Cameltry

[tepidsnake]

Taito is, by far, one of my favourite developers- The Newzeland Story is probably my favourite game of all time, and their arcade output is fantastic- so it'll be fair to expect plenty of rainbowgames posts from me about them! So for starters, let's talk about one of their paddle games, Cameltry.

 

Released in 1989 in arcades, Cameltry is a maze-style game that takes combines rotating graphics with a paddle controller to create a somewhat-dizzying race to the finish. Rather than directly move your marble, you rotate the maze around it with the analogue paddle and while you can press a button to make the ball jump or fall faster- essential for destroying blocks- that's all you've got. The main challenge comes in the form of obstacles like one-way paths, stop/go signs, bumpers, time-reducing cross marks and the all-important timer which is your only real foe. Your marble can't be destroyed by any environmental hazards, only by the clock, and you only get a certain amount of time added after each stage, so making it to the end quickly to have more time for the next stage is the only way to go.

What sticks with me about Cameltry is this strange 'feel' that is has, not necessarily in mechanics but tiny visual things. In particular, the backgrounds (which don't rotate with the maze, but do scroll and range from a thunderstorm, neon signs and pastel smears with the occasional angry clock scrolling by) and the appearance of some kind of Goddess apparently watching over your marble (she runs the tutorial, appears on the Continue prompt and in the ending is identified as Yurika Cery, the Space Time Goddess) give the game this weird atmosphere. Special mention must also go to the ending of each course which we'll see in a moment which emphasize this.


 They're just little things, and you'd think they wouldn't add much, but take them away and the game feels like it loses a lot- there was a remake titled Cameltry 2005, pictured above and included as an extra game on the Taito PSP collection (Taito Memories Pocket in Japan, Taito Legends: Power-Up in the US/EU) and it's fairly colourful, but these elements are gone, and with it a lot of the game's charm and appeal. Hopefully, you'll see what I mean in the little gallery after the cut (which does spoil the endings, but as the game's only a few minutes long...)

These are probably the most striking backgrounds in the game, and some have animations- the bats fly around in the castle background, for instance, and there's intermittent lightning strikes in another.

Here's the Goddess of Space Time, referred to as Yurika Cery- first on the Continue? prompt and again in the tutorial for the game.

And finally, the game's four endings, which can be altered slightly by choosing one of the game's hidden marbles- before selecting a course except Training, hold the Start button down then press the button, and a marble selection menu will appear, including Chack'n, an invader, and the disembodied head of Roy Adams from Operation Wolf. 

If you'd like to try Cameltry yourself outside of MAME, the game was included in Taito Memories Joukan (the one with the blue cover, although it must be unlocked either by a cheat code or playing certain games for over an hour), Taito Legends 2 on PC, PS2 and Xbox and both Taito Memories Pocket and Taito Legends: Power-Up for the PSP with the aforementioned Enchanced version. There were also FM Towns and Sharp 68K ports,and a SNES homeport retitled On the Ball for the US and EU release which has several more levels and apparently supports the SNES mouse (preferable to playing on a pad!). There were also two direct followups- Labyrinth/Mawashite Kolon for the DS, and Cameltry: The Maze of Enigma for iOS.

 

 

Comments

[thegaygamer]

I'm sad to say I've spent very little time with this game so far, but considering how much I, too, love Taito, I'm really going to have to rectify that sometime soon. Also, I've always found the Super Famicom version's box art to be really appealing, so maybe I'll pick up that iteration in the near future and use it as an excuse to spend some quality time with this game ^^

[tepidsnake]

Oh yeah, that Super Famicom boxart is really great! It's not quite as good as its arcade brethren- mostly in visuals- but I imagine it'd work quite well with the mouse controller (I don't have a proper copy to test like this, sadly). And hey, you want a use our of your SNES mouse, right? :3

[peppertsuki]

This game looks really fun, but the most important thing to me is that Yurika Cery is super cute and has an awesome name.

[chocomarsh]

I picked up the SNES port of this last night, and had a lot of fun with it! The Expert & Special courses are really nasty, though. I can't think of the last time I encountered something as aggravating as those pinball bumpers.

And Yurika Cery is very good.

[chocomarsh]

alsooo wow the arcade version is so much prettier

EDIT oh gosh look at this hilariously down-to-the-wire clear of Expert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bssMf8f8tek

[tepidsnake]

I'm glad to see everyone likes Yurika Cery!

And oh wow, that run was so, so close. You do get one final chance when you die, incidentally- a pinball-style 'here's a number, if you get it at random you can keep going' thing. The course after this one is even tougher than that! The very last stage is pretty aggravating, where you have to go against a current of those one-way tiles to get to the goal in the middle.

[moon_hotel]

Cameltry hits me in a very particular aesthetic spot that I always associate with mid-90s Taito arcade games: structures overlaid on top of tiling images or photorealistic backgrounds. I think it's kind of a weird blending in my brain of the backgrounds of the Puzzle Bobble series as well...I should do more research into this!

Thank you so much for this post, Cameltry is one of my favs :^)

[tepidsnake]

Thank you, I figured it'd be a good fir for here!

And yes, that was definitely something Taito did a lot of in the 90s, my mind mostly goes to Puzzle Bobble 2 for it. My favourite game that does it is Cleopatra Fortune, as it blends in so nicely with the rest of the game!