DAY 98 / GAME 98
Kid Chameleon
This is another title that I bought in an attempt to try to fill the 'I didn't own a Nintendo so I couldn't buy Mario' gap. The truth is that there is no Mario clone out there that would suffice. But in the end I tried a number of games I may not have otherwise. Kid Chameleon was a fairly unique side-scrolling platformer. It's got a silly story that is very much the product of the '90s. A virtual reality arcade game shows up in town, kids who play it start to go missing and of course, our protagonist is the only one who is skilled enough to go into the game and save everyone.
In Kid Chameleon you get to transform into various identities as you make your way through it's 103 levels. There's seriously over a hundred levels. There's no save system, no password for each level, you'd have to clear about 70 of those in one run in order to beat the game. That's some serious determination, crafting 103 levels. They're all pretty bizarre at that. At times it feels as if there's almost an underlying horror theme to the whole game. It's full of strange enemies, some of which include giant heads, monstrous skulls and water beasts. Some of the levels feel like they are in the woods, the city and the mountains, then suddenly in the depths of hell.
Your costume choices are also pretty random. 9 different costumes which include a knight and samurai, but also a guy who looks like Jason Voorhees and a skeleton driving a tank. But they really have a variety to different abilities and definately add to the uniqueness of the game. Some costumes give you ranged attacks, some let you fly, climb walls, fit in smaller areas or open areas you couldn't get to otherwise.
At one point my brother and I had borrowed a Game Shark, which had a bunch of codes to jump to different points in the game. Since there was no way I was going to beat the game on my own I figured it would be interesting to see the final boss and most of all, what I imagined would be one heck of an ending considering the size of the game. At the time the big thing for me was to beat a game to see the ending. The harder the game, the more fantastic and cinematic I expected the ending to be. So when I skipped ahead and beat Kid Chameleon I was pretty upset to discover that after 103 levels all you got was a single screen of text explaining how you saved everyone, followed by the credits.
This was a pretty bizarre game that I got decades ago, but still like to bring out and play every once in a while. Like a lot of old Sega games I had, they've held up surprisingly well over time. You can even get this one for Wii Virtual Console and I own a copy in an Xbox 360 Sega collection.
Kid Chameleon
This is another title that I bought in an attempt to try to fill the 'I didn't own a Nintendo so I couldn't buy Mario' gap. The truth is that there is no Mario clone out there that would suffice. But in the end I tried a number of games I may not have otherwise. Kid Chameleon was a fairly unique side-scrolling platformer. It's got a silly story that is very much the product of the '90s. A virtual reality arcade game shows up in town, kids who play it start to go missing and of course, our protagonist is the only one who is skilled enough to go into the game and save everyone.In Kid Chameleon you get to transform into various identities as you make your way through it's 103 levels. There's seriously over a hundred levels. There's no save system, no password for each level, you'd have to clear about 70 of those in one run in order to beat the game. That's some serious determination, crafting 103 levels. They're all pretty bizarre at that. At times it feels as if there's almost an underlying horror theme to the whole game. It's full of strange enemies, some of which include giant heads, monstrous skulls and water beasts. Some of the levels feel like they are in the woods, the city and the mountains, then suddenly in the depths of hell.
At one point my brother and I had borrowed a Game Shark, which had a bunch of codes to jump to different points in the game. Since there was no way I was going to beat the game on my own I figured it would be interesting to see the final boss and most of all, what I imagined would be one heck of an ending considering the size of the game. At the time the big thing for me was to beat a game to see the ending. The harder the game, the more fantastic and cinematic I expected the ending to be. So when I skipped ahead and beat Kid Chameleon I was pretty upset to discover that after 103 levels all you got was a single screen of text explaining how you saved everyone, followed by the credits. This was a pretty bizarre game that I got decades ago, but still like to bring out and play every once in a while. Like a lot of old Sega games I had, they've held up surprisingly well over time. You can even get this one for Wii Virtual Console and I own a copy in an Xbox 360 Sega collection.
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