Interplay’s prehistoric Super NES brawler ‘Clayfighter’ is making a return to consoles in 2010. Nope, this is not a joke.

Heaven knows what insanity must have informed such a decision – we’re certainly not detecting any groundswell of nostalgia for the game, ironic or otherwise. Nevertheless Clayfighter is firmly back on the agenda and heading to Wii and DSi next summer. That means there’s still plenty of time to run and hide if you want.

But giving Clayfighter its dues, it never took itself too seriously and won its fair share of admirers back in the day. It even scooped an EGM Award as the ‘Best Street Fighter Wannabe’ of 1993, as we’ve just been reminded. The plasticine characters and comedy fighting moves surely lent a very unique look to the proceedings too.

What’s new for the 2010 edition? Well, Interplay is talking up “improved graphics and revamped gameplay to take advantage of Nintendo’s current generation of hardware”, which we take to mean it’ll utilise the Wiimote and DSi stylus in various entertaining ways. Also it seems that the original game’s programmer, Eric Hart, is helming development this time around – for all we know he’s spent the last 17 years painstaking stop-motion animating all the new game’s characters. Finally new-gen Clayfighter is scheduled for download-only release, via the Wii’s Virtual Console service and DSiWare.

So that’s something to look forward to next year. Fingers crossed a ‘Rise of the Robots’ resurrection is not following...