Claymates

Nintendo exclusive

From the creators of Clay Fighter comes a game about a shape-shifting ball of clay. You play as a boy named Clayton, whose father has developed a serum to turn humans into animals. However, an evil shaman desires this serum, and when he is denied ownership of it, he kidnaps Clayton's father and turns Clayton into a ball of clay. It's up to the unlikely hero to rescue his father, the serum, and the world!

Released: 26 April 1993
Platforms: SNES
Genres: Adventure Pinball Platformer
Developers: Visual Concepts
Publishers: Interplay Entertainment
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Side view
Themes: Science fiction
Country: United States
Age ratings: ESRB E
Languages: English

About

Claymates is a platform video game developed by Visual Concepts and published by Interplay Productions for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It is one of Interplay's clay animation titles which also included the ClayFighter series.

›Story

Clayton's father has developed a serum to turn humans into animals. However, an evil shaman desires this serum, and when he is denied ownership of it, he kidnaps Clayton's father and turns Clayton into a ball of clay. It's up to the unlikely hero to rescue his father, the serum, and the world!

Keywords

robots
pinball
claymation
side-scrolling
bonus stage
platform exclusive
world map
non-humanoid protagonist
shape-shifting
retroachievements
nintendo gateway system

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The player uses samples of serum lying around in these levels to transform into one of five different animals (Muckster the Cat, Doh-Doh the Duck, Oozy the Mouse, Goopy the Guppy, and Globmeister the Chipmunk) to best fit with the environment and make it to the end of the level. Special abilities that are in a clay ball transform Clayton into a helpful animals as he races the clock to collect as much as possible and still makes it to the end, jumping over obstacles and attacking with the animal in use. Clayton must also be careful not to be hit while a blob or he'll die.

Story

The protagonist is a boy named Clayton, whose scientist father, Professor Putty, has developed a serum that can transform people into animals when it is combined with clay. Suddenly, Jobo the witch doctor appears and demands the formula for the serum. The professor refuses, to which Jobo replies by changing Clayton into a ball of clay and stealing away both his father and the serum. Clayton vows to save his father despite his new form and embarks on a journey through his backyard, the Pacific, Japan, Africa, and finally outer space.

Development

Claymates was developed by Visual Concepts and published by Interplay Productions. Interplay entered into a distribution contract with clay animation studio Cineplay Interactive, a subsidiary of Will Vinton Productions which also included the fighting game ClayFighter and the chess game Battle Chess 4000. Claymates was produced by Interplay veteran Michael Quarles, designed by Gregory A. Thomas of Visual Concepts, and animated by A-OK Animation, the last of which was responsible for mascots such as Gumby and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Thomas conceived Claymates under the working title "Animal Connection" for the Nintendo Entertainment System before production moved to the SNES. Quarles stated the game's clay characters were made in an attempt "to have the consistency of something like Flintstones in character and story" while Thomas claimed was designed to have "the speed of Sonic, the maps of Mario, and colors that have never been done before". For the game's audio, Interplay employed the Advanced Real-time Dynamic Interplay (ARDI) Sound System. This proprietary MIDI tool allowed composers to play music and sound effects directly from SNES ROM files to save on memory by only occupying 18 kilobytes of space.