Chinese Juggler

The Good
There are some games that you pick up and try one day only to put back down, because you were never good at it the first time around. Then, you have a go at the same game at a much later point, and suddenly you find yourself being hooked. Chinese Juggler, which I received just months after I was also given Mr. Wimpy, is one of those games. My father obviously knew if you saw a game bearing the Ocean logo, you knew it was going to be good.

The setting is a stage show and your character is a man wearing an Oriental costume. Eight poles are arranged in a pyramid, and your job is to collect plates from the four racks at the bottom of the stage and place them on each pole. At the same time, you have to keep an eye on each plate, making sure one of them isn’t wobbling. In that case, you have to adjust the pole it is on until it starts spinning again. If you allow one of them to wobble for too long, it will fall off the pole and you’ll need to replace it. Each plate is assigned one of five colors – purple, green, white, yellow, and cyan. Of these, the white ones cannot be collected from the plate rack, but can be obtained by tossing.

There are ten levels, and the first one of these might be easy since you can put any colored plate on any pole you want. On later levels, however, you are told what color to put on next. If a plate of that color isn’t available, you can toss a plate up in the air until the plate turns to the color you want. The hardest levels, in my opinion, are the ones where all the plates you put up have to be the same color.

Instructions are provided, both during the game and on the inlays. What these instructions don’t tell you is that you have to align yourself with the base of the poles as close as you can, otherwise you may struggle trying to get the plates on them. The status bar displays the current level, the two scores (current and high), and a timer. This last counter consists of four digits, and if all of them reach zero, the show is over. If you manage to get all the plates on before it expires, however, your little Oriental man moves to the front of the stage, jumps up and down, and waves to the audience before the next level commences. This animation can’t be bypassed, but it only lasts for about ten seconds.

The cover art for the game looks fantastic, showing a different side to your character; he looks more like a psychopath rather than an entertainer. Bob Wakelin, the illustrator, was impressed with his own artwork, he actually etched his signature onto it. As far as the game is concerned, the graphics look quite colorful and your character’s walking animations are impressive. I like how the palette changes every level. Everything on the screen gets faster the more plates you put on, keeping you on edge. The main music doesn’t get boring, and different melodies play when you finish a level.

The Bad
When you have to toss a plate up in the air to make it change to a specific color, the game can deny you that color until a fair amount of time has elapsed. When tossing plates, the game sometimes gives you a black plate, which is tossed into the air. There is no mention of a black plate anywhere in the instructions. When I accidentally picked up the wrong plate, I couldn’t dispose of it, even if I tried to put it back on an empty plate rack.

A nifty feature of the game is the ability to record your own games, which you can by pressing a function key while viewing the instructions, but I couldn’t find any way to play it back.

The Bottom Line
Chinese Juggler is a game released during Ocean’s infancy. The object is to get all eight plates on the poles and make sure one or two of them don’t wobble. The graphics and music are very good, and some people like me who didn’t like the game in the first place will become addicted to it. The instructions could have had more information telling you how to dispose of unwanted plates, as well as how to playback your recorded games. If you are a collector of Ocean games from back in the day, this one is highly recommended.