A simple fighting game that would have been great for kids, if not for the challenging difficulty.
The story is a group of strange characters such as an opera singer, an evil snowman and a pile of goo, all join a contest to become "king of the circus". It doesn't really make much sense, and it's not at all explained, but it will do for a SNES fighting game. The gameplay is fighting game standard, so if your at all familiar with the genre, you'll pick up pretty quick.
The graphics are really the high point of the game. All of the characters look as if, as the name implies, they are made of clay. The backgrounds for the levels look great too, with cartoon like water waves flowing, or clouds passing by. Unfortanetly, the animation is pretty choppy, and the attacks animate at a pretty unstable rate. The sound has some neat voice acting, and the music (particularly the song at the beggining screen) are pretty silly but work well. But Clayfighter is full of problems, most notably the challenge. If you target a game at kids, you should make it a tad easier. Sometimes the AI feels incredibly cheap.
Overall, Clayfighter is by no means a bad game. Just not a good one either. If you have a huge desire to have clay figures duke it out in a circus to the death, buy this game. And if you feel no challenge by Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, this game could be for you. But overall, there's no reason to rush out and find Clayfighter.