Clu Clu Land (Kurukuru Rando in Japan) is a Nintendo title released for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in 1984 in Japan, 1985 in North America, and 1987 in Europe. It was one of the "black box" launch titles for the NES in North America.
Clu Clu Land is a puzzle game where you play as a fish named Bubblesnote . The Unira have stolen all of the treasures in Clu Clu Land. Bubbles has to retrieve the treasure back from the evil sea urchins.
The goal of the game is to uncover all the ingots in each stage while avoiding enemies and black holes. Bubbles cannot turn around on her own. She needs to use the Turning Posts that located throughout the game to turn. Bubbles has the ability to stun Unira with a sound wave. She can then push Unira into a wall to destroy them and receive points.
Despite having no sequels and being a relatively obscure title, Clu Clu Land has had multiple rereleases and revised versions (including it appearing in the first Animal Crossing game and an appearance in NES Remix). Clu Clu Land was even ported to the Sharp Zaurus PDA in 2001. The last game released on the Family Computer Disk System was Clu Clu Land: Welcome to New CluClu Land, a port of the VS. System arcade version VS. Clu Clu Land. Clu Clu Land has been referenced several times in both Super Smash Bros. and WarioWare. Bubbles is also a Secret Character in the Jungle Jam mode of DK: King of Swing. The Rupees from The Legend of Zelda are modeled after the gold ingots, and the Digdogger enemy is based off of Unira.
Clu Clu Land contains examples of:
- Bonus Stage: Full of blue ingots that mercifully stay upright no matter how many times you pass over them and are always in the same locations. No unira or blackholes either, and no penalty for not completing them. Difficulty by Acceleration is inverted here, as the bonus stages become easier to clear in the time limit the faster Bubbles moves.
- Booby Trap: Rubber traps prevent Bubbles from passing, turn her in the opposite direction and usually are hidden until she tries to move where they are laid. Unira cannot pass by them either unless Bubbles pushes them by one while they are rendered immobile, but are not forced to change direction touching one.
- Collision Damage: The only attack unira have, but they can kill Bubbles instantly while she needs to hit them at least twice to smash them against a wall.
- Color-Coded Multiplayer: Player one is a red Groopy, player two is a green Groopy.
- Color-Coded Time Stop : Clocks known as "bonus timers" will stop the countdown and halt all uniras in place, preventing any more from coming on screen as well. The space outside of the walls changes color while the timer is stopped.
- Cyclops: Just like they mythological beast, the boss unira are gigantic and only have one eye. Unlike the mythological beast they are not humanoid.
- Difficulty by Acceleration: VS. Clu Clu Land gets faster the further you progress. You can tell when ingots start flipping shiny side down when Bubbles suddenly suffers a speed decrease to compensate for the added complexity.
- Dub Name Change: Bubbles's Japanese name is "Groopy", which is used in the worldwide release of VS. Clu Clu Land.
- Informed Species: Bubbles is supposed to be a common variety of pufferfish, but in practice she simply looks like a blob character with a tail. She displays not ability to inflate or deflate, and her most readily noticeable attributes are her constant rate high speed and abysmally low maneuverability. Real balloon fish are only fast in short bursts and make up for their overall lack of speed by being highly maneuverable. The unira move more like balloonfish than Bubbles does in this regard. The ingot arrangements are in reference to the complex patterns balloon fish draw in the sand to woo mates, as well as the intricate nests they lay eggs in, but given that the Unira stole the gold, Bubbles isn't responsible for their placement either.
- King Mook: Boss Unira in VS. Clu Clu Land. They are still rendered motionless by a single stun wave which also allows them to be pushed around, but they are more aggressive, larger obstacles to avoid and can freely pass over uncovered ingots.
- Lost in Translation: "Clu Clu" is an unusual Japanese Romanization of an onomatopoeia. "Kuru Kuru" refers to something going "around and around". It's a pun based off how the playable character goes around in circles.
- Make Me Wanna Shout: Bubbles is capable of releasing short range "stun waves", which immobilize unira while also making them safe to touch and push against a wall
- Maze Game: Most levels look straight forward, and some are, but the existence of rubber traps and the inability to freely change the direction Bubbles moves in when combined with the existence of black holes quickly makes navigation maze like. Then the game starts turning ingots shiny side down, requiring even more precise routes to be taken.
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Nintendo Hard: The puzzles start pretty simple, except for the facts you cannot freely change direction, you cannot change the speed of Bubbles or speed or even truly stop but only trade forward momentum for rotary momentum, you are facing enemies who are much more maneuverable, rubber traps and black holes serve to further restrict your movement, then there is a strict time limit on top of it all. Then the puzzles become more complicated when ingots start turning face down if you pass over them more than once and have to be passed over again to turn them shiny side up, truly pushing both the regular and "Vs." versions of the game into Nintendo Hard territory. - One-Hit-Point Wonder: Anything that can hurt Bubbles will instantly kill her.
- 1-Up: Bonus flags grant you an extra life
- Puzzle Game: Ingots must be revealed by passing over them, always arranged to form a picture, such as a key or a koala face, and must all be shiny side up before time expires to advance the game. There are rubber traps, holes to fall into and hostile unira hindering you while you try to do this. Bubbles has a stun wave attack, and bonus timer to collect sometimes, so Clu Clu Land is an action puzzle hybrid, with the action mainly serving to make the puzzles more difficult.
- Road Runner PC: Bubbles is a little faster than the unira and constantly moving at top speed while they can only sprint in short bursts. This is one of her two mobility advantages, as unira can freely change direction, have the option of not moving altogether, can ignore black holes and are not forced to change direction by rubber traps(the other is that Bubbles can freely pass over uncovered ingots, which becomes less of an advantage after the "option" to turn them dull side up is given to you)
- Scoring Points: Very few for the amount of time left, more for the amount of unira smashed, fruit collected, ingots uncovered shiny side up and bonus bags of money collected.
- Sir Cameos-a-Lot: Bubbles only has one game but has appeared in several other games.
- Spectacular Spinning: Spinning is the only way to anything but move back and forth, have anything resembling momentum control, avoid enemies, pursue stunned enemies and avoid bottomless pits, so get used to it.
- Timed Mission: Every screen is a puzzle that must be solved in a limited amount of time
- Toofast To Stop:Even if Bubbles hits a wall, she'll just bounce off the in the other direction while maintaining her momentum.
- Under the Sea: The entire game is underwater, with the presence of urchins suggesting it is the sea.
- Unrealistic Blackhole: They are bottomless pits that destroy Bubbles if she walks or swims over them, but she can safely swing over them by grabbing a turning post. They are harmless to the unira that infinitely spawn from them. In Vs. Clu Clu Land after smashing enough unira they will spawn a boss unira, which is larger than the hole itself. Smashing the boss unira will cause them to stop spawning unira, but they remain hazards for Bubbles.
- Victory Dance: Bubbles does one every time you clear a stage, and even if when you get a game over should your score be high enough
- Watch Where You're Going!: The two Groopy will bounce off of each other if they move into the same space.
- Wrap Around: Where walls are not present Bubbles can leave the screen and instantly appear on the other side of it.
