What is Cliff Hanger?

 What is Cliff Hanger?

If you grew up in the 80's during the Dragon's Lair craze, you may have stumbled upon a little arcade game called Cliff Hanger. But, there isn't a ton of info about it online, so I decided to really dive into it. So, join me as we take a look back and see what exactly Cliff Hanger even is, and if it's a good game or not. Let's take a look!

         So first off let's start with what Cliff Hanger is. So, Cliff Hanger is an arcade game made by Stern Electronics where you control Cliff Hanger as he tries to save princess Clerisse from the evil count Draco.

    When playing the game, you'll notice that there are a bunch of stutters, and you can sometimes here someone speaking Japanese... wait a minute! This isn't an original animation like Dragon's lair! Heck, Cliff isn't even his real name! That's right, Cliff Hanger actually uses footage from an anime! But not just any anime, but Hayao Miyazaki's director debut, Lupin the third: The Castle of Cagliostro, which is a amazing movie by the way and you should totally check it out! It's the second movie based on the Lupin the third manga and series.

 

       But anyway, Cliff hanger decided to re-brand the movie since no one in the US would have seen a Japanese cartoon from the 70's since it wasn't localized. In fact they outright butchered the plot, changed character names (such as Lupin to Cliff), and had acting that even 4Kids would cringe at. It doesn't even match the mouths most of the time!  The lines themselves are pretty bad too, and you can sometimes here them talking over the Japanese voices as well as sometimes hear the Japanese voices in broad daylight! 

         The way they handled the scenes are pretty interesting as well, often with it making pretty much no sense.! For example, when Lup- I mean Cliff makes his way out of the sewers there's just a bunch of quick skips that you can clearly tell that they don't fit together but.... oh well. Let's move on to the gameplay, shall we?

The gameplay is similar to Dragon's lair where you must press the right button on the correct moment to advance in the game. (When you miss, you lose a life and see a clip from the mystery of mamo where Lupin is supposedly being hanged.) When you need Cliff to do something, ether the word action, or move will appear in the bottom of the screen. Action means you need to press the button that controls Cliffs feet or the button that controls Cliffs hands. Move means you need to move Cliff in the right direction. But One of the issues with the game is that it can be really hard to tell what your suppose to do, so it will require trial and error. But the rest of the time,  it can be quite exhilarating. It can feel like it's you fighting off a hoard of ninjas, jumping from rooftops, and swerving in Cliffs car. Even if it half is, it can be really fun, and hard. When you make it to one of the harder sections, like the ninjas for instance, it really requires quite a bit of memorization. Oh, and sometimes when the camera changes or when you can't even see Cliff you may still have to press something, and it comes off as pretty unfair. Thankfully, there aren't many of these.

     The game isn't that long ether, clocking in at about 16 minutes long, less than a fifth of the castle of cagliostro. I'm no sure if that's a good thing or not! 

So, at the end of the day, Cliff hanger is a fascinating piece of history, I'll be it terribly flawed. It is still really fun, with thrilling action and beautiful animation. However, especially after seeing Cagliostro, the game also comes off as cheap with the terrible voice acting and writing, some unfair moments, and not even bothering to take out the Japanese voices! Still, it's worth a try if you can, but it's far from the best game ever. Thanks for taking a look!

                                                                                  6/10