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Crazy Climbing


Mr. Brow

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I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this one before.  There weren't many games doing graphics this sophisticated in 1980 and the control scheme is really clever.  Clearly a lot of TLC went into the development.  I did write-ups on the controls, the scrolling background, and the sprites.

 

It's acclaimed by critics, but I wonder why it didn't catch on more with arcade-goers. Perhaps the controls were too hard to learn or the difficulty curve too steep.  What do you think?  Anyone play this a lot in the arcades?

 

1556596062_ezgif.com-optimize(8).gif.2e633cfa7d5141b5cec38ed97ec8fd3e.gif

Edited by Mr. Brow
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What makes you think it didn't catch on? It was very popular back when I remember playing one. It must've been enough since it spawned a sequel.

 

First time I recall playing one was at a Dominicks' Foods in Chicago west 'burbs - instantly hooked. When I got into collecting arcades, I sought out the Taito-licensed version since I never ran across the Nichibitsu version.

 

A snippet of CC2:

 

Edited by schuwalker
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30 minutes ago, schuwalker said:

What makes you think it didn't catch on? It was very popular back when I remember playing one. It must've been enough since it spawned a sequel.

Fair enough -- I don't know what its revenues were like, so you may be right that it was popular in its day.  My impressions are based on its Mobygames entry, where it has 6 votes with an average score of 2.1, the fact that its Wikipedia entry is in stub territory, and the fact that I hadn't heard of it until I started digging into arcade history.  It has been ported many times, however (even recently), so perhaps it has a sizable cult following. 

 

Whatever its current status in the gaming community, I do think its worthy of attention.  It took me a while to get the hang of it when I started playing, but it was well worth the effort, IMO.

 

 

 

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It came out relatively early and turnover was high in arcades at the time.  I only have vague memories of crazy climber.  It doesn't come up in top sales/revenue lists.  Only the Atari 2600 got a home conversion at the time; famicom came later in Japan.  Those games were programmed for single joysticks so not exactly the same experience.

 

Sometimes, in the early 1980s, older machines just happen to be at a location near you where it would have disappeared for most other people.  It explains why some people remember a certain machine well and others do not.

Edited by mr_me
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I've been a big fan of the game for the past 40 years. While not exhaustive, I've pretty much gotten every iteration of the game I could get my hands on whether it's the handheld versions (both Entex and Bandai VFD's, LCD keychain versions, etc.), or the consoles (Hyper Crazy Climber, Crazy Climber 2000, Famicom version etc.). For the arcade version, I prefer the original japanese voices which is what I grew up with and not the US version really. I'm not a huge fan of Crazy Climber 2 although that's fun for a little while. 

 

btw.. Anyone notice the Switch version did a poor job with the sounds?

 

Bandai-CrazyClimberKeychain.jpg s-l1600.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

I played it a lot back in the day.   Pretty easy to find here in the Cleveland area back then.  Not as popular as Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, but everyone knew about it.   This is one of the main reasons I bought an X-Arcade controller years ago.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 3/9/2020 at 4:12 PM, Mr. Brow said:

I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this one before.  There weren't many games doing graphics this sophisticated in 1980 and the control scheme is really clever.  Clearly a lot of TLC went into the development.  I did write-ups on the controls, the scrolling background, and the sprites.

 

It's acclaimed by critics, but I wonder why it didn't catch on more with arcade-goers. Perhaps the controls were too hard to learn or the difficulty curve too steep.  What do you think?  Anyone play this a lot in the arcades?

 

1556596062_ezgif.com-optimize(8).gif.2e633cfa7d5141b5cec38ed97ec8fd3e.gif

you must be too young to have played it back in the day. Crazy climber is one of my favorites.  I have been taking mine to cax for the last 4 or 5 years. Before that, someone else was taking one. At one point I owned 4 different versions(cabinet styles) of the game. Currently I still have 3. I plan to only keep the taito version as I played that one when it came out.  I think I have most/all handhelds and released versions of the game(I dont own a switch).

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