Circus Charlie Guide
Intro:
I can’t max this game and I don’t play it often but I’m decent, so here’s a guide….
This game is about 3 things: the tricks/easter eggs, the patterns and the order of execution of the boards.
I play the screens in the following order:
1. Lions (all of them back to back until there are no more lion screens left)
2. Monkeys (all, etc)
3. Balls (all, etc)
4. Horse/Trampolines (all, etc)
5. Knives (1st 3 screens, would be all but I don’t remember how to play past the 3rd one)
6. Ropes (all, etc)
Trick: If you save the knives for late in your game and grab all the money on the screen during a knife board, you are awarded a shit ton more points than if you played that screen early in your game. Not sure if it is because of the # of boards played or if it is because your score is therefore pretty high by the time you play it. This is like a 20 or 30k bonus! Huge.
Lions:
Trick: When you start the board, before you do anything, hold left and press jump quickly 4 times. An extra man will float by rather than a flaming hoop at some point. You can do this on all the lion screens and is CRUCIAL for banking up a ton of free guys right from the start.
Trick: You can make a coin appear by back jumping a flaming pot (changes every board so keep trying this till you force the coin to appear) and then jumping forward over the same pot. A coin will pop up from the pot. This usually coincides with a flaming hoop in your direction though so forward jump a pot, wait until a hoop then comes nearby, back jump the same pot and then you can time your jump to grab the coin and move forward over the pot to also include jumping through the next hoop all at the same time. Only one coin appears per lion screen.
These screens are pretty straightforward and the 2nd, 3rd, etc versions of these screens don’t get too much tougher.
Trick: A HUGE leeching spot occurs at the end of every lion board. At the end of the screen there are 2 flaming pots then the final platform to jump on. Jump the next to last pot but don’t jump the last one to finish the screen. Back jump the same pot and jump forward over it again (the next to last pot). This is 500 points per flaming pot jump so you can rack up a lot of points by continually doing this as the timer ticks down. Eventually more hoops will come, a few of these will be money hoops which only add to the leeching awesomeness. Finish the screen with as few seconds on the timer as possible after leeching the 2nd to last flaming pot as much as possible.
Monkeys:
You can basically just hold right constantly and breeze through the first few screens of these. Eventually they get a little tougher and you have to pause more, wait, jump straight up over some monkeys, time the purple ones more, etc. They are all patterned so this just takes recognition over time to not lose men throughout all the monkey screens.
Trick: At the end of every screen there is a platform to jump onto. Rather than jumping onto the platform, wait near it, make sure no monkeys are coming and run towards the ring that hangs off of it. Once you touch it, it will trigger a money bag to appear on the platform and you can jump straight up onto the platform at that point.
Balls:
No tricks here, very boring screen. Make sure you take advantage of the ability to move backwards and remember that jumping over a ball onto another yields more points, but it’s pretty minimal so just play all of these in a row and don’t die.
Trampolines/Horse:
This screen can yield you big points if you know how to play it well. Basically what I try to do is hold left to go very slow and try to hit the 1st platforms as far left (early) as possible, then slam the controller right once I land on the first platform to speed up and hit the next one(s) for big points. This takes a lot of practice to get down. On some of the later horse stages I will just ride under or jump over the very dangerous platforms to make sure I don’t lose men on these stages. Just remember, slow, then fast while you are in mid air to hit the big point platforms. Learn to control the speed well and don’t be afraid to just skip certain dangerous platforms. Don’t forget to jump onto the final platform at the end.
Knives:
I only remember how to do the 1st 3 of these and they are pretty easy to pattern. Mostly you can see when to progress through these by timing the projectiles. On the first screen, I grab all the money bags since they are easy to get and like I mentioned earlier, if you saved this screen this far into the game and you probably have like 300k+ in points by now or something, you will get about 20-30k at the end of the level by grabbing all the money bags.
After the 2nd knives board you will get automatically routed to a dolphin stage. Basically, you can do a one jump up wait, then move forward through this, unless you get a double dolphin pair come at you. Luckily you will be able to see this ahead of time and when you do, simply pause for one more jump up (2 total), they will go under you and you can move forward.
Ropes:
Easily the toughest screen(s) in the game. Use patience!!! Swing back and forth to gain momentum (joystick left then right in sync with the actual movement of the rope). Try to time your jumps to where the next rope you want to move to is either level with you or slightly above you. NEVER BELOW YOU. That’s death, you’ll go right through it. The hardest part of this screen can actually be landing on the final platform. These screens take a ton of practice.
That should get you going and probably get you to close to 500k or so after some practice. Good luck.
