Crazy Climber

Overview

Crazy Climber is a 1980 Nihon Bussan arcade game in which the player must scale a tall building while avoiding dangers during their ascent. It is in some part inspired by the "Human Fly" craze of the late 70s.

The game was eventually released on the Famicom in 1986 and came bundled with a special controller that allowed the player to control both arms of the climber. It was also available on other home systems, such as the Atari 2600.

It is one of Nichibutsu's most highly acclaimed video games in its library. A precursor to the platformer genre, Crazy Climber was the first game revolving around climbing, specifically climbing buildings, before Nintendo's seminal 1981 release Donkey Kong.

Lives

The player is awarded 3 lives at the beginning of each games. An extra life is given after the players reaches 30,000 points.

Score

For every story of the building climber, the player scores

• 1st Building - 100 points
• 2nd Building - 150 points
• 3rd Building - 200 points
• 4th Building - 250 points

Bonus Points

Bonus points are awarded when after successfully climbing each building and the climber is carried off by the helicopter. However, the bonus score decreases every ten seconds that the climber spends ascending the building.

• 1st Building - 10,000 points
• 2nd Building - 20,000 points
• 3rd Building - 30,000 points
• 4th Building - 40,000 points

Trivia

• An Arcadia 2100 port was in the works, but never got released.
• Musical themes in the game include Baby Elephant Walk, The Pink Panther and The Entertainer.

Legacy

• In 1981, Bandai Electronics manufactured a hand-held VFD version of the game.
• The game has also been ported to the Atari 2600 and the Japanese Famicom.
• A Japanese-only sequel, Crazy Climber 2, was produced in 1988. The game was essentially identical to Crazy Climber in gameplay but featured more sophisticated graphics and a few new features.
• On February 3, 1996, Hyper Crazy Climber was released only in Japan for the PlayStation. It has similar gameplay to that of the original game but also a few differences. Players can choose between three cartoony characters, each with their own strength/speed attributes. Several buildings can be selected from a Bomberman-style map screen, including an underwater building, a medieval clock tower, a haunted skyscraper, and a beanstalk. Power-ups are also used.
• On March 2, 2000, Crazy Climber 2000 was released for the PlayStation. This is more of a remake of the original arcade game using 3D graphics for the first time. A notable feature is the ability to turn corners and access different sides of the buildings, which now have a variety of designs (including one with a cylindrical, tower-like shape). The game included the original port of the arcade Crazy Climber and a scan of the instruction panel. Like Hyper Crazy Climber which released for the same console 4 years earlier, Crazy Climber 2000 was released only in Japan.
• On July 21, 2005, Japanese publisher HAMSTER released the arcade version of Crazy Climber under their Oretachi Geasen Zoku Sono (オレたちゲーセン族) classic game line for the PlayStation 2.
• Another sequel or remake, Crazy Climber Wii was released for the Wii in Japan on December 20, 2007, but no North American or European release date has been confirmed.
• The arcade game was later re-released on the Virtual Console in Japan on February 23, 2010.