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| | ==To do== | | ==To do== |
| − | *There are more (all I believe) of the game's passwords posted in the comments [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiNd3F52i7g here]. Combine these with the ones TCRF lists for the Hidden content page. | + | *Add screenshots and sprites. |
| − | *Find actual stage names. The manual doesn't (appear) to list them, and I can't find them easily in-game. Maybe they're on the pause screens for individual stages once the Tweaker is activated? At the very least, something might be buried in the code.
| + | [[User:CartridgeCulture|CartridgeCulture]] ([[User talk:CartridgeCulture|talk]]) 09:55, 13 July 2023 (EDT) |
| − | *There's a prototype dumped by Hidden Palace that hasn't been covered whatsoever.
| + | *[https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File%3AHistoriemOmSega2_SE_Book.pdf&page=174 Funcom stories]...''"In the spring of 1994, Johan goes to a copy party in Oslo. Funcom is there to recruit new talent. He sees his chance and sends in an application with a floppy disc containing some demos. It all happens quickly. Carl-Henrik Skårstedt remembers it as a crazy process. - "We had a game design document of over 1000 A4 pages in a binder given to us by SEGA and we programmers had leafed through the design and decided that we didn't want to do this. When we spoke to our HR manager, he said that a new programmer [Johan Andersson] would start next week. We wondered who had interviewed him, but we had forgotten. It went pretty well anyway, but the poor guy got to be the main programmer for a game no one else wanted to make. The design was a test by SEGA to see if it would work well to finish the entire design before anyone started programming and graphics. That idea worked just as badly as it sounds. The project is a very ambitious action platform game called Nightmare Circus. - Nightmare Circus is really a game that would have benefited from having a producer," says Johan Andersson. "That was the company's biggest disadvantage, that they hired producers to manage projects, but they had zero knowledge of game development and didn't know how to manage people. None of us coders had even reached the age of 21 and were sitting as lead programmers. Our producer just worked on our game, but didn't do any planning and didn't talk to us very much. Then he quit and we were completely without project management for six months before our publisher sent over people to take over the project on site. But we were DONE! Despite the good results, SEGA decided to release Nightmare Circus only on its cable service SEGA Channel in North America and on cartridge via Tec Toy in Brazil."''--[[User:Asagoth|Asagoth]] ([[User talk:Asagoth|talk]]) 17:13, 13 November 2023 (EST) |
| − | *Is the game's soundtrack unfinished too? It's very well-done for a GEMS game, but a few tracks have seriously misaligned instruments. I originally chocked this up to purposeful design (its an eerie, surreal setting, so making the music sound a little "off" would make sense), but the more I've been listening to it, I'm not so sure. Give the track commonly-titled "Chainsaw" a listen. That sounds less purposeful and more misaligned. And there are some other tracks which play suspiciously short and underwhemling samples (or the very beginning of them.) TBH the soundtrack was probably designed that way, but maybe email the composer/s and see if there's anything to this.
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| − | *[[Ricardo Pinto]] was the designer (creator) of ''Nightmare Circus''. Detail that, get as much info as you can get, and- figure out how it got from Pinto to Funcom (hey, they were both in Europe.)
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| − | *It seems you need to wait about 8 seconds or so after defeating every boss for the level to end. The last boss takes minutes. (Was this at all intentional, perhaps for music timing? probably not, but a thought)
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| − | [[User:CartridgeCulture|CartridgeCulture]] ([[User talk:CartridgeCulture|talk]]) 09:33, 21 December 2021 (EST) | |
| − | | |
| − | ==Story (rough translation)==
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| − | *When the Devil's Circus/Circo del Diablo/Diablo's Circus (unsure if this is a proper name) first began setting up its tents on the edge of the city, people began to gather to purchase tickets for its opening night. | |
| − | *While the circus tents were raised, Leto Diablo, the circus owner, stopped from tent to tent, ordering the artists around and treating them like slaves. Every (unknown. performer? circus performer? contortionist?), clown, and trapeze artist feared and despised Diablo for his cruelty. Because he was losing money with every performance, Leto Diablo began to hate his circus.
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| − | *But Diablo had a plan. He opened an insurance policy with a very high value for his circus, and at the start of the show on opening night, he would take advantage of the darkness and douse the tents with gasoline. (unknown), with a simple strike of a match, would transform the entire circus into a carnival of flames and screams of terror (grammar?).
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| − | *One of the fire's survivors saw Diablo light the match, and testified at his trial. Diablo was found guilty of the murders. When sentenced to the electric chair, he cursed the people of the city.
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| − | *"You can't kill me!", he boasted. "The spirits of all your beloved dead are mine. I'll torture your souls for eternity!"
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| − | *Shortly after Diablo's death, strange (facts? began to?) happen. People began to see strange lights on the circus grounds. An old man swore he saw the circus (tent?) rise from beyond and return to the same place where it had been burned. Others heard laughter blowing like the wind in the desert...
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| − | *Currently, years after the tragedy, the story is considered only a legend. But the warrior Shama(?) Raven lost his family in hell and believes in the event. (? Is this insinuating Raven's family died in the fire? Seems really out of place otherwise...)
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| − | *Raven (runs? travels?) into the desert, where the Circo del Diablo once existed. Under the heat of the sun, only ashes serve as (a reminder? a memory?) of the horrible massacre. But this night, as soon as it grew dark, the sky remained covered by black clouds. Suddenly, the Nightmare Circus arose, floating in space where there had been previously nothing. Raven must defeat this haunted prison of spirits to avenge the death of your (his?) family.
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| − | | |
| − | ==Enemies==
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| − | These names are obviously tentative.
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| − | *Mechanics
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| − | *Little flying tribal guy
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| − | *Clay trapeze guys
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| − | *Dark Ravens
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| − | *Skinless dogs
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| − | *Vial maze grubs
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| − | | |
| − | ==Bosses==
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| − | These names are obviously tentative.
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| − | *Super Dark Raven
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| − | *Leatherface (+Wooden saw robot)
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| − | *Purple wizard
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| − | *Fan guy
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| − | *Grub lady
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| − | *"The Jester" (official name)
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| − | | |
| − | ==Stages==
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| − | ===The Carnival===
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| − | *The one with the rollercoaster on the very left.
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| − | *Level 1 is what you'd imagine a platforming rollercoaster level would look like. And with how close the camera keeps to Raven, its hard to get a good idea of this level's size at the moment. It looks like you could run around on foot, but I think the whole purpose is to wait like 8 seconds at the start of the level for the rollercoaster train to spawn, hop in that, and then after a few more screens of rolling around it drops you off at Level 2.
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| − | *Level 2 is the "workyard", the maintenance area for the rollercoaster trains. There's one of those railroad stopper things directly in front of Raven when he spawns, and directly past that is a long walk to the boss, where there's a pretty heavy stream of sawblade projectiles being hurled at you. I'm assuming this eats through health pretty fast (or is a one-hit kill?) and the intention is to push the block along as far as possible, but you also have to time how you push it a little, AND it can only take so many hits before breaking. And you're still a couple screen lengths away from the source of these projectiles, some skinny wooden "robot" thats standing right in front of the boss, so unless you kill the robot in about four seconds you'll be fighting both at once. The "proper" boss is uh... I'm assuming they were going for Leatherface, its a big ugly dude with a chainsaw. But the art is pretty bad on this guy, its kinda hard to tell. I thought it was the Predator at first. Defeat the boss, wait 8-10 seconds, and the level ends.
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| − | *There's no level 3. Why not? This level gets run through really fast, and probably needs more investigation, but its the only stage with 2 levels as opposed to 3.
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| − | | |
| − | ===The Ticket Office===
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| − | *The building with the AMUSEMENTS sign.
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| − | *Level 1 is a maze stage with a three-dimension design (not visuals). Think Phantasy Star 1 dungeons but cruder and more confusing. And you can go up and down with ladders, and attack parts of the wall to open new areas I think. A lot of the backgrounds for different sections and floors are just palette swaps so it gets more disorienting. And "turning in place" while inside a room involves running to the edge of the screen, upon which the screen blacks out for a bit as it "turns" the room. And there are enemies too. Also you can apparently press Up while in a room to also turn it? This needs investigation. Also the TAS blows through this so fast it doesn't encounter any enemies. I'm fairly sure I've seen enemies here, but look into this too.
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| − | *Level 2 is a long hallway lined with mirrors, where you fight- a bunch of mirror images of yourself, basically. Shadow Ravens? Dark Ravens? Maybe the name's in the manual, but its basically a bunch of Dark Links who die easily but constantly come out of the mirrors. The AI looks pretty involved.
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| − | *Leve 3 is uhm. A... psychedelic rotating cylinder? Its got some really crazy background art that palette cycles or w/e the term is, really does give off a neon vibe. Also kinda makes me nauseous. This room holds a bunch of rotating cylinders (rollers?) that seem to be pushing the background along. Smacking one of these a bit will destroy it, and you have to destroy all of them. But There's another Dark Raven that seems to be more aggressive and singular: he spawns the easily-defeatable Dark Ravens but himself is treated like a proper boss. (is this how it was in Level 2 as well? its hard to tell.) Destroy all the cylinders, defeat Super Dark Raven, wait 8-10 seconds and the level ends.
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| − | | |
| − | ===The Circus===
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| − | *The one with the ferris wheel.
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| − | *Level 1 is a pair of ferris wheels next to each other, turning in opposite directions. The background is an animation of the opposite side of wheels. The gondolas can be jumped on, and taking the upward-turning wheel will take Raven to the "top" of the wheel, where the game loads a new screen of him on the opposite side of the wheel. So you can keep hopping between different wheels to switch to different sides. And while you can go over the top safely, there's fire on the bottom of both sides of the wheels (which I'm assuming is instant death.) This is a great bit of design too, and really works with the uneasiness of the game's mood: you're not safe standing still for too long. It's essentially a pair of conveyor belts leading to spikes, right next to each other and going in opposite directions. As long as you pay attention and switch sides every so often you'll be fine, but that slight tension will always be there. It's also pretty easy to fall off the gondolas too, and there's just enough black emptiness on either side of the wheels to make it a legitimate gameplay hazard and give the wheels a real feeling of height. While keeping Raven from getting too close to the bottom of the wheels, there are also ghostly/zombie/demon mechanic enemies that spawn pretty much right on top of him (a theme in this game.) They're easy to kill but I'm assuming they might be able to knock Raven off the wheels, and they can easily overwhelm players, which I'd imagine was part of the challenge. After a certain amount of time, the fire at the bottom of the wheels goes out, and Raven can fall to the bottom. And then unceremoniously walk offscreen to end the stage.
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| − | *Level 2 is a spinning carnival ride-type thing, but very minimal and worn down. The background is a chainlink fence with skinless dogs crawling over it (who I believe can shoot projectiles), and there's wood on the floor. The very far background layer is a dark shot of the actual circus, and this scrolls to simulate the movement of the "ride" rotating. But it's less like a spinning carnival ride and more a railway turntable. It's got these big metal-industrial looking clown-like faces for doors: Raven enters through one, and there's another at the end of the stage. The stage also stars rotating when you enter it. You stand in front of (one of?) the door(s), hit the lever on it, and the rotating stops. I'm assuming this is some alignment puzzle that needs to be figured out, but the TAS jumps past a lot of this, so this level needs more research.
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| − | *Level 3 is a straightforward open area set in a bumper car rink. The art here is pretty nice, very sickly but pretty green colors and nice use of dithering (this game has lots of nice dithering in places), well-chosen colors. Also gives the scene an awesome mood, with many different shades of darker colors used to make nice shadows etc. You fight a bunch of demon mechanics for a while and eventually the boss shows up. He's a magician wearing a purple suit and a candy-cane striped top-hat, with matching pants and a white cane. Note for later, all the enemies and bosses do kung-fu, and are kinda-poorly drawn and animated. I think this might be a result of the U PROGRAM system... if they spent all that time separating so many variables like that, they probably built the game's actual "physics" system around it too (or it was the other way around), and that's why so much of this game's animated looks kinda stilted and poorly-timed. ALSO, the TAS doesn't give any of these bosses time to show off attacks or strategy, another thing that needs more research. Kill the top-hat magician, wait 8 seconds, the level ends.
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| − | | |
| − | ===The Completion===
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| − | *The big top at the very back. I don't know if you can enter it at any time, or if you need to beat the other three stages first, but probably the former.
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| − | *Level 1 starts you off on the ground in front of a long ladder. Climbing it reveals the stage to be an absolutely massive wooden "billboard" featuring some old decrepit creepy clown artwork, with multiple walkways across it. Honestly looks really cool. The billboard is made of numerous door-sized wooden panels, and attacking (spin attacking?) in front of one will destroy it. The objective is to destroy every wood panel on the billboard (or find the boss?) There's a bunch of panels that you'd imagine you'd be able to destroy, but you cant (specifically the panels directly behind the background pillars, likely because they didn't have the artwork of a pillar in front of a destroyed panel. So you just ignore those), and there are also panels that you can't reach which you can ignore as well. Basically, if there's a panel in front of a open walkway, you have to destroy it. There are also little floating guys with spiky hair and swords, kinda Castlevania Fleaman-esque but with projectiles. They also fly around seated with their legs folded most of the time, its really strange. Also a lot of their animation seems drawn for the enemy standing on the ground, but they'll still be floating around. Once you either destroy enough panels, the boss spawns (ORRR the boss is hiding behind a random panel and you have to destroy a bunch while looking for it, it's not clear.) The boss is... uhm. A? in black spandex, a skull mask, and white boots, wielding a pair of spiked green fans. He/She/it moves pretty fast too, flipping and sliding all over. Once the boss is defeated, you wait another 8 seconds in silence, then it loads Level 2.
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| − | *Level 2 starts you off in some wooden laboratory, with Raven strapped to a circular wooden wheel for a knife-tossing minigame. Well you're not tossing the knifes, they're being tossed at Raven from the center of the screen. There's no scaling/rotation on either the knives or the wooden wheel but the art does an ok job at making it look convincing. The objective is to spin Raven's wheel around so that any knives that are tossed toward him hit the wheel and not him, like landing between his legs or the side of his body. There's a second wheel for the second player as well, but both wheels are offset from the center of the screen and it looks very odd. Also, this is really the one section of the game that takes control away from the player and doesn't feature platform beat-'em-up gameplay, so it feels very out of place and sudden. Like the rest of the game, there's no warning or preparation or anything. After avoiding enough knives, Raven falls off the wheel and begins the stage proper, like right there, no loading or anything, now you're actually in the stage. Which is honestly one of the coolest and most memorable: its a wooden laboratory, where the level's platforms, walls, and ceilings are constructed entirely out of wooden blocks housing a maze of interconnected glass vials. In this maze are a bunch of wriggling worms crawling through the maze. And much of the platforms/walls have openings to the vial maze where these things can pop out for a second and bite you. They don't ever leave the maze, and the maze isn't always connected in the most consistent of ways, so its not always the easiest to track where they're wriggling and where they'll appear. And its all dynamic too, this game's got pretty good AI in a lot of spots. The background features the same art and animation of the grubs wriggling around, crawling around in a second background maze that's attached to the first, and meaning you have to keep track of the faint grubs in the background too. There isn't any safe place to stand still, as you're pretty much always standing on a vial opening. Raven has a cool animation here of his "sidling"? his way up between platforms... it's really hard to describe this stage so just look at a video, but he flattens himself and holds his body up with his arms and legs on either side of the shaft he's climbing. And you have to time your climbing in accordance with the worms, and keep track of where they are. And the grub animations are really gross, this stage will def make someone squeamish. Also its super tense. Once you climb to the top of the stage, there's nothing there, just the top of this huge wooden block stretching on for some time. Running down this block to the right will eventually spawn the boss, some contortionist/grub-lady wearing green spandex with yellow highlights, kinda looks like she belongs more in a superhero game. Her gimmick is that she can contort herself like the grubs you've been fighting, and at any time hop into the vial maze, where she looks no different than the other grubs. She'll crawl off and appear somewhere else (I suspect the game despawns her actor once she enters the maze and respawns her somewhere else, because sometimes the grub she turns into doesn't correspond with the one she pops up from, but it gets the intended effect across), and once she's defeated, wait another 8 seconds of silence and the level just ends.
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| − | *Level 3 is a trapeze, and is set in front of an actual audience (which appears in the previous level but only at the end, this is more-hey there's an audience watching you, and you're on the floor of the big top.) There are uh- clay people? that you have to fight. They almost look like the base art you might drawn enemy artwork over, maybe more U PROGRAM shenanigans. These clay guys flip around doing trapeze stuff and attacking you, and if they're met on the ground, they'll start juggling with their "clay" and throw the balls at Raven like projectiles. They can also slide up and down the trapeze supports. And there are seesaws that bounce Raven/enemies upward too, and little floating "trapeze points" on which Raven can swing, alongside the standard trapeze swing and trampolines/tightrope wires. Attacking one of the clay people for a while causes it to curl up into a small ball, drop to the floor, and die. Except it doesn't, it takes another 8 seconds or so. Seriously whats with the timing issues in this game, is this intentional? So you hop around the abnormally-large level (another theme with this game) looking for guys to smack. Once they're all despawned, another enemy begins to spawn in the center of the level. But it doesn't spawn right away, it just displays its "about to spawn" smoke cloud for again about 8 seconds, and then the game cuts to black for another second while it actually loads the boss level and takes you to an entirely new screen. ALSO, either one of these trapeze guys is a "super" trapeze guy that can take more damage and has a different appearance (he vaguely looks chicken/bird-like, with a bird skull and bird-feet), or they all turn into bird-things after a while? I think its the former.
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| − | *Level 4/the final boss takes place in a red-tinted version of Level 3 (the big top floor with the audience, although it appears there's no trapeze gimmicks here, just fighting the boss on the floor.) The final boss is a red devil-like thing with like... its the guy on the box art with the three red horns. His gimmick is the ability to morph into the previous bosses while you fight him. Also these bosses have different color variations too. He starts in his devil form, then becomes Dark Raven, followed by green fan guy (now red fan guy), and then... the TAS beats him. I'm assuming, given enough time, he probably transforms into all the bosses, but I'm just more surprised they let you end the fight before he even gets through all his forms. Smack him enough and he spazzes for a bit (seriously the art/animation in this game is really rough) as fire rises from the floor, as if hell is opening up to pull him back in. He gets pulled into the fire, it turns off, and that's the game. Oh but not before waiting another 8 seconds. And then immediate credits.
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| | ==User:CartridgeCulture learns basic formatting== | | ==User:CartridgeCulture learns basic formatting== |
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| | Is there a style guide for this wiki? Also is there a list of these special codes that we use for replacing words with other things? ALSO could you assist me in adding an Interviews section to this page, and then adding this into it?: https://segaretro.org/Interview:_Stefano_Arnhold_(2015-11-16)_by_Sega-16 I know there’s a wway to do it all properly and cleanly but I have no idea how to do it. Thanks if you can, appreciate all the help too c; | | Is there a style guide for this wiki? Also is there a list of these special codes that we use for replacing words with other things? ALSO could you assist me in adding an Interviews section to this page, and then adding this into it?: https://segaretro.org/Interview:_Stefano_Arnhold_(2015-11-16)_by_Sega-16 I know there’s a wway to do it all properly and cleanly but I have no idea how to do it. Thanks if you can, appreciate all the help too c; |
| | ::[https://retrocdn.net/Retro_CDN:Image_tagging?rdfrom=https%3A%2F%2Fsegaretro.org%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3DSega_Retro%3AImage_Tagging%26redirect%3Dno Image tagging], [https://segaretro.org/Category:Sega_Retro_templates Sega Retro templates], [https://retrocdn.net/Category:Help Help page]... another good way to learn is to see how others do it (just look for a similar page to see how it was edited) ... if you have any more doubts about something just ask our ''Experts'' [https://segaretro.org/User_talk:Black_Squirrel Black Squirrel] and [https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=User_talk:SorachiJirachi&action=edit&redlink=1 SorachiJirachi] a.k.a. [https://info.sonicretro.org/User_talk:BSonirachi BSonirachi] on Sonic Retro (Wiki Sysops) and [https://segaretro.org/User_talk:Hivebrain Hivebrain] (Administrator)... I'll add an interview section to Stefano Arnhold's page for you... and again... don't forget to add your signature at the end of each of your replies...[[User:Asagoth|Asagoth]] ([[User talk:Asagoth|talk]]) 07:11, 20 March 2021 (EDT) | | ::[https://retrocdn.net/Retro_CDN:Image_tagging?rdfrom=https%3A%2F%2Fsegaretro.org%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3DSega_Retro%3AImage_Tagging%26redirect%3Dno Image tagging], [https://segaretro.org/Category:Sega_Retro_templates Sega Retro templates], [https://retrocdn.net/Category:Help Help page]... another good way to learn is to see how others do it (just look for a similar page to see how it was edited) ... if you have any more doubts about something just ask our ''Experts'' [https://segaretro.org/User_talk:Black_Squirrel Black Squirrel] and [https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=User_talk:SorachiJirachi&action=edit&redlink=1 SorachiJirachi] a.k.a. [https://info.sonicretro.org/User_talk:BSonirachi BSonirachi] on Sonic Retro (Wiki Sysops) and [https://segaretro.org/User_talk:Hivebrain Hivebrain] (Administrator)... I'll add an interview section to Stefano Arnhold's page for you... and again... don't forget to add your signature at the end of each of your replies...[[User:Asagoth|Asagoth]] ([[User talk:Asagoth|talk]]) 07:11, 20 March 2021 (EDT) |
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| | + | == Some observations... == |
| | + | In the back cover the story is told this way... : |
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| | + | *"The maniac ''Jester'' resurrected the ''El Diablo'' [[wikipedia:Traveling carnival|traveling carnival]] (it says "parque de diversões" which in Portuguese means "theme park"... a "traveling carnival" would be a "parque de diversões itinerante"... but that's exactly what we have in ''Nightmare Circus''... a traveling carnival) from the flames of hell. Now, terrifying demons roam the carnival, spreading fear and destruction where once there were children and lots of fun. |
| | + | *Only, Raven a native (American) with mystic and telepathic powers can defeat ''Jester'' and his followers in this carnival. Well, "fun" is not the most appropriate word to define this place..."--[[User:Asagoth|Asagoth]] ([[User talk:Asagoth|talk]]) 22:48, 22 December 2021 (EST) |
| | + | :Thank you, this is awesome. I wanted text confirmation that Raven was Native American. Also those refs are so cool. I saw the missing photo of the dev team too, so sad :( Maybe if I send enough emails I can find whoever has the original :p 20:51, 23 December 2021 (EST) |
| | + | ::His brother is called ''White Eagle'' (player 2 on 2 player mode)... yep... it hurts when cool stuff gets lost... so sad... by the way... ''Leto Diablo'' is in fact ''Jester''... I just don't know why TecToy made such a mess with the villain's name...--[[User:Asagoth|Asagoth]] ([[User talk:Asagoth|talk]]) 21:06, 23 December 2021 (EST) |