Kid Chameleon Review

       I just realized it's going to be hard for me to give a proper score to Kid Chameleon. Back when it was made in '92, there were many such games that you had to play over and over again until you finally beat that last level, no saving involved. Not many games had over 100 super-hard levels like Kid Chameleon though. It's really hardcore.

       Kid Chameleon is a 2d platformer for the Sega Genesis. I played it on PS3 on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. And I save-scummed like it was my job to beat the game. This game is extremely hard and has a seemingly unending torrent of levels. Even thinking of trying to beat it legitimately is nonsense. I understand that there are some warp-points like in Mario 3 that can let you jump forward many levels. Good luck discovering them though. Beating this game outright would take...probably years. In fact I was just reading an article by a guy who has the world's high score in the game, and if I was reading it right, it took him six years to initially beat the game. A few years ago I got into the game and played it a lot. I was trying to play it without saving, and I got to about level 10 or so. This time around, I just wanted to beat it and have some fun, and thankfully on SUGC, you can save at any time. So typically I would save at the beginning of each level and reload as needed, although several times, especially in the later levels where I was tempted to rage quit, I would even save mid-level.

       So, in Kid Chameleon, there is a virtual reality arcade game, kind of like a holodeck. It's final boss has started kidnapping kids (in real life). The player goes into the machine to save them. So each level is a level in the game within a game. That's so meta. You run around in these levels, which are often pretty big and feature multiple paths to multiple exits. You can jump on enemies heads to kill them. You often find power-ups that transform you into a new form, such as a samurai with a sword, a knight with lots of hit points, a tank that shoots skulls (?), or a axe-throwing Jason look alike. That's about half of the transformations, I won't ruin them all. Some of the later ones are amazing...

       X is jump, the d-pad controls your movement, and holding square makes you run. Circle activates your current form's special power. To use our previous examples, the samurai swings his sword, the knight can climb walls, the tank shoots, and the Jason guy throws axes. Some forms also have alternate moves or abilities. For example, the Samurai can stab downward if you press circle and down when in the air, the vanilla, un-transformed kid can grab onto blocks and flip himself up if you double-tap X, and the knight has more hit points and breaks any blocks he lands on with his feet.

       Speaking of blocks, they are everywhere. Blocks with a “p” on them contain power-ups and crystals and extra lives and such. You can also find clocks that increase the time you have to complete the level, as every level has a countdown timer in the corner, and if it reaches zero, you die. I found myself transforming a lot, as there are plentiful power ups and transforming re-fills your hit points. The crystals you find are used to activate special powers that each form has. You do this by holding square and pressing start. Typically these powers make crystals fly out and attack the enemy in a different pattern depending on what form you are in. There is usually a 20 crystal power and a 50 crystal power that is more potent, although one or two of the forms mess with this pattern. These abilities are quite powerful and can be a big help getting through tough spots, but unless you are really going after each and every crystal in a level, you'll only be using these powers once every 5 levels or so.

       The game has a bit of a Mario feel to it at first, but soon you realize that the levels have a much bigger verticality to them than classic Mario. You go up and down almost as much as you go left or right. That combined with the constant transforming really makes the game feel like it's own beast once you get a few levels in, and once you get really deep into the game, it feels nothing at all like Mario despite the fact that you jump on enemies' heads and punch blocks to make power-ups come out.

       Kid Chameleon has pretty great art and music. Each of the many forms have great sprites and animation, and the many enemy types are great as well. I especially love the humanoid killer whales that melt into skeletons when they die. The levels tend to have a blocky look to them, but when you beat the level, the holograms fade to reveal that you are still in the arcade machine, which is a very cool effect. The music is a bit less aggressive and in your face than most games in the genre from this time. It's less about melodies. Kid Chameleon's music fades more into the background. It's nice to have a different musical style in a platformer, which is a genre defined by its many tropes. The sound effects fit in well with the mix too. I especially love the enemies that yell “Die!” at you. That's amazing. If you enjoy seeing crazy stuff from the '90's, you'll love what you see and hear in this title.

       Kid Chameleon is a lot of fun, but it has two major flaws. First, it's really hard to control. You might not notice too much at first, but once the jumps start getting tricky, you will realize that the controls are insanely floaty. The kid controls like a blimp or something. When you jump, you can change direction in the air and your movement to such a degree that it makes it hard to land where you want to, even if you've been playing for hours. When you start getting into harder areas, this leads to frustration. Second, the game is insanely hard! Ok, first off, there's no saving because this is an old school game. I get that. But many, many of the game's levels require trial and error to figure out what to do. The areas that almost require you to sacrifice lives to figure out what to do outnumber the amount of lives you get probably four to one. Which means the designers want you to replay 20...30... 70... 80+ levels just to get back to the level you are on so you can blow through your remaining lives trying to figure out what to do. I would venture to say you would need to repeat that process hundreds of times to beat the game. If a designer asks you to do something repetitive, it must be compelling. Kid Chameleon is fun, but it is nowhere near compelling enough to merit that kind of intense play. In my opinion, that is bad game design (unless of course this was purely a hardware issue, i.e. there was no way to make the game save, in which case I apologize for the nasty stuff I'm about to say). I get that this game is famously super-hard, but what people have to realize is that (in this case) this means is your game isn't fun. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is a good counterpoint to Kid Chameleon. It is probably the harder game in terms of the pure challenge the levels throw at you. But because it has saving between levels, it is engaging and fun to throw yourself at its challenges over and over until you finally break through and beat a level. It is designed to be extremely hard, yet fun and beatable. Kid Chameleon is just way too hardcore for me. I really enjoyed playing it and seeing it all through save-scumming though.

       Kid Chameleon is not beyond hard. Like I said, Giana Sisters is probably harder. Kid Chameleon is beyond punishing though, and requires a life-time commitment to beat legitimately. What that means for 99% of the people who play it is that they will have a few days of fun with it and then give it up having not seen 70% of its fun levels. Whether you are a kid in 1996 or a modern-day person trying to beat an old school platformer without saving, that doesn't help you, it just frustrates you. You can have some fun times playing as far as you can get legitimately, or you can have fun seeing all the levels using save-scumming, but beating the game outright is one of gaming's toughest challenges, and one few will ever accomplish. And that's due not only to the insanely punishing nature of the game, but also to its impossibly floaty physics. The two or so people who do complete the game legitimately will probably feel more pain than pleasure. Kid Chameleon is a Mediocre Game, Tier 2.