Retro Arcade Down The Clown Tabletop Electronic Game

I loved buying this for my arcade and it makes a great addition. You can play down the clown in your own home. There are a few problems, which are that the balls fall on the floor a lot. and it is kind of hard to get them in the thing. But, I learned you could use the thing they go into (the scoop thing) to get them back in. This thing was amazing and I love it.

There's a piece missing

It came with the front gate missing and stickers damaged. When we put batteries in it the “0” on the LED screen blinks and makes a clicking sound, but doesn’t keep track of the score or stock flashing. Seems like it was a return or defective item that was sent to me and I can’t return it because I bought it over a month before Christmas.

A mi niño le encantó el juego, tiene una función muy linda de luces y música que te hace más divertido el juego. Las pelotas saltan del juego con facilidad, por lo que hay que tener cuidado. En general una gran compra

This is a pretty fun game but not perfect. Some clowns knock down easily when you hit them, while some won't go down when you do, which is frustrating. The balls are small and plastic, but surprisingly rebound back pretty hard and a few will fly out past the netting and could be a hassle to corral. Easy to assemble and all the parts were there. It's fun for a few days, then our kids were bored of it, which was not good since this takes up a lot of table space and doesn't store neatly. Gave it away after a week.

SENT THIS HANDS-ON TABLETOP GAME TO MY GRANDKIDS FOR EASTER! THEY REALLY LIKED IT, & GOT THEM OFF THEIR IPADS & IPHONES!!!

The package contains only a few balls. The size of the balls is unspecified, preventing us from purchasing additional ones.

Before you order this game, there are five things you absolutely need to know. It's going to make a big difference, so don't skip this review. 1. SET IT UP BEFORE THE KIDS EVEN SEE THE BOX. It takes a little longer than you'd expect to assemble all the pieces, and put the stickers in place before you actually connect them. This includes even putting each individual clown sticker on yourself. Kids get impatient. Save yourself the high blood pressure of being asked if it's ready to play with yet during assembly by just putting it together when your child isn't around. You've gotta trust me on this one. 2. LOOK AT THE BOX WHEN PUTTING IT TOGETHER: The instructions are only slightly helpful, at best. Because the illustrations are small, and they're printed in grey and white. Sometimes it was just easier to glance at the front of the box (which is in full color) to get a clear idea of how the pieces connect, and where exactly the stickers go. Good luck putting the long strips of stars stickers on the ball cannons. I guarantee you'll either put some uneven, or it won't match up with the illustrations/photos perfectly. Thankfully no one will really notice. 3. HAVE BATTERIES ON HAND. The game itself works without batteries. But if you want the sound effects, the music, the LED timer, and the score keeping to work, you need three AAA batteries. Like any normal parent, I ended up stealing batteries out of whatever remote controls in the house I thought we wouldn't immediately need, to use for this game. Because I wasn't about to run all the way to the store that second just for batteries. Do yourself a favor, have your AAA batteries ready before you even open the box. If you're ordering this as a gift for someone, be a thoughtful gifter and order a pack of AAAs along with the game. It's a small gesture, but they'll appreciate it. 4. SCORING ISN'T PERFECT: About 15% of the time, you'll knock a clown down, and you won't get any points for it. It happens when the clowns fall slowly, it happens when you smack them down quickly. There's no rhyme or reason to it, it just happens. Accept it in advance, and just hope no one gets mildly frustrated if scoring is close between two players. 5. YOU MIGHT NEED SOME GLUE: The "bucket" top part of the shooters can pop off without your kid even being particularly rough with it. One of ours snapped clean off after a few hours of play, all our Little Girl did was hold on to it to aim better when firing. A little superglue made it good as new. The game is pretty sturdy otherwise, just be careful with the loading buckets on top. Overall, the game is great. Nothing like any other game that we've played before. It's not too challenging for even the youngest kids. And it's fun enough that all the grown-ups want to take a turn trying it out. No real negatives about it, except for the ball loaders being a little fragile on top. For some strange reason, there was a patch of open space in the plastic "net" that separates the two playing areas, for our game. Guess it was a minor defect in production. Doesn't warrant taking a star off the rating, since it didn't affect game play. Don't like the music and sound effects? No problem. Toggling the "on" switch to the middle instead of the far left lets you play in silence (but the LED screen still shows the timer and scores). I love the sound effects when you tag a clown, our Daughter actually found the music slightly distracting. And while the score keeping feature wasn't always perfect, we mostly didn't care since we were more focused on who could knock down the most clowns (rather than who could score the most points). The higher up the clown, the more points you get (3 per top clown, 2 for middle clowns, 1 point per lower clowns). So go for those top clowns early. Oddly enough, they seem to be the easiest to hit since you can only tilt the shooter back so far. I do recommend that you keep a ziplock bag or other container handy to store the balls in when you're done playing. Sometimes you'll shoot one so hard that it will ricochet off a clown, and fly back towards you. Thankfully none of us caught one in the eye. But they can fly back at you pretty fast. So you occasionally may have to go hunting for a few of the balls if you play for an hour or more. SHOULD YOU BUY THIS TOY? Parents: Thumbs up. Kid: Thumbs up. It's fun. It's different. It's fast-paced, which is perfect for people with severe A.D.D. like myself (I love that feeling of focus like you get playing certain video games). Plus it's still fun even if you don't have a second player to compete against (though our daughter savors every moment when she outscores me). Kids will love it, grown-ups will love it, grown-ups who wish they were still kids and didn't have all these bills to deal with will love it. Makes me remember those fun games at the state fair. Only I don't have to walk briskly and avoid eye contact with the carnies trying to lure me over to the games I know will clean me out (talking to you, balloon-dart lady and ball-in-the-basket guy). Don't love it? Amazon gives you like a whole month to try it out, and send it back for a full refund. So you risk nothing by ordering it. Look, you can spend forty bucks on eating out once or twice. Or you can put that towards a game that you can spend time bonding with your child. If you've got pizza or fast food money, you can order this game. But you won't know whether or not your kid will love it, unless you actually order it. So add it to your shopping cart right now, check out, you'll have it in a few days.