 S-N-E-S-T-R-E-C-E. Developer visual concepts sure had a strange run on the Super Nintendo. They had a hand in everything from licensed stuff like Tasmania to EA-published sports titles like Bill Walsh College Football 2, terrible crap like Lester the Unlikely. However, they're probably best known for Clay Fighter, the comedic alternative to stuff like Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. A year after Clay Fighter hit the Super Nintendo came Claymates, a 2D side-scrolling action platformer that supposedly takes place in the same universe as Clay Fighter, although it doesn't appear any of the Clay Fighter characters are even referenced here. In Claymates, you play as Clayton, the son of Professor Putty, who's just made a huge scientific breakthrough. He's created a serum that turns living creatures into clay. Apparently, there's only one other person in this universe who can do that, the evil witch Doctor Jobo. He gets word of this and somehow teleports to Professor Putty's house, kidnaps him, and steals the new serum. Clayton tries to stop him, but Jobo turns him into clay, and so begins your quest to traverse all the way through the Pacific, Japan, Africa, outer space, and even Clayton's own backyard to rescue his dad. Unfortunately, Clayton is just a blue ball of clay, but thankfully you can find different balls of clay to take the form of different animals, everything from a mouse, to a squirrel, to a bird, to a fish. When you find another clay ball when you've already inhabited a form, you get an additional projectile attack, which is useful. When you take damage from an enemy, you revert back to your original form as a clay ball, and in that form you can only muster a fist as an attack. You're probably better off just avoiding enemies here, which is a challenge in and of itself. If you take damage as a blue ball, you're dead. Any action platformer where you morph into different forms is always gonna draw comparisons to games like Kirby, especially since the early Kirby games and Kirby Superstar practically perfected the style of game. And while Claymate isn't in the same ballpark as Kirby, it's still pretty good. The controls are simple pickup and play style and easy to figure out. They're a little loopy and take some getting used to, but the game still has the same feel no matter which animal form you have. If anything, this game kinda reminds me of Little Nemo for NES, where each form you take has special abilities inherent to that animal, like the cat who can climb trees, or the squirrel who can burrow into the ground. What helps make Claymate stand out a bit are the little bits of personality the game shows, everything from the sprite work to things like the mouse having a roar for an attack. That's pretty funny. There's also the bird who can only fly for a short time before he runs out of breath. Stuff like this really goes a long way toward having the game separate itself from the pack. Even the box has some personality as it touts this game's quote-unquote blaze processing. Heh. Another thing that helps Claymate stand out is the overworld map. It's not just there for looks or to shuffle you from level to level. You have to figure out a way across to the next level, or this sand whirlpool looking thing here. Each level you complete, you're granted two robots. Why? I have no idea, but you have to direct them in the right place to clear a path for you to get to the next level. It's not exactly an in-depth feature of the game, but it is a nice touch. If there's any flaws in this one, it goes back to what I mentioned earlier about the controls. They're a little imprecise and take some getting used to, but it's not that big of a deal. I will say I think it was a mistake starting the game out with the mouse because he's too fast and too quick. You run into enemies the split second they leap onto the screen. Also, there's no battery save or passwords here, unfortunately. This isn't a long game, but a save feature of some sort would have helped. So yeah, Claymates isn't perfect. It's certainly no Mario or Kirby, but it is at the very least an above-average action platformer. Sure, all the generic platformer stuff is here in spades, like collecting crystals to unlike bonus stages to get extra lives, that kind of stuff. But Claymates stands out by allowing you to play as different characters, which each show off some fantastic sprite work, and the world map gimmick is a little different, too. This one is well worth checking out.