10 Earliest Games With Painstaking Claymation Graphics
251There’s something mesmerising about stop-motion animation. It’s the sense that you’re watching real things, actual models that have been lovingly crafted by hand and that exist in the real world, not just on a hard drive somewhere. Fingerprints left in clay are an imprint of humanity, a reminder that a person spent hours bending a maquette into this shape and that, giving it life.
There was a surge of interest in using clay models for making videogames in the early 1990s. Goro, a four-armed boss character in 1992’s Mortal Kombat, was created using stop-motion animation, as were the enemy characters in the pioneering 1993 first-person shooter DOOM. At the time, 3D computer modelling was difficult and required costly hardware, so capturing images of a real-life model provided a relatively easy shortcut.
More games followed that featured an even greater reliance on stop motion. 1993’s ClayFighter was a parody of Street Fighter II that used clay models for all of the fighters, and it was successful enough to spawn two sequels. Primal Rage the following year was another claymation fighting game, this time featuring dinosaurs and apes that were reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen’s special effects work on movies like Jason And The Argonauts and Clash Of The Titans. And Claymates, from the same studio as ClayFighter, was a vibrant 1994 platformer that used plasticine models for all of the characters and enemies.
But the real breakthrough came with The Neverhood in 1996, a point and click adventure that marked the first time a videogame was made entirely using stop-motion animation. Previous titles had used clay models for certain characters, while generating levels and backgrounds using a computer. But The Neverhood featured real-life sets sculpted from clay, and everything was created using cameras and painstakingly poised figurines.
The Neverhood was the zenith of 1990s stop-motion videogames, and a remarkable achievement, but it also marked a period of decline. As 3D modelling rapidly improved and became cheaper to use, game designers moved away from using clay models. A 2D platformer sequel to The Neverhood, called Skullmonkeys, came and went in 1998 without much fanfare. Clay animation had been abandoned in favour of polygons. But those quirky clay games left a lasting impression on youngsters who were lucky enough to play them – and now that generation is bringing stop-motion games back.
Words by Lewis Packwood (Whynow Magazine)
Intro and Outro Music
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Games Featured
0:00 Intro
0:26 1988 Reikai Doushi (Arcade)
1:03 1990 Trog! (Arcade)
1:42 1993 Clay Fighter (Super Nintendo)
2:21 1993 Claymates (Super Nintendo)
2:56 1994 Clay Fighter 2: Judgement Clay (Super Nintendo)
3:32 1995 The Dark Eye (PC Windows)
4:15 1995 PO'ed (3DO)
4:50 1996 The Neverhood (PC Windows)
5:35 1997 Clay Fighter 63 1/3 (Nintendo 64)
6:12 1998 Skullmonkeys (Playstation)
6:50 Outro
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