By Kevin Christman

Ninja Clowns - Arcade (1994)

American Flyer

Ninja Clowns

Ninja Clowns

LET'S MAKE IT SMOOTH If you've paid any attention to the internet when it involves video games in the past ten years, you know that the debate over whether video games can be art has been continually argued with often-misguided fervor. Whether it be Spielberg asking for a game that would make someone cry (which would make Boom Blox a success, given the number of EA execs who shed tears over the net sales of Boom Blox versus the cost of putting Spielberg's name on the box) or Roger Ebert generally being a dick about the subject, it's become ever more intensely debated as the years pass on. Now, let's be completely honest here: in terms of debate, "games as art" is freaking ridiculous. All games are art, even if that art is completely shit. When the Octomom buys her kids a box of 128 crayolas so that all of her kids now and in the future will have a color to call their own, you can bet that whatever they come up with is going to be called art by their mother. Similar, I used to proclaim shock and awe over how a girl at my high school could constantly win art competitions by drawing pictures of smoking fetuses in the womb; after all, surely they had nothing on my paintings of blue whales fighting dragons in outer space. "Art" is a dumb term and if we're going to use it as a strawman argument against video games or for them, we probably need to be like the eskimoes describing snow and come up with newer and more specific terms if we're going to make a debate. To start things off, I will absolutely argue that Ninja Clowns is art-tastic. In fact, it may well have inadvertently ignited the whole debate. Ninja Clowns fashions itself as a playable graphic novel well before Max Payne ever made scenes about kissing into a series of dramatic non-sequiturs. It starts from the very intro in the attract screen, which enlightens us to the dramatic formation of our unnamed protagonist; whom we can assume has a mysterious past. Because seriously, it'd be totally stupid in a video game if he didn't. INNUENDO THROUGH THE OUT DOOR I mean, have you have stopped to think about the dudes from Contra? One day, they're going about their everyday lives. It's a casual Wednesday: they're eating hot dogs in Central Park and trying to deny the deep love and respect they feel for each other with every three inch bite down the meat-packed buns. At their park table, they're sitting across from the fraternal twins they met at the Creedence concert the night before. The twins attempt to show their interest in the two men as they grip their tube steaks and begin gnawing on them with less-than-veiled suggestion. The brunette, often considered the ugly duckling of the two, runs her tongue down the intestine-encased pork product she holds between her hands and ends with a sucking gesture at the top that fills her mouth with ketchup and relish which she's now all too eager to swallow. The above is why games about shooting people do not get serious plots. This doesn't make them any less of art, even if Contra never made much of an artistic statement besides aliens kind of being dicks. Which, to be fair, could be seen as an artistic analogue towards Japan hating stupid foreigners unless they're pale, blonde and relegated to advertisements. ZOMBIES [ASSASSIN]ATE MY NEIGHBORS Whenever games involving shooting people and attempts at meaningful, artistic plots are involved, you tend to end up with a rough approximation of the picture preceeding this paragraph: a misguided attempt at a political statement about the state of man and our various conflicts (see jingoistic message board-based hate towards Halo 2 when it came out and parallels people drew towards the Iraq War) with little substance to hold the actual product together unless it has awesome multiplayer. If you're a lone nut, you should just stick to Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. Games about punching people are merely a close-range version of shooting people, so they should be judged no differently. Ninja Clowns sets itself upon a solid plot, and then thrusts you into a near-post-apocalyptic world that's probably best described as "Detroit". Right in the first level, you're out on the streets and forced to defend yourself against lawyers and cops as crooked as their movement patterns. You're made to fight back with little more than a repertoire of kicks, punches, and seltzer water to overcome the... not quite over or under, but merely whelming waves of enemies that wish to take you down. At the end of all this comes Steven Seagal's first major video game appearance: this time playing the starring role in a biopic of Earl Anthony. LIKE FEEDING ALKA-SELTZER TO SEAGALS As he explodes, you're thrust into your first bonus stage. But whereas a typical beat-em-up tends to place you into a solitary screen with a car or something as big as can be destructible in limited screen real estate, Ninja Clowns thrusts you into a scrolling laboratory full of colored flasks and indeterminable pieces of metal machinery that are undoubtedly evil. You do not get such as an "Oh, my lab!" out of this, but rather a quite simple notice: So, Clowny, it seems you must move on, but to what? Initially, a circus Midway, as opposed to the Midway who would cause Incredible Technologies' publisher Strata to lose sleep each and every night. But if you look onward, you'll notice a disturbing trend: you're on the streets a damn lot. BEARD ME UP BUTTERCUP Three stages in the game happen on the "streets" with the non-bonus levels in between all being circus themed. It comes off as, to say the least, clownish that three completely unique stages get stuck between three homogeneous stages on the "streets." Despite the rage that may be happening on that turf, it seems shocking that they didn't at least make an "industrial zone" or a "subway." What's worse is that the game nearly seems to forget the gritty, mature plot it was founded on in the very beginning... but all is redeemed at the end of Streets level 3, as the plot returns to kick your scrotum back into your medulla with more Raw Thrills than Target: Terror could ever provide. So you step into Twisto's tent and proceed to cause him to explode after 8-odd minutes of punching spread across twelve 9-second long instances of quarter-depositing and reaffirmation to yourself that you're doing the right thing by putting money into the quarterbox. The end rolls on and the credits follow, and with that you're left to deconstruct and analyze one of the first attempts at crossing true narrative with comic art; least of all with a video game attached. You're also now free to realize Max Payne is built on more plagiarism than a remedial Eng101 class. Our clown, master of ninjitsu he is, rolls off into the sunset as a hero for all eternity; at least, it seems, as far as bearded women everywhere are concerned. A MILLION VINCENT VAN GOGHS CRAMMED INTO A TINY CAR For all its shortcomings, Ninja Clowns was a perfect early example of injecting narrative into even the least complex of games. It ended a nearly decade-long drought in arcade-based storytelling since Ms. Pac-Man and the scintillating cutscene-based story that ended up in both Baby Pac-Man and Pac-Man Junior. Unbeknown to most, those games would later be translated to film in the "Look Who's Talking" series, whose first and second entry would eventually become the 73rd and 15th entry in the AFI's greatest films hall of fame countdown, respectively. When we look at games 100 years from now, when the art debate has been more than settled, I believe we'll all look upon Incredible Technologies' monumental early work which we know as Ninja Clowns as being the lighthouse beacon that guided ships like Bioshock and Half-Life 2 to shore. And, while the game industry's artistic visions will no doubt reach stagnation much as every artistic movement since the discovery of oil paint has, we can take solace in at least one thing: the speed of the rolling of Roger Ebert in his grave at the thought of games even being considered art will be more than enough to power the resurrection of the Incredible Technologies team. If history is any indication, we can rest assured they will once again redefine the medium altogether; even if that means starting from the beginning with Ninja Clowns HD Remix.

Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns Ninja Clowns