Clu Clu Land

About Clu Clu Land

Clu Clu Land (1984) is Nintendo's maze puzzle game for the Famicom and NES in which the balloonfish Bubbles swings around posts to uncover hidden gold ingots, while stunning the sea urchins that stole the kingdom's treasure.

Clu Clu Land in Depth

The Unira, a kind of sea urchin, have stolen all the treasure of the underwater kingdom of Clu Clu Land, and the heroine Bubbles, a female balloonfish called Gloopy in Japan, sets out to recover it. In each stage she swims around a maze to uncover all the gold ingots, which usually form the shape of a heart or a mushroom, while avoiding the Unira and black holes. She can only change direction by grabbing the turning posts placed through the stages and swinging around them. A sound wave stuns the Unira, and stunned ones can be pushed into a wall for points. Bubbles loses a life if a Unira hurts her, if she falls into a black hole or if time runs out. In later levels, ingots flip between their uncovered and dull sides, so she must pass over them an odd number of times.

The title anglicises "Kuru Kuru", Japanese onomatopoeia for going "around and around", after Bubbles spinning round the posts; the same phrase gave its name to Kuru Kuru Kururin. The arcade VS. Clu Clu Land doubled the puzzles, added a Boss Unira and new level themes, and became the basis of the last Famicom Disk System game, Clu Clu Land: Welcome to New Clu Clu Land.

Making Clu Clu Land

Nintendo developed and published Clu Clu Land for the Famicom in Japan in 1984, released it in North America in 1985 as an NES launch title, and in Europe in 1987, with an arcade version on the Nintendo VS. System. A Famicom Disk System port added minor enhancements such as difficulty selection. In a June 1986 survey of the NES catalogue, the Chicago Tribune's Steven Kosek and Dennis Lynch picked out it and Ice Climber as the games that kept their interest. It returned on the Game Boy Advance in the 2004 Famicom Mini series, in the NES Remix series, on the Virtual Console for the 3DS and Wii U and on Nintendo Classics, and Hamster released the arcade version in Arcade Archives on the Switch in 2018. Its elements recur across Nintendo's games: Bubbles is a trophy in Super Smash Bros. Melee and a Spirit in Ultimate, the soundtrack appears as stage music, WarioWare: Smooth Moves and Twisted! include Clu Clu Land microgames, and Bubbles is a costume in Super Mario Maker.