Kid Chameleon

"Challenging..."

In my childhood years, I was fond of my genesis and It's games. Out of my collection I owned titles like Sonic, Sonic 2, Some old volleyball game game I didn't care about, and Kid chameleon. Out of all of those, I strived to beat Kid chameleon the most, only getting up to the Shishkaboss battle, a battle against... well... errr.... three Bald heads on a spear. Now the miracle of ROMs exist and I can once again attempt to beat this monster.

That said:

Gameplay: 9
Kid chameleon plays almost Identically like Super Mario Bros 3. It has jumping, flying, and the level design is grid based with various different types of blocks littering the play field. There are prize blocks you break open by smashing your head into and, much like SMB3, there are different forms you can assume, but don't expect to be bouncing around in a frog suit, in this game, you can become much more; Knights that have hard armor and can somehow climb walls, samurais with shortswords who can do downward thrusts while yelling "HUY!", Hockey mask wearing axe tossers, Midget German tanks, and even a fly and rhino.

Difficulty: 3 (HARD)
This game is ludicrously difficult. There are many levels, and an unfortunate lack of a battery save, or even a password system. You have to finish every level in one sitting, and I've heard there's about a hundred of them, give or take all the side places you can go to as well. The learning curve is kind of crazy as well. Level 1 is extremely easy, Level 2 has hidden cannon blocks to get through a brick wall, Level 4 has these hands that try and clamp onto you, Level 6 has jumping midget teeth, Level 8 has a crazy drill wall that chases you and kills you as soon as you touch it, it goes on and on up in difficulty until the whole thing seems impossible, almost "Gradiusesque" in difficulty (Gradius is a Japanese shooter game that is also very difficult and never made it to America most likely due to it's difficulty).

Graphics: 8
Where to start? First off, there's the backdrops; the backdrops are colorful, but many levels have very bland and boring backgrounds that only use about 2-10 colors for the trees, lakes, mountains, and skyscrapers in the back. The landscape you walk on however is nicely detailed. You can see all kinds of hidden junk in the land if you look closely. In a few levels, it's somewhat hard to differentiate the background from the terrain though, so be on your lookout. The sprites are the best aspect of graphics; each person on screen is nicely animated, and the concept for some of the enemies are amusing, cool, or just plain weird. There are silly looking, 2-legged dragons with yellow crests, Rock heads that chomp at you, The hands mentioned back in the difficulty section, and, probably the best looking out of the bunch, the giant spinning crystals, and ink monsters.

Sound: 8
The music pieces in this game are hit and miss. The first level has a quiet, tribal beat to it, while the later levels have pieces that sound like hip-hop and rock. The worst part about it though is that this game reuses music, which means that the boss tunes are the same as normal level tunes. The sound effects are excellent though, a nice twinkle sound plays whenever you pick up a diamond (which is this games version of Mario's coins) the rock heads chomp has a nice mechanical sound to it, and, of course, the silly digitalized voice samples of "OUCH." "Bummer.", and the "DIE!" that is said when you get killed, and is probably the single most memorable quote in the game.

Story: 2
The story is basically this; there is this new arcade machine that uses holograms to make a virtual reality (which was a fad back in the early 90's), and of course it's a hit, but then the boss escapes through some weird way, and begins to capture kids by beating them at the game. OH THE HUMANITY. Who would save the children in this time of peril? What has caused the boss to escape? WHY THE HECK DON'T THE AUTHORITIES CLOSE THE GAME DOWN!?!?!? Plot holes galore. And of course, kid chameleon, the sunglasses-wearing, undershirt-bearing hero, Kid Chameleon. Of course we could of come up with a better story, but hey, it was 1992, they didn't need a strong plot for a game to be good.

Final words:
The game is HARD. I strongly suggest you play this game on a ROM with save-state capabilities. If you are an awesome gamer, or you have something for Mario-like games then this game can easily be recommended.

Final score: 7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/19/05