Circus Caper (NES) Playthrough
196A playthrough of Toho's 1989 action-platformer for the NES, Circus Caper.
Circus Caper is a game that I came to know after it renting a few times as a kid. I doubt I would've ever heard of it had I not seen it on the shelf at the video store. None of my friends knew anything about it, and I don't recall it getting much attention in magazines, but the box used to grab my attention.
It's a platformer in which you play as a Tim, a kid whose little sister is kidnapped at the circus by a demented clown named Mr. Magic. To rescue her, Tim has to battle circus performers and exotic animals across six stages set beneath the big top in search of clues.
Most of it is straightforward platformer stuff. You kill enemies by kicking them or by using one of the many weapons that they drop - there's a screen-clearing bomb, a throwable hammer, a soccer ball that rolls along the floor, and a circling shield that looks like a piece of licorice candy. You can also grab food to refill your health and blocks that you can use to reach high platforms.
There are loads minigame rooms scattered throughout, and by doing things like leaping over fire, dodging boulders in a car, and pelvic thrusting with Godzilla, you can use these pit-stops to earn extra points. Points don't really matter since you get unlimited continues, but the games are there if you feel like playing them, or in case you need to make a quick escape from the throng of enemies closing in on you.
I think the most notable thing about Circus Caper is how creepy it is. The intro seems to imply some really unsavory things, and the cast of bad guys is fairly terrifying. If that's not enough for you, then you ought to check out the nightmare fuel clown art in the instruction book.
Circus Caper is a weird and thoroughly memorable game. It has the same zany streak running through it that you'll find in many Japanese-made NES platformers from the late 80s, like Amagon, Astyanax, and The Krion Conquest. Unfortunately, it doesn't play nearly as well as those games.
The controls are sloppy (especially in that awful jetpack stage!), streams of respawning enemies constantly swarm you, the minigames are boring, and though the game is frustrating, it never poses a legit challenge. From the beginning of most stages you can skip straight to the boss by jumping over the left-hand wall, enemies drop plenty of food, and you can use your shields to tear through the bosses like they're tissue paper. The hardest part of the game is probably figuring out that you have to use a block to reach the exit of the first level.
Here's something interesting that you might not know about Circus Caper: it's a localized version of a game based on Moeru! Oniisan, a manga-turned-anime that was popular in Japan in the late 80s. There were so many changes made to the game, however, that Circus Caper bears very little resemblance to it - it's essentially a brand new game, similar to how Sofel handled Casino Kid's localization.
I found the game somewhat appealing when I was a kid, and as an adult, I can still see what drew me to it. The setting was novel for a video game, it made an attempt to tell a story with cutscenes, and the gameplay moves along at a good pace. But as an adult, I can't say that I'm a huge fan. It's not terrible, but the NES's library is full of high quality platformers that Circus Caper simply can't compete with.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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