Nightmare Circus

To do

There are more (all I believe) of the game's passwords posted in the comments here. Combine these with the ones TCRF lists for the Hidden content page.
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.
There's a prototype dumped by Hidden Palace that hasn't been covered whatsoever.
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.
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.)
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)

CartridgeCulture (talk) 09:33, 21 December 2021 (EST)

Stages

The Carnival

The one with the rollercoaster on the very left.
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.
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.

The Ticket Office

The building with the AMUSEMENTS sign.
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.
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.
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.

The Circus

The one with the ferris wheel.
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.
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, 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.
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.

The Completion

The big top at the very back.

User:CartridgeCulture learns basic formatting

Nightmare Circus dismystified - Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHTfV6e_hXE

Having a lot of trouble with both the proper text link, and the reference for this YouTube video. EDIT: Thank you for this and for fixing that youtube link! CartridgeCulture (talk) 02:01, 20 March 2021 (EDT)

Template:Ref ... to add your signature (with date and time) to a conversation, add four tildes (~) at the end of each of your replies (in the not too distant past, you just needed to click on an icon at the top of the page to add your signature , but this feature is "broken" and still needs to be fixed) --Asagoth (talk) 00:03, 20 March 2021 (EDT)

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;

Image tagging, Sega Retro templates, 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 Black Squirrel and SorachiJirachi‎ a.k.a. BSonirachi on Sonic Retro (Wiki Sysops) and 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...Asagoth (talk) 07:11, 20 March 2021 (EDT)

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