Bandai’s FL Crazy Climbing brings Nichibutsu’s 1980 arcade hit Crazy Climber to the tabletop: steer a daredevil up the face of a 49-storey skyscraper, one handhold at a time, with a joystick for each hand.
“FL” is short for fluorescent: a glowing vacuum fluorescent display shows a red climber on a grid of blue and green windows. The box sums it up as “Dodge the obstacles and scale the skyscraper!”
Interesting facts
Straight from the arcade. Nichibutsu’s Crazy Climber reached Japanese arcades in October 1980 and was the country’s third-highest-earning arcade game of the year, behind only Pac-Man and Galaxian. Its designer, Shigeki Fujiwara, later created Bomberman.
One climber, three names. Japan got FL Crazy Climbing; American shoppers knew it as Bandai’s Crazy Climber (model 8203), and French boxes read L’Escalade. The Handheld Museum warns that the whole case is painted, and the paint comes off rather easily.
A killjoy in the sky. The box names the hazards with comic flair: the pot-dropping Ijiwaru Ojisan (“nasty old man”) and the Shirake-dori (“killjoy bird”), which shares its name with a famous gag by comedian Masao Komatsu.