Circus Charlie
Circus Charlie is a circus-themed collection of mini-games, most of which involving jumping over things. The player controls Circus Charlie, a clown, as he attempts to perform stunts such as leaping off trapeze swings and riding circus animals through hoops of fire in order to entertain the audience.
You play as this clown in Circus Charlie, through five different levels. Levels like riding on a lion and jumping through great circles of fire, riding on a horse and jumping on trampolines (!) and so on. Your goal is to score as many points as possible on your journey. The levels are (obviously) circus-inspired, and that is the really fun part about this game. I don't understand why not anyone has made a game with a circus-theme to one of the newer consoles, it would sure have been fun!
The level-designs can sometimes be quite intriguing, and the gameplay gets steadily harder and harder...until it's almost impossible!
Put that dank blunt down and have fun at the circus, we have drunken miserable clowns, endangered animals being tortured by the owners, the acrobats have fallen to their deaths and the Chinese somehow do a better job than anyone else.
And if that made you laugh, then you might want to leave because the jokes are drier than the saharra desert. This is a short little oddity in the world of gaming and it’s called Circus Charlie, developed and published by Konami it was an arcade game released in 1984 which had a very successful port to the MSX that same year. But I’m going to talk about the Famicom port by Soft Pro in 1986.
This is one of those titles that appeared in many bootleg machines. My Dad actually had one and I first played it many years ago. They had some good games and all but the most fondly remembered was Circus Charlie. But I remember the game for me being quite sadistic.
There are five stages, including:
Lion Taming - Charlie rides a lion through rings of fire and over flaming pots.
Tightrope Walking - Charlie must keep his balance as he walks across a tightrope. He must avoid the monkeys by jumping over them - blue ones in particular move very quickly so the player must keep alert.
Ball Balancing - Charlie must make his way across a series of large, striped balls that spin in place. Since Charlie jumps a specific distance that cannot be altered, the player must judge the correct distance between the ball they're on, and the one they're aiming for and jump at the right moment.
Trick Riding - Charlie is riding a pony and must hop off and jump on trampolines as they pass overhead. Keeping a rhythm will allow Charlie to land back on the pony once the trampolines have passed.
Trapeze Swinging - Charlie must leap between each trapeze swing as they reach the end of their arc in order to reach the next one. He can also use the trampolines beneath to move from one swing to the next.
The music is nice and very circus-inspired, and it's likely that you will remember at least one or two of the tunes.
It's really annoying when you fall of your horse for the 100th time on level 4, or you manage to jump on the same monkey for the 1000th time on level 2 and you have to start all over again on level 1, but at the same time, this is what makes this game so addictive!
If you own a NES, you should also own this game. Simply because it's one of the true classics, and also because it can remind us of how simple yet so fun/addictive/hard the games used to be in the eighties!
With each of these events, the player can earn additional bonus points by performing risky or difficult actions and pulling them off, thus entertaining the crowd even more. These include the smaller fire rings during the Lion Taming act, jumping over multiple monkeys during the Tightrope or hopping across several trampolines in a row with the Trick Riding event. The player can earn extra lives by earning a lot of points on all these events. After completing any of the five acts, the player can opt to play a more difficult version of the same challenge for additional points.
The first stage where Charlie rides a Lion and jump on rings of fire, whenever Charlie lands on the fire you’d see the painful reaction to the Lion and I remember laughing at it so much, causing pain to an animal and seeing the animal’s reaction to it was hilarious, yep, if you thought GTA or Call of Duty was desensitising children, the same applies to a game from the 80’s.
You play as Charlie the Clown as you perform six circus tricks (or five since one was removed from the Famicom port) the first stage consists of riding a Lion and jumping on rings of fire…hehehe (NO ME, YOU’RE NOT SEVEN ANYMORE!). The second stage consists of tightrope walking whilst jumping over monkeys, jumping from ball to ball, ride a horse and jump over trampolines and finally the trapeze level and if you thought I missed the trampoline level that’s because it wasn’t in the Famicom version.
You are Charlie, a member of a circus troupe. Your job is to please the crowd by performing five death-defying stunts:
Stunt #1: You and the lion must jump through several rings of fire. Remember to avoid the jugs that emit fire. You must do this for 100 meters.
Stunt #2: Walk the tightrope for 70 meters, avoiding the monkeys that get in your way. Jump the cyan monkeys for 500 points.
Stunt #3: Roll on a ball for 80 meters, jumping from ball to ball. You can move balls backwards if the target is too close to make a successful jump. Avoid contact with the ground.
Stunt #4: Ride a horse for 200 meters, bouncing on trampolines along the way. Be careful not to miss the jump or go over the tops of trampolines. You can speed up or slow down the horse.
Stunt #5: Finally, trapeze from swing to swing for 50 meters. If you miss, make sure that you land on the platforms below so you bounce back on a swing.
This was a really difficult game to play as a child, now it’s a cakewalk, though I still can’t do the trapeze stage. It’s one of those games where easy to play but hard to master, but with enough practice it’s a really easy game to play. The graphics are good enough for a Famicom game, it is a port of the arcade version and it’s a very faithful port in terms of game design. The music really tries to replicate the circus experience and while it does an OK job at it, it’s still too tingly and I pass it because of limitations of the machine.
Overall, it’s a little time waster but for what it is it’s a fun title to try to master and it doesn’t take long to do so, as in the poster says it’s ‘The First Authentic Circus Game In History’, in my opinion, it maybe the only authentic Circus game out there, and I think that’s why this game is unique, I recommend it if you want a fun experience that near enough replicates the craziness of the circus.
