On opening night, the circus was set ablaze and burned completely to the ground by its shady and villainous operator, the Jester, who intended to cash in on an insurance policy. Afterwards, the Jester was convicted for the deaths of the fire victims, but before he was executed, the Jester warned that the souls of the victims would be forever tormented. Many years later, a Native American man named Raven who had lost relatives to the fire goes to investigate the site where the circus was held, and where strange happenings have been reported.
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Sega Channel was fuckin sick, because without being exposed to the amount of terrible games for no additional cost I would never have developed the kind of taste I have now. This game is pretty much as bad as the reviews will say, but it's invaluable to my history as I remember often booting it up and going "what the hell are they wanting me to even try to do," and it might be the first time I started thinking about that relationship at all.
Nightmare Circus is one of the most fucked up games I've ever played, the sheer lack of player direction and obtuseness completely mystified the shit out of me to the point I thought the game wasn't even completable, and that it was some kind of crappy prototype that made it to Brazilian retail and the Sega Channel.
It turns out I was only half-right, the game IS completable, but it took until 2009 for someone to post a video to youtube explaining how to get through the game. As it stands, I find it laughable for anyone to pretend that the game isn't unfinished at least from a design viewpoint. It takes literally a whole minute for the final boss to spawn in, and the game lacks fanfare for pretty much everything that occurs like stage completions or even the ending to the game.
This thing plays like some kind of crazy experiment where they gave a platforming protagonist a gigantic beat'em up move set that's mostly unneeded, and then proceeded to make progression a complete mystery in an attempt to add "puzzles" to the game. Why does this game need to use the MODE button of all things in combination with another button to activate "psychic mode" or whatever it is? How comes your protagonist can both crouch and go prone on his stomach, where he looks like he's humping the ground? Why is there an entire button for going "BLEEEEEH"? The last one is for stealing a boss's move if I recall correctly. Yes, you can steal moves in this game like Mega Man for some reason. As you can tell it's all too overambitious for it's own good.
This game sucks due to it's obvious beta-ness, but I kinda like it in a fucked up way. At least it's interesting and has good music unlike Sword of Sodan or Heavy Nova, so I dunno if I agree with it being "the worst ever" on Genesis.
It turns out I was only half-right, the game IS completable, but it took until 2009 for someone to post a video to youtube explaining how to get through the game. As it stands, I find it laughable for anyone to pretend that the game isn't unfinished at least from a design viewpoint. It takes literally a whole minute for the final boss to spawn in, and the game lacks fanfare for pretty much everything that occurs like stage completions or even the ending to the game.
This thing plays like some kind of crazy experiment where they gave a platforming protagonist a gigantic beat'em up move set that's mostly unneeded, and then proceeded to make progression a complete mystery in an attempt to add "puzzles" to the game. Why does this game need to use the MODE button of all things in combination with another button to activate "psychic mode" or whatever it is? How comes your protagonist can both crouch and go prone on his stomach, where he looks like he's humping the ground? Why is there an entire button for going "BLEEEEEH"? The last one is for stealing a boss's move if I recall correctly. Yes, you can steal moves in this game like Mega Man for some reason. As you can tell it's all too overambitious for it's own good.
This game sucks due to it's obvious beta-ness, but I kinda like it in a fucked up way. At least it's interesting and has good music unlike Sword of Sodan or Heavy Nova, so I dunno if I agree with it being "the worst ever" on Genesis.
I played this as a child on Sega Channel and didn't understand or enjoy it.