(This is the 67th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Kid Chameleon, a platformer developed by Sega Technical Institute and released in March 1992 for the Sega Genesis, is the 35th best game for the Sega Genesis according to magazine "Mega". That seems like a pretty good ranking for a game that I found to be overwhelmingly 'meh'.
The game got re-released in multiple collections over the years, and even is available on Steam for just 1€ since 2010 (it has 4 user reviews since then).
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
Here is how the manual describes the setup: "Wild Side is the newest game in town. It's a hologram that creates a reality not our own. You step inside to play..." Basically, kids enter a building to play the most realistic VR game ever. Turns out, the antagonist of that game, Heady Metal, found a way to enter reality from the game world and started abducting the kids who played. The obvious question arises of how another kid was sent in to play after the previous one disappeared behind closed door, but alas, many kids are "KID-Napped!".
Casey is the cool Kid Chameleon, and he enters the game world himself to rescue these kids. Try to guess why he is called 'Chameleon'... Yep, it's because he can shapeshift into multiple different alter ego's. You collect masks in the game to take the persona of characters called "Iron Knight", who has 5 hit points instead of the Kid's normal 2, "Red Stealth" who can attack with a blade, "Berzerker" who can bull-rush and break walls and, among other options, "Maniaxe", who can throw axes and looks like Jason Voorhees.
That's pretty much all. You go through a bunch of levels to find the bad guy, kill him and free the kids.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
This game is a side-scrolling platformer. You start off as Casey in his Kid Chameleon persona. Here, all you can do is walk and jump. You have two hit points. The game has Super Mario Bros-type blocks with hidden items in them, like diamonds for currency, clocks to give you more time, keys to give you more lives and, of course, masks to change your persona.
Once you collect a mask and switch personas, you either get 3 or 5 hit points depending on the character you get. You can also use their abilities, like throwing stuff at enemies, climbing up walls and flying upside down, to name a few examples. These characters are varied enough and fun to use, but most of my time, I simply got one of very few masks that would appear based on the situation at hand. A wall needs breaking? The game drops the Berzerker mask. You need to climb? The game drops the Iron Knight. Later levels will definitely get a bit more creative here, but considering that I got about 10% into the game after 3 hours and already saw enough, I didn't get that far.
Overall, the game doesn't play all too well. It falls victim to the control issue that plagues an occasional platformer, which is the icy block phenomenon. For some reason, jumping on a block means Casey takes a few extra steps forward, giving a "slippery" feeling to the controls for no apparent reason. The game also has a few issues with glitches, at least from what I can tell. Sometimes mask simply disappear, sometimes you jump on top of an enemy but it doesn't recognize it and you take the damage instead and sometimes you jump on a block that shoots spikes and for some reason, you get hit by them and instantly die. Fighting the game instead of the enemies is never fun. Finally, the pacing often felt slow. In one level, almost all you do is just stand around and wait for platforms to arrive. Breaking blocks, whether by jumping or running into them with the Bezerker, felt tedious and slow as well. Even boss fights, at least from what I saw, are very slow. And after playing this for hours, I couldn't believe how much game this game still had left. Why make it so long?
Apart from the personas, this game doesn't really stand out in any way, and the novelty of those personas does wear off after a while. So I can't say I am shocked that there is no official sequel, but maybe that had other reasons. According to the developers wiki page, the game sold well for Sega, whatever that means.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 4/10
No voice acting, apart from a specific sound I will mention in a second.
The sound design has that Sega vibe to it but doesn't sound impressive as a whole. For some reason, when certain enemies shoot (or spit) projectiles, the sound that plays is a voice saying "die". Why? The soundtrack fails to have a kick to it in my opinion, it just sounds so stale and more like background music that is uninvolved with the gameplay. Thematically, the songs also often don't fit. The "Fantasy" track for example sounds futuristic for some reason. Didn't really enjoy listening to this a whole lot.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
I'd say there is both good and bad here. For example, go to 1:07:34 of NintendoComplete's playthrough of this and look at the background. It literally looks like something my six year old brother drew. It looks like it came straight out of Paint and it's truly crazy how bad that looks compared to what you would expect out of a 16-bit console. I'm less insulted by NES games which simply have a black background to be honest.
But if you play most of the other levels, you will realize that this level's background is more of an oddity. Mountains have actual textures on other levels, entire cities are drawn on others, and the game does a solid job on a technical level. One level for example has the trees reflecting into the water, and that image moves as the water flows. Clouds move from side to side. And the sprites look pretty good here. The design of the different personas is especially well done and they remain the highlight of the game graphically as well as they already are from a gameplay perspective.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 4/10
Remember that you have entered virtual reality in this game. The game's way of reminding you of this is to have a stock image of a room with square tiling, which is the room that the Wild Side game is accessed in. Those squares fill out to give you the impression that you're in the game world. The game's levels themselves feel like a random mash-up of thematically different levels. There is the fire, water, earth and ice themed levels, there are levels playing below and above ground with no coherent overall map design apparent and all in all, immersion and atmosphere does not feel like a priority for this game apart from that initial set-up for the game's plot.
CONTENT | 4/10
The game has a lot of stages, with not nearly enough variety to justify it. The game is also fairly difficult at times, so the game can drag after you beat one of those more difficulty sections, only to realize you got many, many hours still to go.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Apart from there being too many levels in my opinion, a lot of them give the impression of being haphazardly designed. Often, I just felt like I had no idea where I was and somehow, some way I found my way to the exit. Having fewer levels and spending more time on each would have done wonders here, though finding the occasional secret passage to some (bland) treasure was enjoyable enough.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
The personas are a neat idea, but it's not like that didn't exist before this game. If people reminisce about this game however, the personas will be what they will remember primarily. In every other way, the game is a very basic platformer.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
Not much replayability apart from trying to beat your high score and maybe using the personas slightly differently, though you won't be using them differently in a way that makes a notable difference.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at almost all times apart from the occasional glitches I mentioned.
OVERALL | 45/100
Worth trying for the novelty of the chameleon aspect, but other than that, the game is a very typical, and slower-than-average platformer that I wouldn't recommend.
Kid Chameleon, a platformer developed by Sega Technical Institute and released in March 1992 for the Sega Genesis, is the 35th best game for the Sega Genesis according to magazine "Mega". That seems like a pretty good ranking for a game that I found to be overwhelmingly 'meh'.
The game got re-released in multiple collections over the years, and even is available on Steam for just 1€ since 2010 (it has 4 user reviews since then).
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
Here is how the manual describes the setup: "Wild Side is the newest game in town. It's a hologram that creates a reality not our own. You step inside to play..." Basically, kids enter a building to play the most realistic VR game ever. Turns out, the antagonist of that game, Heady Metal, found a way to enter reality from the game world and started abducting the kids who played. The obvious question arises of how another kid was sent in to play after the previous one disappeared behind closed door, but alas, many kids are "KID-Napped!".
Casey is the cool Kid Chameleon, and he enters the game world himself to rescue these kids. Try to guess why he is called 'Chameleon'... Yep, it's because he can shapeshift into multiple different alter ego's. You collect masks in the game to take the persona of characters called "Iron Knight", who has 5 hit points instead of the Kid's normal 2, "Red Stealth" who can attack with a blade, "Berzerker" who can bull-rush and break walls and, among other options, "Maniaxe", who can throw axes and looks like Jason Voorhees.
That's pretty much all. You go through a bunch of levels to find the bad guy, kill him and free the kids.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
This game is a side-scrolling platformer. You start off as Casey in his Kid Chameleon persona. Here, all you can do is walk and jump. You have two hit points. The game has Super Mario Bros-type blocks with hidden items in them, like diamonds for currency, clocks to give you more time, keys to give you more lives and, of course, masks to change your persona.
Once you collect a mask and switch personas, you either get 3 or 5 hit points depending on the character you get. You can also use their abilities, like throwing stuff at enemies, climbing up walls and flying upside down, to name a few examples. These characters are varied enough and fun to use, but most of my time, I simply got one of very few masks that would appear based on the situation at hand. A wall needs breaking? The game drops the Berzerker mask. You need to climb? The game drops the Iron Knight. Later levels will definitely get a bit more creative here, but considering that I got about 10% into the game after 3 hours and already saw enough, I didn't get that far.
Overall, the game doesn't play all too well. It falls victim to the control issue that plagues an occasional platformer, which is the icy block phenomenon. For some reason, jumping on a block means Casey takes a few extra steps forward, giving a "slippery" feeling to the controls for no apparent reason. The game also has a few issues with glitches, at least from what I can tell. Sometimes mask simply disappear, sometimes you jump on top of an enemy but it doesn't recognize it and you take the damage instead and sometimes you jump on a block that shoots spikes and for some reason, you get hit by them and instantly die. Fighting the game instead of the enemies is never fun. Finally, the pacing often felt slow. In one level, almost all you do is just stand around and wait for platforms to arrive. Breaking blocks, whether by jumping or running into them with the Bezerker, felt tedious and slow as well. Even boss fights, at least from what I saw, are very slow. And after playing this for hours, I couldn't believe how much game this game still had left. Why make it so long?
Apart from the personas, this game doesn't really stand out in any way, and the novelty of those personas does wear off after a while. So I can't say I am shocked that there is no official sequel, but maybe that had other reasons. According to the developers wiki page, the game sold well for Sega, whatever that means.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 4/10
No voice acting, apart from a specific sound I will mention in a second.
The sound design has that Sega vibe to it but doesn't sound impressive as a whole. For some reason, when certain enemies shoot (or spit) projectiles, the sound that plays is a voice saying "die". Why? The soundtrack fails to have a kick to it in my opinion, it just sounds so stale and more like background music that is uninvolved with the gameplay. Thematically, the songs also often don't fit. The "Fantasy" track for example sounds futuristic for some reason. Didn't really enjoy listening to this a whole lot.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
I'd say there is both good and bad here. For example, go to 1:07:34 of NintendoComplete's playthrough of this and look at the background. It literally looks like something my six year old brother drew. It looks like it came straight out of Paint and it's truly crazy how bad that looks compared to what you would expect out of a 16-bit console. I'm less insulted by NES games which simply have a black background to be honest.
But if you play most of the other levels, you will realize that this level's background is more of an oddity. Mountains have actual textures on other levels, entire cities are drawn on others, and the game does a solid job on a technical level. One level for example has the trees reflecting into the water, and that image moves as the water flows. Clouds move from side to side. And the sprites look pretty good here. The design of the different personas is especially well done and they remain the highlight of the game graphically as well as they already are from a gameplay perspective.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 4/10
Remember that you have entered virtual reality in this game. The game's way of reminding you of this is to have a stock image of a room with square tiling, which is the room that the Wild Side game is accessed in. Those squares fill out to give you the impression that you're in the game world. The game's levels themselves feel like a random mash-up of thematically different levels. There is the fire, water, earth and ice themed levels, there are levels playing below and above ground with no coherent overall map design apparent and all in all, immersion and atmosphere does not feel like a priority for this game apart from that initial set-up for the game's plot.
CONTENT | 4/10
The game has a lot of stages, with not nearly enough variety to justify it. The game is also fairly difficult at times, so the game can drag after you beat one of those more difficulty sections, only to realize you got many, many hours still to go.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Apart from there being too many levels in my opinion, a lot of them give the impression of being haphazardly designed. Often, I just felt like I had no idea where I was and somehow, some way I found my way to the exit. Having fewer levels and spending more time on each would have done wonders here, though finding the occasional secret passage to some (bland) treasure was enjoyable enough.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
The personas are a neat idea, but it's not like that didn't exist before this game. If people reminisce about this game however, the personas will be what they will remember primarily. In every other way, the game is a very basic platformer.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
Not much replayability apart from trying to beat your high score and maybe using the personas slightly differently, though you won't be using them differently in a way that makes a notable difference.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at almost all times apart from the occasional glitches I mentioned.
OVERALL | 45/100
Worth trying for the novelty of the chameleon aspect, but other than that, the game is a very typical, and slower-than-average platformer that I wouldn't recommend.