The “Drill Wall” Levels are incredibly annoying.
The games I feature here are games that I love. Some games are games that are widely regarded as the best ever, but I also try and focus on games that are not considered to be critical successes, and games I like. Sure, everybody’s reviewed Street Fighter 2 in their times, but pushing games like The Detective Game is also important for me. If one other person plays that game because of me, then I feel I’ve acheived something.
One such game for me is Kid Chameleon.
Never quite got the critical success it deserved in my eyes, with many people viewing it as an average platformer. I’d agree and see why. There are times in the game you just get unbelievably stuck, with no idea what to do. One time for example happens early in the game, you become the Beserker and you reach an unscalable wall. What you are supposed to do is not become the Beserker, but remain as The Iron Knight – the only character that can climb walls. Problems such as this did put people off.
So, I mentioned two characters, what do they do and why did I mention them? Well, the game you play Kid Chameleon, who enters a virtual reality video game to try and rescue his friends, who have been captured within the game. The Chemeleon aspect of the game refers to the powerups dotted within the game. What starts as a fairly basic platformer becomes a puzzler, as whilst all the masks (the formation of the powerups) are useful, some are more useful than others. One mask makes you fly, one mask mask turns you into a tank, other allows you to run into walls to knock them over. There’s even a hockey mask that turns you into Jason-esque character called Maniaxe.
Diamonds lead to powerups, which you can use to do special attacks.
This is the reason why I love this game when it came out – the sheer scale, amount and varity of the powerups. Sega didn’t have a power up driven superhero like Nintendo’s Mario, and Kid Chameleon in this game did a lot to rectify this with the Kid. Whilst not as successful as Mario, Sega did manage to make a “cool” power up driven hero, as even in the Kid’s unpower upped state, the Kid wears shades & jeans, and could you ever imagine Nintendo’s plumber wearing a slasher, Jason-esque mask? The powerups are awesome, and the whole “mask” concept I believe works better than the mushroom, fire flower & stars that appeared in Mario.
The other beauty about this game is that it’s the first I remember with multiple ways to complete the game. This was a good thing, as there were over 40 levels (which was a massive amount at the time), and each one of them was substantial.
Sure it wasn’t completely different, groundbreaking or original, but it had some nice touches, a fairly cool theme tune, and was rather fun to play.