This game takes place underwater!  Apparently!  According to some of the websites (Wikipedia, Moby Games) I checked out.  Do you know what would have helped make that clear?  If they'd made the background blue (instead of black) like it is on the box cover!  Also, the main character is some sort of aquatic fish-like creature!  Apparently!  Do you know what would have helped make that clear?  If he didn't have hands, legs, and teeth during the score tallying sequence!

Length & Replayabilitiy: 1 (Bad)
This is one of those arcade-style games that just plays out endlessly, like Pac-Man, so there's not much to say about length.  However, for a game that's about revealing the hidden pictures, they put some randomization in the order the levels appear, so it's not exactly the same each time you play it.  It's a nice touch, but not enough to save the fact you'd never want to replay this.

Total: 2 (Awful)