Kid Chameleon
Surprising as it may be, in all my years as an amateur journo, I’ve never reviewed a computer game. I lost interest in them when I was about 18 which roughly coincided with the last time I actually had a computer good enough to play recent releases. Ironic then, that despite the fact that I finally received my new, high-spec computer this week (and yes, it’s great, thank you for asking), I’ve chosen to review an old game.
Kid Chameleon was released on the Sega Mega Drive at some point back in the early 90s (probably about 1992, if memory serves), and I had the cartridge back in the day when such things weren’t charmingly retro. I’ve always had fond memories of the game, but nostalgia can do funny things to the brain and I was curious to see if it had held up after all these years. It also provided a decent challenge in that I never completed it when I was younger. I remedied that this afternoon, and this is clearly the first thing to recommend the game. I sat down for about two hours and played the game right through, with only short breaks for food and the toilet.
The basic concept of the game is simple enough. You’re a gamer playing a ‘total immersion’ video game, not dissimilar to Star Trek’s holodeck, but the game’s been hijacked by a bad, bad man and the safety protocols have been removed. It’s up to you to get through the game and free the other players. To help you along the way, there are various masks which change Kid into characters with different skills that will help you through the 100+ levels.
The game is admittedly huge. There are over 100 levels, and while it’s not necessary to go through all of them, as there are plenty of short cuts along the way, a completist-type player could certainly spend happy hours getting through the entire game. The cartridge version of the game didn’t have a save function (something of a rarity back in those days, let’s face it), which made the game a test of concentration span more than skill, but most people today would probably play this on an emulator, complete with snazzy save function, and so this criticism of the game is negated.
I find it baffling that Sega decided to push the horribly overrated and tedious Sonic the Hedgehog as their signature game/character back in the 90s when this game would have made a far better counterpart to Nintendo’s Mario series. Not that Kid Chameleon is on the same level as the superlative Super Mario World, but it’s certainly a lot closer than Sonic ever came (despite his apparent super speed), and Kid’s many personae would have definitely made for some interesting marketing ideas. But seeing where Sega are in the games market today, is anyone surprised that they made some crappy business decisions?
Anyway, Kid Chameleon has certainly held up over the years, and provided me not only with some erstwhile and dizzying nostalgia, but a great deal of gaming fun, too.
Kid Chameleon was released on the Sega Mega Drive at some point back in the early 90s (probably about 1992, if memory serves), and I had the cartridge back in the day when such things weren’t charmingly retro. I’ve always had fond memories of the game, but nostalgia can do funny things to the brain and I was curious to see if it had held up after all these years. It also provided a decent challenge in that I never completed it when I was younger. I remedied that this afternoon, and this is clearly the first thing to recommend the game. I sat down for about two hours and played the game right through, with only short breaks for food and the toilet.
The basic concept of the game is simple enough. You’re a gamer playing a ‘total immersion’ video game, not dissimilar to Star Trek’s holodeck, but the game’s been hijacked by a bad, bad man and the safety protocols have been removed. It’s up to you to get through the game and free the other players. To help you along the way, there are various masks which change Kid into characters with different skills that will help you through the 100+ levels.
The game is admittedly huge. There are over 100 levels, and while it’s not necessary to go through all of them, as there are plenty of short cuts along the way, a completist-type player could certainly spend happy hours getting through the entire game. The cartridge version of the game didn’t have a save function (something of a rarity back in those days, let’s face it), which made the game a test of concentration span more than skill, but most people today would probably play this on an emulator, complete with snazzy save function, and so this criticism of the game is negated.
I find it baffling that Sega decided to push the horribly overrated and tedious Sonic the Hedgehog as their signature game/character back in the 90s when this game would have made a far better counterpart to Nintendo’s Mario series. Not that Kid Chameleon is on the same level as the superlative Super Mario World, but it’s certainly a lot closer than Sonic ever came (despite his apparent super speed), and Kid’s many personae would have definitely made for some interesting marketing ideas. But seeing where Sega are in the games market today, is anyone surprised that they made some crappy business decisions?
Anyway, Kid Chameleon has certainly held up over the years, and provided me not only with some erstwhile and dizzying nostalgia, but a great deal of gaming fun, too.
posted by Ryan Stephens at 1:29 PM
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