It was a decade and a half ago that I played Circus Caper for the first time, with my interest in the game coming from the flyer Toho packaged with Godzilla: Monster of Monsters. I eagerly rented the title at the first opportunity and warmed up my NES with high hopes for what Toho’s game might have in store. Four minutes and countless deaths later, I popped the game out of the system and placed it back in the box. However, much to my dismay, the residual experience would be forever burned into my psyche.

For the years that followed, whenever the topic of the worst video game was brought up I answered that it was Circus Caper. Since those years, my feelings toward the game haven’t changed much, although I never really forgot the game unlike numerous other titles which I played for the NES. There is a saying that there are two types of movies that stay readily in memory: remarkable ones and awful ones. I believe the same could be said for video games, and, because Circus Caper was so awful, I have never been able to forgot the title.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. First let’s answer a common question, which is what relation does this game pose to Toho’s cinema work? The answer is, for the most part, none… kind of. You see, once upon a time there was a game called Burn! Older Brother (Moeru! Oniisan – 燃える！お兄さん), which was based on a 1988 anime of the same name that Toho did produce. The game, published by Toho and developed by Advance Communication Company (the same team behind Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), was used as the starting point to create Circus Caper. However, the title was so completely transformed that it bears little resemblance to the original. Any references to the anime have been removed, the setting has shifted to a circus theme, and the characters have been entirely reimagined. Aside from the attacks, some level layouts and some bosses being direct copies, there’s very little left of the original. It seems Toho, likely uninterested in promoting the anime’s release in North America, wanted to capitalize on the game they published by creating something they thought would appeal to the North America market. This effort also included adding new mini-games, which feature a rather demeaning cameo from Toho’s most famous character: Godzilla. Fans of the King of the Monsters need not worry, though, as he appears in the game’s fifth level, which very few players will reach, in one of the mini-games that even fewer will engage with after the first level.

Anyway, as part of the change to Circus Caper the game got a new story, although not much of one. What little “plot” there is, is as follows: Tim and his sister Judy enter a town-wide carnival and become interested in the event’s main attraction, the circus. However, Tim has no money for admission, but the clown at the entrance is willing to roll some dice to see if they can enter for free. With a flick of his wrist, the dice hit the table and the clown exclaims that they have won (regardless of what the dice roll ends up being); unfortunately, it seems that the clown only has one ticket to give. So Tim, ever the gentlemen, allows his sister to attend while he waits outside. Eventually, the day gives away to night as the young boy is still waiting outside. Just then the vile Mr. Magic arrives on the scene to inform the boy that he has captured his sister. His reasoning for the nefarious act is that the young girl had stumbled upon his organization’s smuggling ring and must be silenced, or he learned of a vast fortunate that Judy’s parents are in control of and plans to extort the money out of them through ransom… or the game simply gives no justification, nor does it explain why Mr. Magic felt the need to give this information to Tim. Regardless, the young boy leaps into the hero roll effortlessly with a commanding “Shucks! You can’t have her!”, while venturing inside the tent where he is destined to die numerous times in the next few minutes…

 

Gameplay

Most players will experience mostly the same thing while playing through Circus Caper: they will begin at the start of the tent and make their way slowly to a large body of water, all the while an endless number of clowns with knives will leap around our young hero as they try to run him through. Out of the depths of the blue surf, two alligators will appear, jaws at the ready, as they slowly close their mouths and then open. The solution is obvious: leap on the closed mouths  to cross. Of course it never works out that way, as more than likely one of the clowns will hit the player, causing the controls to basically freeze up as Tim will then lazily slip into the water and his death below. Second attempt: the player rushes to the pool and manages to reach the second alligator before it quickly opens its mouth and relieves poor Tim of his legs. Third attempt: the player, with some luck, manages to clear both alligators and reaches the safe ground beyond. At this point the knifed clowns will be joined by flying, decapitated, clown heads that hover above (this is the stuff that nightmares are made of, kids). Little Timmy will eventually make his way to the second body of water, which is twice as long and with twice as many gators and has both clowns with knives and the flying heads all over the place. To make matters worse, the game often glitches so the other alligators don’t appear in time, forcing the boy to either leap into the water to his death or lose his legs instantly from the gator he is on.

What happens next varies, although it can range from a grown man cupping his eyes as tears readily flow, to finding some blunt object to end the game’s reign of terror and spare future generations. If by pure chance the player manages to clear this second body of water, then congratulations, although it’s highly suggested that they end on this high note. For if they advance and happen to die in the next stage or during the boss then it’s all the way back to the start of the game for them, along with a possible incident of tossing the controller across the room.

To pause from the main game for a moment, as mentioned earlier when Toho reworked this game into Circus Caper they introduced four largely unrelated mini-games. Players can access these mini-games by entering a door and can play them as often as they like. The first mini-game features a “Fairy” suggesting that young Tim take a break and jump over a moving spire of flames with a bear (which might only be considered “restful” compared to the knife-wielding clowns and alligators lurking outside). The second mini-game has Tim driving down a road while dodging boulders until time runs out (it’s unclear whether these are rooms or separate dimensions). The third mini-game involves Tim throwing baseballs at moving Rodan statues, where only golden ones score points, while hitting the numerous blue ones deducts points. Ultimately, you’ll likely earn just 2-3 points after a minute of play—something you could easily achieve by defeating just a few enemies in the main game. The final mini-game features Godzilla in what might be his most embarrassing appearance, as he attempts to touch his toes while the player repeatedly presses A (talk about fun!). The main issue with these mini-games, aside from being a bit tedious, is that points don’t matter at all in Circus Caper. There are no bonuses for accumulating points, and players lose all their points every time they continue, which happens far too frequently.

Now if by some stroke of luck, and against the designer’s intention, the player manages to actually reach the end of a level then they will be presented with a key to the next. This process is complete with a solid blue screen that then rapidly starts to shift between white and blue, as the development teams attempts one last ditch effort to stop the player through seizures, seeing as how the eye-gouging difficulty didn’t deter them. For if there is one thing to take away from Circus Caper it’s that even when you win, you’re still the loser.

 

Graphics

The graphics here are simple, even by the NES standards. For a lot of the game’s enemies it’s hard to tell exactly what they are (is that really a decapitated clown head with wings, and a miniature ballerina that just leapt into the bottomless pit?). Some of this is owed to trying to adapt existing enemies into new ones, like the spinning bear on a ball boss was originally a spinning female warrior with a katana. Or also like how the Sack Clown boss was literally a sack of garbage before… I guess there’s not much you can do with that design.

As for performance, the characters clip whenever they are on top of either Tim or another enemy too, which is a standard problem in most of the older Nintendo games. The backgrounds tend to be very generic too, although the system was never known for diverse backgrounds anyway. On the plus side, at least most of the “out of game” images, such as the introduction story, are constructed rather well. Although I suppose the “seizure” sequences shouldn’t go unmentioned here, and it’s bad enough that it’s worth deducting the score in two places. In fact, I’d say the graphics overall are a step up from the original Japanese game that this was heavily reworked from… but that’s not big praise.

 

Audio

The game features a very small, and highly repetitive, collection of music that is utilized through out the game. None of the music here is particularly memorable or good, even when keeping the limitations of the Nintendo hardware in mind. As for the sound effects, there pretty much aren’t any except the punches, kicks, and the soccer ball.

 

Controls

The game’s primary controls, jump and punch, are easy and can be done without much trouble. There is a third kick move as well, which is done while holding down and is the only way to strike smaller enemies. However, the item system is far less convenient, as the player scrolls through the items by pressing select. It seems easy enough, but the problem is that the endless amount of enemies make it so there often isn’t a spare moment to do this, and the item is used through the attack button so the player is a sitting duck while changing items or they will be forced to waste them to try and avoid getting hit. Of course one must consider that a NES controller only has four buttons, but that still doesn’t excuse the implementation of the item setup. In fact, I can think of two clear solutions: 1. that “Up” replace jump, and one of the buttons is used just for items 2. that they utilize the system set up in Mega Man, where items are selected from the pause menu.

Moving on to more problems addressed by the controls comes the aspect of hit detection, which is very poor. In fact, foes will often leap on top of the player, as Tim’s punches will fly through them with no effect. Being struck by enemies also cause the controls in general to crap out, for example if there is a pit nearby and Tim tries to jump he seems to become a magnet for the unholy netherworlds below. The game’s second stage is just awful in regards to the controls too, as poor Timmy dons a rocket pack which grants him the “ability” to take nearly 5 tries to simply get over a ledge that would have taken a single regular jump (I can’t help but feel the game’s designer is laughing somewhere).

 

Replay

Even though one will likely grow tired of Circus Caper long before beating it (or even clearing the second body of water, for that matter), the nightmares will still remain…

 

Overall

By any standards, Circus Caper is simply an awful game. I cut the title some slack in the audio and graphics department, but honestly it’s hard to mess these up in regards to what the NES was capable of. I would like to point out, though, that roughly two years ago I revisited this game, and actually beat it from start to finish, which had become some masochistic goal of mine since my troubling introduction to the game all those years before. Unfortunately, trumpets didn’t sound nor did world peace reside when this accomplishment was met. In fact, all that happened was that the lackluster story was wrapped up, as Judy tells about how she was used for target practice with knives (I’m not joking). At least Mr. Magic wasn’t anti-climatic, as he was as challenging as one could hope for, although I did string together a nice list of profanities every time he killed poor Tim, as it meant having to venture through his painfully long maze like level yet again.

Regardless, it’s safe to say that Circus Caper is one of worst things Toho ever put their name on.