Bringing a Clown to a Fist-Fight

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I think this will be my longest introductory segment ever (or at least the one that rounds most neatly to the nearest 1,000):

Yes, there's plenty of games where you have to lay out a clown with haymakers, jump-kicks or using other clowns as living baseball bats:

Clown Baseball: with a clown for the bat and a clown for the ball.

But this week we're not going to look at beat-em-up games that have clown-enemies.

Instead we're going to look at ~~a motley assortment of~~ One-on-One Fighting Games where one of the characters is a clown. To ~~pad out the article~~ fully show off every brawlin' harlequin, we'll look at four categories for each fool:

Name: where we wax somber on their wacky sobriquet
Level: Anywhere they hang their giant rainbow-colored wig is home.
Circ-Cred: What do they do to earn their "Circus-Cred" as a fighting clown?
The tears of a clown: How do they handle defeat? (And not just "dey put dem in deir comically oversized shoes")

Street Combat

Name: Dozo

Not quite Bozo, not quite No-Doze -- the grim-faced but androgynous harbinger of your doom. Also your second opponent.

Level: Girders of a building under construction

I'd say it's an odd choice, but Dozo itself has such a high reading on the Goofy-Meter, it's hard to judge.

Circ-Cred:

Red Rubber Nose
Terrifyingly snug leotard with large red buttons
Floppy night-cap
Maracas/extendable batons
pointed shoes?

The tears of a clown: "Go back to the circus."

She/he drops his/her maracas, and somehow manages to be knocked unconscious but not plummet off it's lofty lair.

Fighter's History

The most blatant of Street Fighter II-ripoffs to successfully fend off Capcom's lawsuit features THIS penultimate mini-boss:

Name: Clown

Short and to the point...though basically without imagination (which makes it a good microcosm of Fighter's History)

Level: Salvador Dali Brothers Circus of Despair Plus Giant Faces On The Moon And/Or In The Clouds.

Circ-Cred:

Hideous mask
Background filled with other circus performers
Hideous mask
"Pick a Card" projectile attack
Various tumbling tricks (flying at you while curled in a ball, spinning you in circles using his feet, etc)
Hideous mask

The tears of a clown: If beaten repeatedly about the face his mask flies off revealing a travesty of human features beneath.

And in defeat, he presents the victor with a miniscule flag, suitable for "claiming this ice cream sundae in the name of Spain!"

Clay Fighters

The SNES's third-best clay-based Street Fighter II knockoff contains THIS fully-playable red-wigged horror:

Name: Bonker

At least he's not having a bad fur day.

Level: Terrifying checkerboard, giant rubber duckies/toys, a river of pink slime rolling between two gaping maws of green and red nightmare beings.

Pee-Wee's Playhouse, as envisioned by Hieronymus Bosch?

Circ-Cred:

Giant red hair and nose
Comically oversized shoes
Squirting Flower gag
Cartwheel attack
Throws pies
Jumps loudly, swings a big mallet.

The tears of a clown: Falls on his back with his limbs pointed towards that great clown in the sky...

He assumes the classic "Dead Bug" position.

And to wrap up -- Honorable Mention: Ballz 3-D

I'm pretty sure there's a vaguely clown-like amalgam of spheres in BALLZ, but given that it's possibly the only SNES fighting game LESS playable than the torturous Pit Fighter (and I can't get pictures from it), I'm not going to bother with it...