ClayFighter

About ClayFighter

ClayFighter (1993) is Visual Concepts and Interplay's comic SNES fighting game, a parody of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat with stop-motion clay fighters such as a snowman, an Elvis impersonator and an opera-singing Viking.

ClayFighter in Depth

A meteor made entirely of clay crash-lands at an American circus, and its goo turns the circus attractions into bizarre caricatures with superpowers. The eight fighters, digitised from photographed clay models, are Bad Mr. Frosty, a snowman with an attitude who throws snowballs and rolls into opponents as a snow boulder; Blob, a master of "goojitsu" who morphs into objects such as a buzzsaw; Blue Suede Goo, an Elvis impersonator who throws musical notes and slashes with his hair; Bonker, a manic clown with pies and a big hammer; Helga, a Viking opera singer with a sonic scream; Ickybod Clay, a pumpkin-headed ghost who teleports; Taffy, whose stretchy body gives him some of the longest reach in the game; and Tiny, a posing wrestler who mostly punches.

Each fights on a themed stage, such as Frosty's icy lake with penguin spectators or Blue Suede Goo's flaming piano reading "Big Hunk O' Burnin' Clay". The final boss, N. Boss, a string of pearls whose name puns on M. Bison and "end boss", copies others' projectiles and is the only character not made of clay.

Making ClayFighter

Visual Concepts president Greg Thomas conceived it as a "new" and "funny" alternative to violent fighting games, and took the idea to animators Ken Pontac and David Bleiman of Danger Productions in Brisbane, California. The two companies worked for nearly a year: Danger's artists spent months sculpting the fighters in different poses, and they were animated by stop-motion photography and digitised with a video camera linked to an Amiga, a process designer Jeremy Airey called long and tedious. Interplay spliced new animations and recorded the music, voices and sound effects.

It was released on the SNES in November 1993 and the Genesis in 1994, and had sold 200,000 copies by 1994. GamePro wrote that "fighting fans with a funny bone will enjoy ClayFighter", and EGM praised the Genesis version for keeping all the content, though it needed a six-button pad. Tournament Edition fixed glitches and added stages and modes in 1994, followed by ClayFighter 2: Judgment Clay and ClayFighter 63⅓.