ClayFighter 63⅓

“So You Wanna Be a Clay Fighter, Huh?”

“Playland has become Clayland.”
Inclayible art by @peachyfiend97.

Oh, ClayFighter. My sweet little clay, clay fighter. Of all the fighting game franchises launched during the genre’s boom in the 1990’s, it was certainly one of them. Hoping to stand out from the crowd by parodying the perceived self-seriousness of other, more popular offerings; the end result was a series of games which banked on style over substance, and which would ultimately fail to establish a significant fan following for it. Its lasting legacy is largely centered around unfavorable retrospectives and unforeseen rarity: Criticisms of its highly problematic comedy, contention over cut content and convoluted controls, and scarce cartridge supplies now trading for thousands in cash.

Of course, this wasn’t always the common perception of the series. There was a time where ClayFighter was rated as a underdog contender — a dark horse in the competition for fighting game supremacy. Each new entry brought new hope with it that they might finally be the one to break through. Until inevitably, there was no more fight left in the franchise, and the long-fought bout was declared a loss. The final effort on the part of the ill-fated competitor would be recorded as a whiffed one-two punch: ClayFighter 63⅓ for the Nintendo 64, and its subsequent “update” in the form of ClayFighter: Sculptor’s Cut. Our focus for today’s article will primarily be on the former, though the follow-up will certainly play a role in our story as well. I should also note that today’s article is another in our line of Patreon requests; suggested and sponsored courtesy of @RobertNaytor.

The road leading to ClayFighter’s N64 debut is a winding, rocky one. We’ll be attempting to quickly track the franchise’s full journey from the fourth generation of consoles into the fifth, complete with struggles to change console manufacturer allegiances. Failing repeatedly in that endeavor and having been forced to settle for Nintendo’s hardware offering, a full examination of the resulting game should follow. And from there, we’ll deal with the matter of its final follow-up, and the unrealized attempts at a resurrection thereafter. Keep your minds open and your hands moist, folks: This one might get a little messy.

EDITOR’S NOTE: It must be noted that several of the playable characters who appear in the ClayFighter franchise serve as depictions of – to put it bluntly – crude racial stereotypes. Unavoidably, there will be images and descriptions of these characters in the course of this article. To establish my own personal sentiment up front; I find these characters / caricatures to be pretty abhorrent, and will be criticizing them thusly.

“Khaos on Klaymodo!”

The development studio known as Visual Concepts was originally founded in 1988, debuting with a series of software offerings for the Apple IIGS and DOS before broadening their hardware horizons. Their early catalogue is quite an eclectic mix; ranging from dinosaur-driven edutainment (Designasaurus II), to handheld advergames (McDonaldland and Spot: The Cool Adventure on the Game Boy), as well as acquiring an early taste for the sorts of sports titles that would come to define the bulk of their latter output (bringing Madden NFL ‘94 and 95 to the SNES). With most of these titles being developed on a freelance basis – assigned as odd jobs from a plethora of different publishers – they would find one of their first properly recurring business partners in Interplay Entertainment. It would appear that Visual Concepts’ work in bringing Interplay’s Star Trek: 25th Anniversary from the NES to the Game Boy served as the initial introduction.

With Interplay having dabbled in all manner of genres and hardware themselves (as both developers and publishers), they perhaps found something like kindred spirits in Visual Concepts — both still attempting to determine something like a focus or direction for themselves as companies. Up to this point, much of their combined software libraries dealt in licensed fare and conversion work, with only occasional stabs at establishing their own original properties. And with their both operating within the state of California (six hour commute between Novato and LA notwithstanding), I can envision an arrangement being made; to pool together their resources and develop a series of fresh intellectual properties, in the hopes of finally breaking free of their creative doldrums. How and why this resulted in two distinct titles both based around the same shared concept of “claymation?” I can’t even begin to guess.

Claymates would be the first product of this collaboration: A 1993 SNES platformer with puzzle and collectathon elements, all bound together by a purported modeling clay aesthetic. I say “purported” as – by my estimation – the game’s final graphics only barely manage to convey this styling. Aside from sprite-based letterings which most effectively manage to get the texturing and deliberately lumpy form across, most of the rest of the game’s graphics were clearly generated entirely digitally — from the level designs to the creatures and things that inhabit them. As such, the small handful of actual [potentially] clay-crafted elements end up sticking out like sore thumbs: Your protagonist’s default “ball of clay” form, some handful of collectibles, and only the occasional character sprite that actually manages to retain those tell-tale signs of having been photographed and scanned in. The culprit here is likely the scaling-down of these clay-captured graphics into sprites, to the point where their details and imperfections are largely lost in the translation.

For those curious about the details of the game’s premise: You play as a young boy named Clayton, who is ironically transformed into a living ball of clay by a fully stereotypical evil witch doctor named Jobo. Let this go ahead and set something like a precedent for out-of-place racial caricatures popping up in these clay-centric games. In any event, your mission is to rescue your father (Professor Putty) who had originally developed the clay-transforming serum that Jobo has sought and stolen, and to turn yourself back into a flesh and blood human boy. Your quest will you see you spanning continents and outer space – complete with levels set in Africa pitting you against hostile “tribals,” and a Japan brimming with feudal-era samurai – and transforming into various animals as a means of better defending yourself and navigating terrain. Eventually, it turns out that Jobo isn’t even the main villain, but that some previously unmentioned martian leader actually is? It’s an appropriately messy plot for an altogether messy, unfocused game.

Claymates for SNES (Interplay / Visual Concepts, 1993)

But Claymates was only the opening volley from Interplay and Visual Concepts — a declaration of intent, and a commitment to the longer war ahead. For you see, Claymates was developed simultaneously alongside the first installment of ClayFighter, and so the launch of the latter on SNES would either pre-date or closely follow the release date of the former (depending on market region). And whereas Claymates served as a relatively unassuming submission to an over-populated genre – not particularly seeking to challenge or upset the status quo – ClayFighter immediately sought about making noise and taking names. Between standard 90’s “eXtreme” advertising conventions, and magazine adverts directly parodying the likes of Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II, and even World Heroes; ClayFighter picked its fights against the established champions of the fighting game genre, hoping to make an impression by merit of its unique visual style and comedic tone. The double-edged sword of this approach, of course, would be the direct comparisons made against its chosen competition.

“Ultra Turbo Head to Head Fighting Action.”
North American magazine advertisement.

Mechanically, ClayFighter bears more similarity to the likes of SFII than MK, given its back-to-block and three-variable punch / kick inputs. That being said, ClayFighter doesn’t quite rise to the same level of tightness over its controls, and unbalances its [admittedly eclectic] roster in such ways as to render some characters entirely impractical (I swear that it’s impossible to get anything going as Blue Suede Goo). The only attempt to innovate / iterate on the traditional gameplay system is the inclusion of ‘Super KOs,’ wherein inflicting sufficiently-damaging combos are further rewarded by brief windows where the strength of your specials are increased. Beyond this though, the focus of the design here is firmly on presentation over playability: Having sourced clay sculpting and animation duties to the claymation studio Danger Productions, great care is taken to show off these assets in the highest detail / largest scale possible. And at least in this sense, the game is successful enough.

With eight distinct characters all making their debuts, ClayFighter’s priority had almost no choice but to be on making each of them a stand-out combatant in their own right. Even with menacing snowman Bad Mr. Frosty quickly assuming the mascot spot, the other seven sculpts still had to serve as equally memorable in order for the game’s clay and comedy gimmicks to land. To this end; we have the likes of the disconcerting clown Bonker, chewing candy-turned contender Taffy, a ghoulish pumpkin-headed apparition named Ickybod Clay, and… a generic blob of leftover clay, simply designated as “Blob.” Amazingly, only that last guy and Mr. Frosty would be the two characters to appear in every installment of the series. You get the sense that characters whose designs proved slightly more elaborate – the opera-singing Helga in full viking regalia and Elvis impersonator Blue Suede Goo, for examples – must’ve proved frustrating to capture consistent stop-motion for, and so all parties involved were more than content to drop them past this first installment.

But before we get to ClayFighter’s sequel, we have to talk about its ports and re-releases. For starters, speculation in the early half of 1994 was that Interplay were due to bring the game to Atari’s Jaguar,^[1] where it’d have likely languished along with the console itself. While that project never did end up materializing, ClayFighter’s release on Sega’s Genesis did. Unfortunately, it’s something of a compromised conversion, losing something in the ways of graphical and auditory fidelity. It would be one thing if it ran smoother / faster than the source material, but it only manages to match it rather than one-up it. Furthermore, it fails to incorporate or benefit from any of the changes made in the improved ClayFighter: Tournament Edition, which saw release for SNES within a month of the Genesis conversion. With tweaks made to the core mechanics, additional multiplayer modes, and even an improved introductory cinematic; Tournament Fighter does a fair bit in trying to keep ClayFighter in the competitive conversation. However, it must also be noted that the revision cartridge was made available exclusively as a Blockbuster rental — establishing yet another precedent for the series.

ClayFighter for SNES (Interplay / Visual Concepts, 1993)

As would be revealed in the foreword to an official strategy guide, ClayFighter had managed to move somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 units (presumably across all three of its variants).^[2] This would be sufficient enough for Interplay to order a proper sequel, though Visual Concepts wouldn’t stick around to help see it through. Furthermore, Interplay would source their claymation from a new studio as well, crediting one “Animation & Effects.” By the testimony of the game’s lead producer (Jeremy Airey) some two years later: “Let’s just say that [the quality of the actual clay work] was horrendous, total crap!”^[3] And so, with a total turnaround period taking only six months time, C2: Judgment Clay hit store shelves in early 1995. Only about four years late with that Terminator 2 reference in the title (as well as box art and advertisements prominently playing up this angle), but we’ll just have to put that aside for now.

By pretty much all accounts, Judgment Clay demonstrates steps down in nearly every aspect of design. Character sprites are scaled down to something like half their original sizes, resulting in the same losses to detail that made the characters in Claymates not distinguishable as actual clay sculpts. Furthermore, while stage backgrounds are recognizable as digitized photos of real-life dioramas and miniatures, they’re also harshly lit and noticeably compressed in some really unpleasant-looking ways. As a whole, the visual presentation ends up feeling like a straight downgrade from its predecessor, despite claims from Interplay that the tools used to develop the original were the “primitive” ones by comparison.^[3b] Further losses incurred involve the game’s combat mechanics; where throws, holds, and KOs have been removed from the standard repertoire. The only merit gained in trade is slightly faster game speed, which hardly makes up for the losses to depth and complexity here.

To sour the pot even further, the character roster itself loses much in variety and originality. The likes of a vaguely Jamaican anthropomorphic banana named Nanaman, an octopus using two of his legs to stand upright going by the very clever moniker of Octohead, and an utterly generic boxing kangaroo known simply as Kangoo, are all weak replacements for the uniquely memorable likes of Blue Suede and Ickybod. A moderately interesting design in a skirt-clad gorilla to be named Lucy had apparently survived several iterations of prototyping, but eventually got the ax before final release. While that would seemingly leave us with another roster of eight combatants, there are also doppelganger-type bosses associated with each playable character; amounting to little more than palette variants with slightly varied attack animations, but used in advertising to boast that the game featured a total of sixteen characters.^[4] It’s hard to reconcile all these ill-advised changes to the cast being made at the same time that Interplay were supposedly pitching a ClayFighter TV show to studios^[5] — dooming that endeavor if ever it had a chance.

Evidently, the underwhelming reception to this installment impacted a number of planned moves for the franchise. While talk of proposed Sega 32X and 3DO conversions for the game were initially planned,^[6][7] neither would see fruition. While I’m sure these fledgling consoles would’ve welcomed any and all third party support by this point, I imagine it was Interplay themselves who scrapped plans, clearly dissatisfied with their own output in this instance. At the same time, plotting was still in the works to eventually transition the series away from Nintendo’s hardware; where they perhaps felt creatively stifled by content restrictions, and had been forced to adapt a “family-friendly” image / policy of no blood and guts in order to assure marketability. As we would soon discover, Interplay had a “raunchier” sense of comedy than they may have let on, and seeing their hopes for the Saturday morning cartoon treatment dashed may well have been the catalyst for letting loose.

C2: Judgment Clay for SNES (Interplay, 1994)

Developing the next installment under the generic working title of “ClayFighter 3,” Interplay were quick to bring Danger Productions back on for claymation duties, in order to ensure that at least one of their previous mistakes would not be made twice. To their credit, Danger Productions immediately set about providing high-quality sprites across a range of characters both new and returning — aiming for a roster of at least seventeen combatants. And by my estimation, models and motion capture for all these characters were completed well ahead of the game’s release, probably before programming had even begun! This would allow Interplay to gussy up some impressively high-res proof-of-concept images for the game, with the initial hardware target being the ill-fated Matsushita M2.^[8] Planned as both a standalone 64-bit console as well an add-on for the existing line of 3DO consoles, the M2 was a platform ultimately condemned to vaporware status. However, Interplay would continue to use some of the same target renders in advertising for newly-planned versions of the game, then-slotted for Sony’s PlayStation and the Nintendo 64.

“They have been born of fire —
hopefully they won’t melt.”
North American magazine advertisement.

In developing the game for both major console offerings, two different title variations were decided upon: The PlayStation would play host to “ClayFighter Extreme,” while the Nintendo 64 would receive ClayFighter 63⅓; serving as yet another example of a video game title likely referencing The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult, and at least beating Elf Bowling 7⅐: The Final Insult to the punch by a decade. In any event, both releases seemed intended to serve as largely the same game, possibly save for some further content restriction on Nintendo’s part. Between pre-release magazine features to a beta version of the N64 ROM which floats around the web, you can track some of the content cut by order of the Big N: A combatant to be named ‘Hobo Cop’ (whose character design is exactly what you think it is) would miss the game’s proceedings, on account of reportedly being too tasteless for Nintendo. There were likely a number of other changes requested and jokes “censored” by Nintendo’s certification board, with just one noted example being a poster in a military camp stage reading “NRA” being changed to “NOA” (for Nintendo Of America).

A number of other changes and concessions to the game’s original vision would have to be made — especially as the game’s development struggled to keep with timeline milestones, and faced repeated delays (especially when taking the initial M2 release date into account). In one of the most relevant to the gameplay itself, stages were redesigned with 3D movement now in mind, ditching the high resolution static backdrops sported in so many of the promotional screenshots. While the game’s producer may have now been able to boast “No more fighting on wallpaper; this looks truly amazing,”^[3c] this obviously meant that a load of new assets had to be developed, as well as fundamentally reworking how combat flowed. When all was said and done, four additional characters failed to make the initial cut; likely having failed to have them ready come final deadline, or simply not fitting onto the N64’s allocated 96 megabit cartridge. At the very least, the final product would still be allowed to feature ‘Claytalities’ and ‘Spillits,’ serving as the clay equivalents of fatal finishing moves and bits of gore.

Having missed a July 15th, 1997 launch projection – a particular point of embarrassment, given the game’s release having been set to feature as the cover story for that June’s issue of Nintendo Power^[9] – ClayFighter 63⅓ finally limped its way onto shelves three months later, on October 23rd. While the official word was that ClayFighter Extreme remained in development, I don’t mind spoiling the fact early that it was eventually cancelled come February of 1998.^[10] As such, 63⅓ represents all that the team at Interplay were initially capable of, given their constraints and lack of further deadline extensions. Would it still serve prove impressive enough to please players? There’s only one clay to find out.

Though Claymates release date in North America (April 26, 1994) follows that of ClayFighter’s (November 15, 1993), its European release (November 20, 1993) precedes the debut of the fighting game in that region (May 26, 1994). That being said, I’d argue that Claymates should still be considered as something like the predecessor to ClayFighter; establishing the shared settings of ‘Muddville, USA’ and ‘Cape Claynaveral,’ as well as the precedent of witch doctors holding some magical power over flesh and clay. Furthermore, several of the animal transformations from Claymates feature as the round announcers in ClayFighter, framed as reference to Claymates being an earlier release.

If you are – for whatever reason – compelled to learn about the full history of the Elf Bowling franchise, we do have an article on the subject matter hosted here. If you’re curious as to why two separate games released in 1997 and 2007 felt so compelled to reference a comedy movie from 1994… well, I can’t help you there, unfortunately.

“Contains No Bloody Carnage or Fighters Named ‘Ryu’ or ‘Ken.’”

“Clay Combat in 3D Worlds.”
North American box art.

Following in a completely pointless plot that has persisted since the first installment; ClayFighter 63⅓ sees the nefarious scientist Dr. Kiln (a character mentioned in the manual of Judgment Clay but never seen in that game) continuing research into the crashed meteor classified as “Bessie” — which was responsible for the initial wave of folk transformed into clay in the original ClayFighter. Situated on the island of Klaymodo, and partnering with a resident voodoo chieftain named Happy Harry Houngan, Kiln developers a mutagen with the intent to take over the world. Presumably, he intends to threaten the rest of the non-clay world with transmogrification, or something to that effect. Further servants to his cause include the evil Sumo Santa – plotting revenge on Bad Mr. Frosty for having thwarted some previous North Pole domination plans – the vaguely malevolent Ickybod Clay, and the hapless clown Bonker.

By what appears to be pure coincidence, a cruise ship (or an airplane, if you go by the in-game character bios instead of the manual) carrying our band of heroes just so happens to crash on the very same island, leading to their battling to save the world. At this point in the continuity, Bad Mr. Frosty is currently one of the good guys — ditching the backward baseball cap he donned in Judgment Clay, and having turned his life around since the events of the first “King of the Circus” tournament. Other passengers-turned-protagonists include the returning Taffy and Blob, as well as the unfortunately named wok chef Kung Pow. Additionally, the bunny formerly known as Hoppy (having debuted in Judgment Clay) is already on the island as the result of a near-fatal helicopter accident, where Dr. Kiln has seen to it to rebuild him with cybernetic implants. Now going by “T-Hoppy,” he rebels against the evil commands of Kiln, and now battles against him. Oh, and it also turns out Earthworm Jim and Boogerman are on the island too, because why not?

Okay, okay: For those requiring an actual explanation for these special guest characters, Interplay had acquired the rights to Earthworm Jim for the release of 1995’s Earthworm Jim: Special Edition, as well as attempting to establish a media franchise around their originally-produced Boogerman IP. As for the storyline justifications for their appearing in the ClayFighter universe, it’s written off as their both taking vacations at the same time on the same island, and wanting to one-up each other on discovering that they’re both in proximity to a potentially world-threatening event. That’s about as much as you’ll get out of the game, so I’d suggest simply taking it for the shameless bit of cross-promotion / brand synergy that it is. Personally, I’d have also gone to bat for including Kurt Hectic from MDK as another playable character, but I doubt Interplay were looking to increase their workload any further at this point.

With very little opening fanfare, the game drops you off on a bare bones main menu, consisting only of ‘Game Start’ and ‘Options’ as choices. The options menu provides the basic volume adjustments, difficulty selection, a choice between ‘Normal’ or ‘Psycho’ amounts of Spillits-styled gore, as well as the ability to disable throws and holds along with the match timer. You can also remap your controls or hide some of the HUD elements, if you so choose. What you won’t find are any options for setting up more than the most basic one-on-one matches in multiplayer; with nothing along the lines of handicaps, tournament brackets, or variable round counts / timer lengths. Granted, these are settings that I reckon 95% of players never bother to access or adjust in the first place, but their being entirely omitted here feels like a lack of faith by the developers in their own game’s competitive viability.

Electing to start the game will whisk you away to a character select screen, featuring nine of the twelve characters available by default. The likes of Sumo Santa, Dr. Kiln, and Boogerman all have to be unlocked, in a process we’ll discuss later. That being said, we’ll be judging the roster by the value of its whole lot, as it still manages to underwhelm (and possibly offend) with its full dozen. And so, one of the first realizations you might come to is the fact that the roster is devoid of any female fighters, bucking the series tradition / fighting game convention of including at least one token woman. This was the slot a character advertised as Lady Liberty was meant to fill, but who failed to make the cut in time for 63⅓. Shortly after recognizing this, your attention will probably shift to the characters of Kung Pow and Houngan, who are… boy, howdy, there’s a fair bit to unpack here.

As surely as I hold ClayFighter 63⅓ accountable for perpetuating racist caricatures, I also recognize that it doesn’t exist in a vacuum: The 90’s as a whole are rife with these sorts of depictions for the purposes of “comedy” — even within the medium of video games. Witch doctor sorts like Banjo-Kazooie’s Mumbo Jumbo and Crash Bandicoot’s Aku Aku are well-worn tropes for the era, as are amalgamated-Asian characters like Shadow Warrior’s Lo Wang or Hogs of War’s “Sushi Swine” soldiers. But even taking the standards of the time into consideration, and assuming the intent by Interplay as having been to play these characters as so absurdly over-the-top as to comment on the nature of stereotyping in itself; you’re still left with a character clad in karate gi sporting buck teeth and a bowl cut who shouts “EGG FOO YOUNG” (as recorded by non-Asian actor Jeff Bennett) when he performs karate chops, plus a dark-skinned shaman (voiced by the very white Jim Cummings) making constant allusions to fried chicken. If you’re of either of these ethnicities and happen to find no offense in these characters, that’s fair for you. But the fact of the matter is, depictions like this can make others deeply uncomfortable, and that shouldn’t be discounted.

Moving along from the presentations of these characters to their combat abilities: 63⅓ introduces the most major shake-ups to the fighting gameplay within the series, taking the combo and round systems in the direction of Killer Instinct’s, while incorporating 3D side-stepping into some obstacle-laden stages. As we focus on the newly-established executions of special moves and chaining together of combos, I’m gonna toss around some very particular technical fighting game terminologies — stuff I’m not all too familiar with myself, and which isn’t even entirely well-documented in the case of this particular game. But I’m gonna do my darndest anyhow, because I fancy the challenge of it.

Mercifully, the bulk of specials and supers in the game are simple combinations of quarter and half-circle motions, where any one of your three punch or kick buttons will result in the same attack coming out at the end of your input. For example: A super move wherein Bad Mr. Frosty executes a kick rush is activated by two half-circles forward, followed by any of your three kick buttons. So far, so simple. And as with any other fighting game, chaining together elongated combos with as many hits as possible – alternating between standard attacks, specials, and supers – is one of the most effective ways of controlling the battle. Now, how 63⅓ is actually structured to allow for extensive combos is another matter entirely — with each individual attack unofficially categorized / designated as either ‘Openers,’ ‘Auto-Doubles,’ ‘Linkers,’ ‘Auto-Linkers,’ or ‘Enders.’ In effect, stringing together a combo is a matter of understanding which category each of your attacks fall under, and executing them all in a particular order so as to maintain control — to the point where you can theoretically maintain infinite combos. Of course, there’s always the risk that your opponent can execute a ‘Combo Breaker’ during these sequences in order to escape your grasp, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

I’m sure to some fighting game aficionados, all the above sounds like pretty standard hat. Of course, the trick of it here is that none of ClayFighter 63⅓’s moves are particularly well-documented within the game or manual themselves; not to mention that the earlier guides that got published in games magazines sometimes provided information that ended up obsolete / non-applicable to the product as actually released, thereby resulting in further confusion and an inability for players to grasp what exactly given characters are capable of. Two decades later, only two partial guides exist on GameFAQs [as of the time of this writing] attempting to cover movelists for the roster, and I have reason to believe they both provide some inaccuracies in their attempts at listing button combinations / explaining combo theory. Put simply; the few people who cared enough to try and document the game’s mechanics were put at a disadvantage, and most players just didn’t see it as worth the effort.

Further compounding the frustration that comes from trying to get combos going in the game; you are actively mocked by a constantly-chiming announcer for anything less than ‘Ludicrous’ or ‘Insane’ combos, which only begin at around the 20 hits and up mark. If you should fail to score consecutive hits in the double-digits, the game will delight in writing off your efforts as ‘Itty Bitty,’ ‘Lousy,’ ‘Lame,’ ‘Weak,’ ‘Dumb,’ or ‘Little Girlie.’ The insult to injury of having to hear a smug voiceover repeatedly and constantly deride you as an amateur, as you struggle to develop working combo chains, may well be enough to make you want to shut the game off and never touch it again. With only so many jokes up their sleeve and lines of dialogue you’re made to hear over and over again, the game quickly exhausts its repertoire over the course of mere minutes, rendering the remainder as pure nuisance.

But perhaps more pertinent than any of that, the game simply feels like mush to actually play and control. With a serious lack of animation frames across the board for our fighters, attacks fail to convey any weight or impact, which mixes well with seemingly unresponsive inputs and delayed actions. All this being further combined with the general unwieldiness of the Nintendo 64’s controller in the context of fighting games, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a frustrating fighting game. Even if all these loose screws were tightened up some, the Killer Instinct approach to combat can apparently be fairly divisive on its own; I guess due to its emphasis on initiating elongated combos, and the incredibly specific rules about how and when you’re able to break out of them? To be honest, I’m no fighting game aficionado, so I have to take a lot of this stuff on other folks’ word. All I can testify to personally is the fact that I never felt fully in control over any of the given characters, and that even managing to get combos going past the 20-hit mark didn’t feel particularly gratifying.

Even the moves that are tailor-made to make you feel like you’ve absolutely decimated your opponent – in the form of ‘Insane Combos’ (not to be confused with standard 30+ hit combos rated as “Insane”) and ‘Claytalities’ – didn’t do much for me. In the case of the pre-scripted Insane Combos (which can only be performed when your opponent is in the red on their last life bar), a short input string will yield you an ~~exhausting~~ extended sequence of your character hitting a triple-digit combo, leaving your opponent dazed and stunned for your final blow. If you happen to know the inputs for a Claytality, you can execute one of a few given “comical” finishing maneuvers, almost all of which are fairly underwhelming. About half of them are just slightly repurposed supers / specials, while there are just about a dozen variations each on splitting an opponent in half at the torso and / or hitting them so hard they crash into the screen. Needless to say, the bulk of these tend to get old quick, and none of them feel particularly unique to the characters executing them.

If you had to force me to pick two or three Claytalities that manage to stand out from the bunch? I guess there’s the one where Boogerman farts on his opponent so hard that they spontaneously combust. There’s also one where Blob swallows their opponent before exploding the both of them together. Perhaps the most “infamous” though is brought to us by Sumo Santa; who leaps high into the air declaring his intent to “sit on [his opponent’s] lap,” before plummeting back down at such a trajectory as to consume his opponent entirely within his ass. He then spends entirely too much time going through the motions of constipation, before crapping out bits and spillits of his unfortunate adversary back out — all with gratuitous fart noises as accompaniment, of course (NSFW?). If video games are truly art, this must surely be our Mona Lisa.

This gross-out humor – as punctuated by tortured puns and shockingly racist shouts – is given voice by some well-established players in the voice acting biz. All three of the Warner Siblings are reunited in the studio (Rob Paulsen, Jess Harnell, Tress McNeille) to portray Bonker, Frosty, and Taffy; as well as television’s Homer Simpson (Dan Castellaneta) playing the roles of Earthworm Jim and Boogerman. Dr. Robotnik (Jim Cummings) and his assistant Snively (Charlie Adler) team again to play two roles apiece, not to mention the legendary Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) putting in work across six different combatants… only two of whom actually appear in this version of the game. But perhaps most expensively, none other than Michael Buffer is brought in to handle ring announcer / fight introduction duties, and to utter his famous catchphrase: “LET’S GET READY TO CRUMBLE!” Get it? Like how dried-out clay crumbles? This man most likely earned upwards of six figures for an hour’s work here.

While we’re talking about the game’s comedy stylings and general aesthetic, it must also be mentioned that the game ain’t much of a looker; thanks in large parts to the eleventh-hour decision to render stages as 3D environments, and to the N64’s bilinear filtering / anti-aliasing aging like a fine egg. Thanks to the latter point, characters are all rendered relatively blurry, as the hardware at hand ensured that sprites that were made to scale (either up or down) could never look crisp or sharp. Never mind the tiny textures stretched across the rest of the game world — those being common as they were for the console: When your player’s primary focus is placed on characters who look constantly out-of-focus, that’s drawing as much as attention as possible to one of the most lacklustre qualities of your game. That’s not even mentioning again how many frames apparently had to be cut from character animations in order to fit the cartridge, resulting in further choppiness compounding the issues.

Proof-of-concept / promotional image used in marketing the game [as early as during development of the M2 iteration].

By this point, the whole clay-based novelty is already largely squandered; with the lack of discernible sprite detail meaning that the characters may has well been drawn digitally, for how they end up coming across in-game. But when you further take the 3D stages into consideration – with no attempts even made at conveying any sort of clay look or feel to them – you get the impression the developers had truly given up on the gimmick at some point during development. In fairness: Each stage is designed to be genuinely unique, with varying degrees of symmetry and presence of props, as well as some fairly distinct theming. The game also benefits from the old Mortal Kombat III “stage transition” trick; where knocking opponents into given walls or ceilings will move you from one location to another, connecting many of the backdrops together and giving a sense of geography to Klaymodo. On the other hand; some of these stages are lousy with framerate tanking elements, others with vision-obscuring foreground objects, and several presenting obstacles (such as fences) which can outright bring matches to a grinding halt by presenting impenetrable barriers between you and an opponent.

Giving players the abilities to side-step and otherwise deviate from the intended “track” in these 3D stages might well be one of the worst design decisions made in the whole development process. Putting aside the astounding fact that you can literally put walls between you and your opponent that bring the fighting to a standstill: So many attacks (namely projectiles or long-distance travels) can be circumvented by simply holding down L or R, there’s no good reason to let off of either button at any time. See, in most 3D fighters, tapping to either side is a move in and of itself, where you’re committed to your brief motion whether for better or for worse. In ClayFighter 63⅓, holding either will continually keep you side-stepping in conjunction with any other direction you’re looking to travel, as well as doing nothing to interrupt or prevent your ability to attack. By presenting side-stepping as if it were unrestricted strafing as in an FPS, damn near the entire balance of ranged moves is upset.

While it’s easy to accusingly point the finger at a team of developers fundamentally misunderstanding the essentials of the genre, the more likely culprit in all these seemingly obvious design flaws was the ever-changing nature of the game they were stuck trying to evolve and develop. Between changing target hardware and clear struggles to adapt to the N64’s hardware (despite complimentary claims that “One of the great things about N64 is the lack of bull&$#! you have to cut through to do what you want with the machine.”^[3d]), the story you can surmise is one of a challenged and constantly rushed development cycle, resulting in a game that feels largely unfinished and entirely unpolished. You almost have to wonder if there was any time or room for playtesting, where some of the more obvious issues might’ve been caught and remedied? Signs either point to no, or to new features being incorporated so late into development that there was no time to actually fine-tune or outright retract any of them. I’d like to think the devs would have undone the side-stepping mechanic if they had the time and means to — and I reckon time may well prove this theory.

Perhaps the most tell-tale sign of the utter rush to get this game past the finish line comes with the game’s endings and unlockables. Now, in typical arcade fighter fashion; the game’s progression sees your chosen character fighting off the rest of the roster, eventually encountering a mirror match (thankfully, not presented as the final boss as in Judgment Clay), and finally confronting the big bad Dr. Kiln in his laboratory. The underwhelming reward for this effort is a fleetingly brief text scroll describing what your character does after the battle’s end. Not atypical, but unimpressive nonetheless. What really sells the slapdash nature of it all though is a brief screen commiserating the loss of the non-playable character (in this version of the game) Lockjaw – complete with a parodical “This animal was severely hurt in the making of the game” disclosure – before cutting immediately to the ‘Game Over’ screen and then back to the title. What makes this odd screen so particularly egregious isn’t just the fact that it references a character ultimately cut from the game, but that it’s a character who appears on the very cover of this release. If that doesn’t signify some literal last-second decision-making, I don’t know what does.

Earlier, I mentioned three characters requiring unlocking, and I reckon now’s as good a time as any to reveal how. It’s a process that has remained seemingly undescribed / undocumented for the last twenty-plus years online, so I guess it’s up to me to break the story. See, the game offers five difficulty levels: ‘Cookie,’ ‘Normal,’ ‘Whoa,’ ‘Dude,’ and ‘Psycho.’ By my reckoning, those last three options each correspond to unlocking one of the three characters, as completing the game on the hardest difficulty provided me the code to unlock Dr. Kiln. Note that I didn’t say it unlocks him for play straight away. Rather, sitting through the credits following the character epilogue screen will reward you with a button combination at the end to be input on the character select screen, which in turn will flip over one of the hidden character tiles. And you’d better keep that code written down on a piece of paper, too, since these unlocks don’t actually save to the game cartridge. Again, this is presumably the product of content cutting and mad dashing towards getting a gold master for the game ready; but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make the final product look ramshackle as all hell.

In effect, we’re left with a disposable single-player mode that exists to be trudged through exactly three times; in order to provide three codes to be copied and kept on-hand, for whenever you might feel so compelled to play the game again. Which brings us to the matter of multiplayer, and where the game’s true value is ostensibly meant to be measured. But of course, and as again mentioned earlier: The range of options for multiplayer are nearly non-existent, with level select obtusely hidden behind undisclosed button presses on the pre-match screen, and nothing in the ways of player handicapping or rule adjustment. Acceptable for an arcade game, maybe? But certainly not for a home console release this late in the competitive fighting scene. Then again, who could you convince to play more than a single match-up in this game with? Proficient players will quickly be frustrated by the imprecise control and molasses for momentum, while more casual players will just as quickly tire of the game’s droll shtick. ClayFighter 63⅓ is one of those games I occasionally mention here as being “made for no one” — trying and failing to appeal to a whole general audience, and impressing none in the process.

So, what could’ve been done to fix this mess, aside from simply suggesting it spend several more months in the oven? Believe it or not, I’ve got a few suggestions! For starters, that 96 megabit (12MB) cartridge format is a death sentence, and desperately requires the expansion to at least 128 megabits. With that allotment, we could hopefully restore the cut characters and round out the roster some, giving the game at least a bit more in the way of variety and content. And while we’re at it, why not add a proper title sequence to the game, complete with new theme song and animated accompaniment? Generally speaking, sprucing up all the rest of the sound and presentation couldn’t hurt, and might well go a long way in upping the charm factor. I’d include adding some additional single-player story beats and character motivations under “presentation” as well, if we’re trying to make these characters more unique and endearing.

Of course, this only really constitutes as “polishing a turd” to this point. Fixing the core gameplay itself should be the priority, and doing so means removing unnecessary elements to it. First order of business is cutting out the side-stepping entirely, and confining characters to pre-designated tracks in these 3D stages. Hey, so long as the developers already went through the trouble of creating them, we may as well continue to use them. Also, let’s re-evaluate that combo system some, since the end of 1997 seemed to indicate Killer Instinct not really having much in the way of staying power (as far as folk knew). Rather than dealing with linkers and auto-doubles or whatever else have you, why not just have basic attacks be able to hit into specials or supers, and implement some amount of juggling? Having the option for parries might not be a bad idea either — especially if we end up dropping the Combo Breakers in all this excitement. (For those not in on the gag I’ve got going here, please wait just a short while longer)

All told, the suggestions above represent some of the bare minimum needed to get this current game in something like shipping shape. Where it perhaps would have benefited most from intervention though was back when the developers first needed to prioritize development on the Nintendo 64 or PlayStation, and seeing to it that they made a decision towards the latter instead. Now, I’m not one to say that any one entrant in ye olde console wars was objectively better than another, but I’ll put my vote in as saying that the PS1 would’ve been a better fit for at least this particular game: It would’ve provided for better sprite and texture clarity, higher quality audio sampling, and a veritable excess of CD-ROM storage capacity to contain all that [plus the originally intended cast of characters]. Hell, maybe if the move had been made directly from the M2 to the PS1, we may well have even been able to keep the originally-envisioned 2D stage backdrops, and managed to avoid any of this side-stepping nonsense entirely.

What hurts worst of all in all this is the fact that the world really could’ve used a good ClayFighter game back in ‘97. While it wasn’t really the case that American-made fighting games of the era had become too dour or self-serious in the wake of Mortal Kombat’s influence (not to say that Mortal Kombat itself was ever actually too self-serious), the move was certainly being made towards more technically-minded and painstakingly-balanced titles within the genre. And so I’d argue that it wasn’t 63⅓‘s sense of “humor” that was needed in this time: Folk would’ve been happy to see a functional, lesser-complicated fighter. What the market needed was a game you could pick up and play without having to consult tier lists or spreadsheets, where your choice of character can be determined solely by which is most aesthetically pleasing to you. Over-complicating the core mechanics and slapping needless “cutting-edge” features on ClayFighter 63⅓ steered it all in the wrong direction, and diverted precious focus away from the fundamentals.

I use the term “amalgamated-Asian” to refer to Asian stereotyping that’s too lazy / ignorant to even distinguish between different Asian cultures. For example: An Ice Cube song titled “Black Korea” (off of his 1991 album Death Certificate) sees Cube racistly intimidating Korean convenience store owners by threatening to kick their “chop suey asses” — seemingly oblivious to the fact that chop suey is actually a Chinese dish.

This would mark Michael Buffer’s second of three video game cameos in his career, which would further include 1993’s Prize Fighter and 1999’s Ready 2 Rumble. Somehow though, he didn’t actually make it into any of WCW’s video games, despite being on retainer as a ring announcer for most of the mid-to-late-90s?

“Make It a BLOCKBUSTER Fight.”

Needless to say, the world was not swept up in Clay-mania with the release of ClayFighter 63⅓. It’s fairly telling that one of the most positive reviews penned for the game came with that aforementioned Nintendo Power cover story issue, where the version being reviewed still featured the full cast of characters (including the infamous Hobo Cop). By the assigned reviewer’s metric: “The moves are smoothly animated and often hilarious to watch,” and “There seems to be almost an endless supply of new Claytalities and other ‘alities.’”^[9b] For the record? There aren’t any other kinds of “-alities” in the game, and no evidence seems to suggest that there ever were any other varieties planned. The review stops just short of providing an actual final score for the game, though extrapolating and averaging the category scores across ‘Graphics & Sound’ (4.2 out of 5), ‘Play Control’ (3.2), ‘Challenge’ (4.0), and ‘Theme & Fun’ (3.8) would yield you something like a 76%? Still fairly generous if you ask me, even if it doesn’t quite line up with the accompanying claim that the game is “quite possibly the most entertaining fighting game ever molded.”

A 3.7-scoring [out of 10] review by IGN’s Matt Casamassina is far more pointed in its criticism — though it too seems to be based on some other non-finalized version of the game (mentioning Hobo Cop as one of the unlockable characters is something of a clue). Diving headfirst in hyperbole, it opens with a bold statement proclaiming “Clayfighter is so terrible it sets the standards for bad. It takes bad to a whole new level, in fact, and then to a level after that.”^[11] More reasonable critique by GameSpot’s Jeff Gerstmann contends that “[ClayFighter 63⅓] simply can’t compete with a real fighting game in any category. Even if the graphics and music were great, the game would still play terribly.”^[12] A resulting 3.1 score lands in close range of IGN’s, and would seem to speak for the general consensus among most gaming mags of the era. Simply put: The unfinished feel of the product was picked up on by most everyone, and the flaws in control and combat were deemed inexcusable at this stage in games history. With too many other, better fighting games poised as ClayFighter’s competition come late 1997, Interplay’s half-baked effort stood no chance.

And yet, Interplay refused to throw in the towel — persisting for one final bout. Over the course of six months (during which time they would abandon the PS1 version), they put ClayFighter 63⅓ back into development: Finding ways to re-incorporate as much of their cut content as possible, polishing up the presentation, and generally trying to see their original vision through to completion. Sure, they still couldn’t quite live up to the photorealistic claymation spectacle promised in original target renders; but they weren’t about to scrap all the work they had already done on creating those 3D environments, for one thing. This work was less about rebuilding the game from the ground up, and more about reshaping all that they had already crafted into a better realized work. A “Sculptor’s Cut,” so to speak? As for what changes this would entail… well, I must confess that I’ve already gone over pretty much all of them. My “suggestions” for how to improve 63⅓ were meant to read like the list of issues Sculptor’s Cut was intended to resolve.

ClayFighter: Sculptor’s Cut for N64 (Interplay, 1998)

There was only one small problem with developing this updated version of the game: Nintendo were no longer interested in distributing it through retail channels. Evidently, the whole experience with heavily promoting and repeatedly delaying 63⅓ – only to have the final product turn out to be something of a flop – soured the hardware giant on taking a second risk with them. An alternative theory might be that they weren’t willing to foot the large manufacturing cost for a full order of expanded 128 megabit cartridges, and offered only a limited quantity run to Interplay. For yet one more hypothesis, perhaps both companies noticed a decent number in rentals for 63⅓ versus underwhelming retail sales (estimated at 60,000 units come holiday season of ‘97^[13]), and simply decided to cater more to that market? Whatever the case may be, the decision made was final: Sculptor’s Cut would be made available exclusively for rental at Blockbuster Video locations across North America, with a rough estimate of just 20,000 cartridges having been produced.^[14]

You’ll remember that ClayFighter: Tournament Edition had similarly released as a rental exclusive at Blockbuster some four years prior. Of course, these weren’t the first or last games that Blockbuster would exclusively stock in agreement with Nintendo, and you’ll find that a number of the others were either other “special edition” carts or releases of decidedly dubious quality. But ClayFighter’s returning to rental-only for their latest enhanced edition would seem to demonstrate that there was at least some viability to the business model, as you’d figure that Interplay wouldn’t have put the time or money into revamping 63⅓ if they didn’t believe it would at least break even in the end. All that being said: 20,000 carts was reportedly an unusually small order, even for this particular distribution method. Further proof of little faith in the endeavor by Nintendo, I suppose? In any case, the small run of revision cartridges would be made available for rental come April 1998, giving the world a three-day-basis glimpse at what could’ve / should’ve been.

Arguably the most significant change here is the return of four cut characters. Lady Liberty’s presence finally brings a much-needed female fighter to the roster, Lockjaw lives to serve as Dr. Kiln’s loyal hound, the Zappa Yow Yow Boys remind us that racist caricatures are a recurring theme, and High Five should really be called “Half Finished.” Seriously: Lacking any Claytalities and having a grand total of one super attack, it’s clear as day that High Five still wasn’t ready for prime time. Either this, or his inclusion as a playable character was a complete afterthought; where Danger Productions only provided so many frames that Interplay could use, with the idea that he might only be serving as something like a miniboss or background element. Considering High Five’s backstory as being Dr. Kiln’s amputated / disembodied hand, I could even picture him originally being intended to serve as something like a helper character or summon for his original owner, rather than as a standalone character.

ClayFighter: Sculptor’s Cut for N64 (Interplay, 1998)

Of course, the changes to how the game plays and feels are key as well. Keeping the fighters on fixed rails running through the arenas definitely mitigates a number of control and flow issues, as well as now allowing for practical dashes to take the place of side-stepping. Furthermore, the move away from Killer Instinct‘s more obtuse combo system allows for altogether more accessible combat; where players of any experience level should be able to pick up and play confidently. There’s an argument to be made that there being not as much to master might mean less longevity for a fighting game, but let’s face it: There’s really nowhere to go but up from 63⅓, and this whole package was intended to be played on a rental basis anyhow. The simplified gameplay is absolutely for the better in this scenario. The only potential issue here is the further remapping of some existing specials and supers, to where folk still used to the original game may need some re-adjusting.

ClayFighter: Call of Putty (working title) for NDS (Interplay, unreleased)

To be very clear, here: Sculptor’s Cut still doesn’t make for a stand-out fighting game. The sum of these improvements brings the game to the level of “functional” — far from exceptional. The style clash between polygonal 3D backgrounds and frequently choppy 2D claymation is still as distracting as ever, the comedy is still more miss than hit (not to mention highly repetitive), and the sense of control over characters still leaves some to be desired. The revision also adds little in the way of match options and customization, and nothing in the way of furthering multiplayer support (other than adding a proper ‘VS Mode’ option to the main menu). At best, it’s still a no-frills fighting game facing stiff competition in an era of excess and iteration.

Sculptor’s Cut marks the final release in the ClayFighter franchise (as of the time of this writing, et cetera). While it was highly unlikely that Sculptor’s Cut could’ve really done much to undo the damage of 63⅓ – especially given the limited nature of its release – it is still made to serve as the tombstone for a five year-ran franchise. Rather than doom the series to permanent obscurity though, Sculptor’s Cut might actually be something of a saving grace for it? Recalling the fact that only 20,000 copies of the game were produced, and that Blockbuster Video were probably not particularly interested in preserving them past their shelf date, surviving cartridges are something of a rarity these days — let alone complete in box copies! As such, fees for the instruction manual alone command prices of $1,000-plus;^[15] rating it as one of the most sought-after titles in the N64 library for collectors, and pretty much guaranteeing that we’ll continue to see news stories pop up about every associated eBay auction for the next few decades. Maybe not the legacy Interplay intended, sure, but better than none at all?

That being said, Interplay did try on more than one occasion to revive the fallen franchise — if never to any degree of completion. What seems to be the first attempt came in 2009, where it was announced that a new ClayFighter title was “planned for a Summer 2010 release via digital download through Nintendo’s WiiWare and DSiWare services.”^[16] The plan was to assign development duties to StudioBlack Games – then-home of one of ClayFighter’s previous programmers, Eric Hart – and to deliver “improved graphics and revamped game play to take advantage of Nintendo’s current generation hardware.” According to collected information over the course of the next few years, a working title for the release was pitched as “ClayFighter: Call of Putty,” and the character roster would have seen the same characters and sprites from Sculptor’s Cut recycled once more across some [potentially] redesigned stages. Needless to say, this decidedly ill-conceived idea never came to fruition, and was dropped without so much as a formal announcement of its cancellation.

Trailer for an unreleased ClayFighter installment, teased by Interplay in 2015.

A second attempt was made as recently as 2015, where a teaser trailer released on February 28th of that year (re-uploaded here) tried entirely too hard to push the “ironic” qualities of the franchise. Going so far as to self-deprecate themselves by billing Interplay as “the company that brought you smash hits such as Tommy Tronic and Crazy Cats Love” (two games so obscure so as to not even have MobyGames entries), the entire minute and thirty second video is a build-up to the punchline that ClayFighter is the franchise being resurrected here — rather than Earthworm Jim, as a looming silhouette is made to imply. Over the course of the next year, not much else came to be revealed about the game; until a thread on 4chan’s /v/ board (archived here) saw a visit by an anonymous poster claiming to be an ex-Interplay staffer. By their completely unverifiable testimony: “Clayfighter was a disaster of a game because Herve Caen who runs Interplay managed to fuck the entire project and team over.” They go on to detail a number of further unverifiable behind-the-scenes roadblocks and drama, speculate that the game was meant to serve as a Mortal Kombat Trilogy-esque mash-up of content from all three of the original games, and ultimately declare that official news of an unofficial cancellation will never come out because – to quote them – “Herve doesn’t like to acknowledge cancelled projects and everyone ditching his sinking ship of a company.”

Past a certain point, none of this hearsay really mattered much anyhow: The fledgling remains of Interplay would attempt to sell off most of its IPs come turn of September of 2016 — ClayFighter being among them.^[17] From all I can gather, no one has yet to purchase the rights to the property, leaving its future in limbo. Someone might think to ask Visual Concepts if they’re interested in taking back the reins to the franchise, but they’re probably plenty content continuing to develop unending iterations in 2K Sports’ NBA and WWE franchises. The fact of the matter is, ClayFighter’s place is firmly in the past, and the efforts [and expenditures] that would be required to reboot the franchise would be almost guaranteed not to pay off in the end. Whatever name recognition the brand might have is likely too sullied or insignificant to warrant the investment, and thus it’s likely that it’ll continue to stagnate and further diminish in value. The honest best case scenario is that it goes so long without getting picked up by anyone, the asking price will hit such a low so as to get picked up by some sort of mobile game publisher; who ultimately goes on to put out something like what Call of Putty was planned to be on Android and iOS, and charges something like $3.99 for it. Yes, I’m aware that my optimism is infectious.

Again, none of this is to say that the concept behind ClayFighter isn’t a viable, marketable idea. There’s plenty room for new fighting game franchises in the current space, and something like a colorful claymation-themed title could be plenty welcome! The problem here is with the history of the franchise at hand, and the continued steps it took in the wrong direction with each of its sequels. By the time we had Santa Claus accidently lodging racist caricatures in his ass, all hope for the brand was already lost. The move waiting to be made now by a potential developer is to create a game that gets back to what made the first ClayFighter special in the first place: A light-hearted, vibrant, family-friendly fighting game, with a charming and uniquely hand-crafted aesthetic. None of that requires digging out the likes of Bad Mr. Frosty and Hoppy from their plots in the ground, and it’s likely that their stench would only serve to scare off potential consumers anyhow.

Actress Lupita Nyong’o was once quoted as saying “Clay can be dirt in the wrong hands, but clay can be art in the right hands.” While I’m fairly certain the original context was her talking metaphorically about her hair, I’m gonna go ahead and take it something like face value here: Interplay and Danger Productions once managed to create a decently-compelling piece of art with the clay that went into the original ClayFighter. But over time, and having re-worked and re-shaped that clay so many times as to wither and crumble it, they turned it all into a pile of dirt by the point ClayFighter 63⅓ had released. And try as you might to sculpt and shape dried dirt, you can only pack it so tightly. And when you pour water on it? That’s called mud. You can make mud pies out of it, but nobody really wants to eat those. I’m losing track of the analogy here. ClayFighter 63⅓ is a bad game.