Kid Chameleon (Genesis/Mega Drive)
Prior to the 1990s, many video games were short and simple enough that it wasn’t unusual to expect a player to beat it in a single sitting, difficulty often the barrier to finishing games that otherwise would only take about an hour on a successful run. However, as games continued to grow in complexity and scope, passwords and save systems started to become more popular, allowing for longer experiences played across multiple days. The 1992 platformer Kid Chameleon unfortunately feels trapped between these two designs approaches, a player needing to beat the game in one sitting despite it being a longer experience bound to take up someone’s entire evening. All these years later though, many ways exist to play a Sega Genesis game and be able to pop right back into it where you left off another day, many more people able to see what this lengthy retro platformer is all about.
Kid Chameleon is actually a video game about a kid playing a video game. Wild Side is a new virtual reality arcade machine that uses holograms to make an interactive world, this technological marvel luring kids in to play even though none of them ever seem to come back out. Somehow, the game’s boss Heady Metal escapes the game and starts capturing kids himself, although this part seems to be brushed over as none of the conflict really seems to bleed into reality. Instead, one kid seems to be willing to step up and take down Heady Metal on his home turf. In his sunglasses and leather jacket, the ultra cool Kid Chameleon steps into Wild Side ready to save the other kids, his name a rather fitting one considering his adventure will be all about taking on new forms to help overcome the dangerous situations in the game world.
Kid Chameleon’s box art isn’t lying when it promises over 100 levels, although you’ll never actually see them all in one run through. Instead, this a platforming adventure with many branching paths, and in fact, one way the game might have tried to mitigate its length is through certain branches that allow you to skip a great deal of stages. On the other hand, some of the warps ahead have you skip some of the game’s better and more memorable stages, although beyond a cheeky way to face the final boss immediately, there is still going to be a good amount of meat to your adventure no matter what path you end up on. The splitting paths are part of what makes the levels in Kid Chameleon compelling though, its stages technically only requiring you to reach the level flag before a timer runs out but they pack in many goodies and secrets to reward you for looking around.
Prize blocks are littered all around levels, and if you hit them from below, something will pop out of them. Usually, this will be a diamond, each of Kid Chameleon’s forms having a powerful but costly diamond charge attack that is useful for the moments when the game throws perhaps too many pesky foes at you to reasonably handle otherwise. The abundance of diamonds means you can use these somewhat regularly but it also slows down hunting for the better rewards in prize blocks, such as extra lives or continues. At the same time, the level layouts are usually pretty good at making an area with such useful finds feel a bit special, often out of the way or requiring some special effort to reach. As a result, despite being a game with potentially plenty of levels to conquer, you can start to shore up your reserves so you can tackle it, the size a bit less daunting when you do regularly take the time to perform these searches. Warp exits to other levels are also found by trying to locate alternate paths and some of the side levels even provide resources in greater abundance, although Kid Chameleon does make a bit of an unfortunate choice in having that time limit hanging over your head. When a level begins you only have three minutes to clear it, and while you can find clocks in certain prize blocks, outside of large levels that basically give you them for free, finding these can sometimes be a guessing game. You don’t want to waste time hitting block after block looking for them, but also might need them if you want to spend time considering a stage’s layout, and even if you grab multiple clocks in a row, the timer will max out at 10 minutes. The push to be speedy doesn’t add much to any level and can force unfortunate errors, Kid Chameleon weakening one of its neater elements by limiting your ability to engage with it.
The costume changes you undergo in Kid Chameleon are a strong bunch for the most part though. Kid Chameleon himself naturally can take two hits before dying, but pop on a costume and he’ll get a new health meter, most of the forms able to take three hits before you’re back to the game’s hero in his standard form. Normally, Kid Chameleon has to rely on jumping on enemy heads to hurt them and his means of reaching higher places is a bit of an imprecise option to pull yourself up onto a ledge. Pop on a new costume though, and your attacks and movement can change considerably. Slip on the hockey mask of Maniaxe and you’ll get one of the best attack options in the game, rapidly throwing axes great for clearing out regular enemies and the game’s unfortunately repetitive giant head bosses. The Cyclone form lets you fly up into the air as a whirlwind by mashing your special attack button, opening up large vertical levels but also asking you to be careful how quickly you fly as you need to start weaving through blocks and baddies to preserve this useful form. Hop into a tank as a skeleton soldier and fire bouncing skulls or climb aboard the Skycutter hoverboard that lets you ride even on the ceiling for some major changes to your usual movement approaches, but some of the other forms come with some drawbacks.
EyeClops for example has some good level segments devoted to his ability to reveal hidden ground and even packs a cheap but effective diamond attack, but his powers can be almost useless in some situations. Micromax is a little fly form that lets you scale up walls but it won’t help much in combat, and Berzerker’s rhino ram meant to break through barriers will only break one layer of stones at a time, meaning you have to awkwardly run up to the same wall over and over to break through. Iron Knight’s wall climbing is a little awkward, but his extra health and ability to smash through blocks he lands on feel more like his main draws, but oddly enough, the samurai form Red Stealth feels like it might be the most clunky despite seeming like it should be a favorite. Swinging a sword just doesn’t have the reach you’d hope for, meaning many enemies will easily take the hit and hit you back anyway. His downward stab is used for some awkward block breaking and requires pinpoint timing for use on enemies, so while you often will want to grab the costume helmets when you find them purely for the easy health refills, sometimes you’ll wish for the ever useful Maniaxe or level defining powers of one like Cyclone over the options you are provided.
When a level does build itself around a costume it often comes out to be quite an interesting stage, able to better shake up its layout to test your handling of the unique skills you bring to the table. Regular levels can still concoct some unique ideas, although some of the mechanics they rely on aren’t always the best. Scaling up a mountain might not sound so bad, but needing to use your somewhat slippery jump to hop up small bouncy rubber blocks where it’s fairly easy to overshoot and fall down to the beginning makes it a bit tedious. Some levels feature large mechanical crushers chasing you from the left, and if you don’t perform the right jumps or actions at the right time, you won’t be able to outrun it and will instantly die. Some levels feature periodic hailstorms where the randomly falling ice chunks can’t be predicted well and, depending on your elevation, you might not even have time to react to their appearance. Some levels with awkward bouncing around also have instant death pits at the bottom, so you will likely run into a fair few levels where you die repeatedly just trying to learn the right way through. Thankfully, these life drains are balanced out by more measured designs. Kid Chameleon features a fair few level types, going from forests, lava caves, and icy mountains to the sudden surprise presence of modern cities and mystical islands in the sky. Many levels have walls you can walk through as part of the main path as well as a way to hide secrets, although this can make finding the way onward a bit tougher in some more unusual areas. In a way, it’s fortunate Kid Chameleon has so many levels, since many try out a new idea or two and while it will slip up from time to time, it also puts together a good deal of effective if not always exciting designs to counterbalance the egregiously rough ones.
THE VERDICT: Kid Chameleon’s alternate forms provide its best moments, be it levels specifically built around them or stages where you can select from many and can take different courses based on their abilities. Levels that let you explore give you rewarding finds be they alternate paths through the adventure or the resources needed to tackle the more tedious and poorly planned levels, this platformer definitely feeling too long but not totally losing its steam along the way. It’s over 100 stages to potentially find don’t have the best average quality, especially with some costumes not being as clean to control, but the times when things click will still leave you with some fond memories of Kid Chameleon.
And so, I give Kid Chameleon for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive…
An OKAY rating. It might be easy to place the blame for this rating at the feet of the game’s length, trying to hit over 100 levels likely leading to some of the mediocre or downright flawed stages you come across, but it might actually be a missing layer of polish that is keeping Kid Chameleon from being the good game it can sometimes feel like. When you’re exploring with one of the better forms, especially in levels that feel like a nice fit for them, you can often find a good mix of interesting ability use and challenge. Some enemies like alien spaceships and thunderclouds are perhaps a bit overly aggressive, but some level gimmicks come through nicely and shake up the standard experience enough to make you curious about what lies ahead. Even areas without a clear unique idea can motivate you through having alternate paths to get extra goodies or find warps to alternate levels, but there are some elements of Kid Chameleon that aren’t enjoyable but you’ll often run into. Your jump not being precise can cause frequent small hiccups that add up, especially when you’re under pressure in levels that strain you to perform perfectly less a crusher kill you or a long drop punishes you for being a pixel off your landing. Red Stealth is a bit of a tragedy, one of the coolest looking forms not controlling well enough to provide some exciting swordplay, and it really is strange Berzerker’s identity as a charging destroyer is hampered by each impact interrupting the flow. Most levels usually involve a great deal of jumping so its not like it could go on an unopposed rampage and there are still skill check moments where you need to set up the headlong rush properly, but it’s not like there aren’t other moments with forms like the tank that feel like they are more about a fun bit of carnage rather than a difficult trial.
Clean up the controls and costumes a touch, and you may still want to add in a few password points and maybe give the levels a universal hard timer rather than the pesky clock collecting task and you might have Kid Chameleon in a state where its high points can be properly enjoyed and its low points wouldn’t be as frustrating because you wouldn’t be blaming slippery controls or weak powers. As said earlier though, Kid Chameleon benefits a great deal from more modern ways to play it. Place a save state or restore point and you can return to it later or even better explore alternate routes through the adventure. Use a rewind and you won’t have to put up with the mountainside bounce’s annoying falls. Go online to learn the tricks to watch out for or ways to get the lives you need to tough out this long 90s platformer. However you choose to approach it, Kid Chameleon does have ideas that will work and others that will test your patience, but at least now it’s much easier to see that range in quality rather than having your ability to even see what it offers hampered by needing to plan when you’d even have enough time to attempt to clear it.