Claymates (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Interplay's 1994 platformer for the Super Nintendo, Claymates.

I always thought that claymation was so cool. The sheer amount of effort, talent, and resources required to do it well make it something of an rarity, but that just makes it all the more impressive on the occasions that you see it. That goes equally for video games as it does for film or TV: Claymates was one of the first games I had ever seen like it, second only after Visual Concepts' previous game, Clay Fighter.

Claymates is a mascot-style platformer in the vein of Mario and Sonic, and it makes a huge effort to leave its mark. You get several different clay animal characters (with 'tude, of course - it's 1994) that you can switch between by picking up the appropriately colored ball of clay, and each has a special ability - the mouse runs as turbo speed (hence the box's playful notice that the game features "blaze processing"), the duck can fly for a few seconds with a running start, the fish can swim and blow bubbles... you get the idea.

The levels are all designed to take thorough advantage of these abilities, and they are *huge*. You don't have to fully explore them to complete them, but there are tons of secret areas and hidden items for anyone that enjoys exploring - you can easily run out the ten minute stage timer out if you get too absorbed in wandering around.

There are also some novel little puzzles between each stage which I've never seen in another game, before or since. They're fun, light distractions that give you a nice break after clearing one of the huge stages. And you'll probably need the down time, since there is no save or password system. It has to be played from start to finish.

The levels all are pretty well designed and have about a million potential paths you can take through them, but be careful about your speed. It may look cute and friendly, but enemies are bloodthirsty and easy to blindly run into if your are reckless. It is not at all an easy game. I think I'd actually call it a fair draw between Claymates and Plok! when it comes to both charm and difficulty level. And length. And fun, for that matter.

And then there's the star attraction - the game's presentation. It looks absolutely awesome. The player character sprites, the bosses, and many of the regular sprites are digitized images of clay figures, and unlike ClayFighter, since the characters are so much smaller, the animation is far more fluid and impressive to look at here. I particularly loved the bosses - Sam, the giant puppy, was a real standout. Everything has some kind of silly body language or sassy facial expression, and those details lend the game a whole lot of personality.

So does the music, which is pretty incredible throughout. It reminds me of the stuff in the The Lord of the Rings game - the samples are of uncommonly high quality, and some of these songs are total ear-worms. My favorite has to be the piratey theme (fifes and accordions, woo!) that plays during the Pacific area's levels, but they're all good.

I rarely see any mention of Claymates on the internet, so I thought that I would give it a bit of exposure. It's an excellent game that deserves a few more people singing its praises. How does such a well-made game seemingly become all but forgotten?

There is a silver-lining to its lack of popularity, at least. Because nobody knows nor cares about it, even though its obscure, you can find a copy of it pretty cheap. You can get a cart for $10-15 without much problem, and there's even a sealed copy on eBay at the moment for a mere Benjamin. Go on... you know you want it ;)
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!