I mean... it's not GOOD, but I think it could be worse.

Granted, I'm not, like... a master of fighting games. I don't play a whole ton of them, so maybe this game is worse than I feel like it is. But I like it's charm, visuals are a mixed bag, but man, those clay character designs. SO good.

I mean... when they're not incredibly racist.

But hey, maybe Sumo Santa balances it back out. Could be better, could be worse.

Hey this is just a shittier, grosser Killer Instinct!

One thing I will give this game, is that the combo system is surprisingly lenient. Every time that I thought "that was it I can't keep going", it turned out that I could keep going, and it doesn't have crazy execution or anything like that, it's very free flow and casual friendly. You can just chain things. It's not a deep game but most of my enjoyment of it came from this.

It's... fine, but hell no I'm not playing it again as I would have to endure the shit:

-So, the framerate suffers the more you land hits, because of the million particles that fly out of every character when they get hit. Isn't that great?

-It also looks teeeerrible. The 3d backgrounds look bad and the 2d sprites clash with them. The character animations look choppy. The menus are very cheap looking and really as a whole the game just looks low quality.

-Then there's the fecalfunny. Characters are constantly talking, making terrible quips or painful jokes. I found most of it annoying even if the voice acting was actually great.


If you'd like to play as naked santa or capt booger, sure go ahead you freak.

The Clayfighter series are parody games that supposedly make fun of other fighting games. Previous entries made fun of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, while this one tackles Killer Instinct. When I think of a parody fighting game, it brings up the idea of a creative and funny game that has over-the-top moves that is enjoyable but likely quite simple. Clayfighter 63⅓ is none of those things.

Clayfighter aims for a claymation style, but this is completely spoiled by the very low quality sprites and extremely poor animation. On top of that, none of the characters were anything I wanted to play with, being a mixture of generic things, things 6 year olds find “gross” (fat, snot) and racist caricatures. Oh, and Earthworm Jim. Every character also has extremely annoying voice clips, a complete waste of the talent they hired (which includes legends like Frank Welker, Tress MacNeille, Jim Cummings, Rob Paulsen and Dan Castellaneta).

The arenas are slightly more interesting than fighting games. They’re not as deep as Mace: The Dark Age, but you can hit your opponent through doors and reach other arenas. Unfortunately, the camera is terrible and you can end up fighting behind scenery. The fighting itself is also really dull, being incredibly slow and clunky, with button mashing working very well.

The game is also very light on content, with just one mode of fighting random opponents (with no attempt of putting it inside a story) and…options. No practice or additional modes and not very many options. It’s an atrocious game devoid of anything fun or amusing.

Reviewing ClayFighter 63 1/3 is tough because two of the core mechanics that make good fighting games (performance, combat, gameplay) are actually some of the weakest points in the game. Where Clayfighter really shines is the character/fighter design as well as the stage/levels design which feature different sections and environments.

Additionally, the character design and the clay presentation is great. Humor is on the edgy side and may not be for everyone but I personally enjoyed most of it through the different characters and their backgrounds.

Clayfighter 63 1/3 is the most racist game I've played since Shadow Madness.

Bought this one cause I found it for cheap and because I have a vague recollection of playing this one warm Summer night before watching Free Willy, and my approach to collecting N64 games was essentially "if I laid eyes on a cart in the 90s, I buy the video game." Terrible policy, this is why I own Quest 64. As a series, Clayfighter shoots for the same level of humor as The Garbage Pail Kids, which both operate on a similar level of subversiveness that is really only appealing when you're like, 7-years-old, and that probably explains why I rented it. Each fighter is some sort of puerile pun or caricature given life and forced to fight - or, more accurately, jump around a whole lot and not actually do anything while time slowly ticks away, leaving you to contemplate the choices that brought you here.

Mechanically, this is essentially a Killer Instinct clone, making use of the same combo-focused system of hitting an opponent with an opener, then chaining that with an auto-double into a linker. True to form, you can also break your opponent's combo to punish them and turn the tables. Since the game is so reliant on this system, single strikes are only capable of dealing chip damage. Good luck actually initiating combos, though, because the AI in this game is positively non-confrontational and will enter into a perpetual loop of jumping backwards anytime you make an attempt to get near them. If this game has a meta, it's to stand perfectly still and wait for your opponent to exhaust their projectiles and come to you. Sometimes, however, they'll just stand perfectly still and you have to take a step forward to sort of jar their AI and attempt the strategy again. Every match has a 90 second timer that somehow feels like it takes five minutes to elapse, so when I say Clayfighter is a tedious game trust that it's an understatement. Hey you know what else I own? A copy of Killer Instinct: Gold. I have zero reason to be playing this when there's a perfectly good Killer Instinct in the other room. But I did it for you, the reader. I hope you're entertained, because I sure wasn't. Please remember to follow and like my reviews and ring that bell so you can be notified when I play shit like Dangerous Streets instead of good fighting games.

Aesthetically, Clayfighter 63 1/3 is ugly with intent. Sprites were made using real clay models, which gives them a very distinctive and textured look that only amplifies how hideous the character designs are. The character models are (generally) great, but they clash against the fully 3D backgrounds. I'm of two minds on this. On one hand the contrast helps highlight the character models by allowing them to stand out more, on the other hand the backgrounds are incredibly dull and the locations patently uninteresting. There's also some... questionable character designs. Kung Pow is a profoundly derogative caricature of Chinese people, complete with buckteeth and bowl cut. There is also Houngan, a Jamacian witch doctor who looks like he was designed by someone who probably has a few photos of themself in blackface they'd rather not get out, and who I am distressingly the most proficient with out of the entire roster. And yet, Hobo Cop was cut from the game because Nintendo disapproved of his design, deeming it "offensive." Knowing Nintendo, this likely has less to do with concerns over the depiction of homeless people and more with not wanting to make cops look bad.

Clayfighter 63 1/3 also shipped in a fairly incomplete state. There were four characters who were cut from the original release that later made it into the Blockbuster exclusive Sclupter's Cut, which in terms of overall units seems about as rare as Panzer Dragoon Saga, making it one of the most expensive N64 carts on the secondhand market. I was surprised to learn that the improvements made for the Sclupter's Cut were not limited to just new roster additions, but that the flow of combat, character movesets, and menus were all changed as well, and that new storylines and an opening cutscene was added. However, Sculpter's Cut also seems to be in a somewhat unfinished state as High Five, one of the newly added characters, is lacking a low brutal-kick, supers, claytality, and the ability to throw.

The Clayfighter franchise feels to me like it is either destined to get purchased by Piko Interactive or end up as the next abandoned series dumbasses transfix on and fabricate faux adoration for, which inevitably results in the rights holder capitalizing with a dogshit sequel nobody actually wants. As dire as those sound, there's nothing sacred about these games. If anything, such a fate would be perfectly in-character. Let it happen, I say. Fuck it.