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Before we resorted to classifying games in the megahybrid genre of “Action,” there was “Action-Adventure” and its sub-category - the iconic “Platformer.”  These games were the mainstay of the industry through two decades of evolution, and the trademarks of this genre are ubiquitous in gaming as a whole.  From Pitfall! to LittleBigPlanet, the best Platformers have always pushed us to the jump-landing, ledge-grabbing, death-defying limits.  Since you and I both have a masochist deep down inside, let’s ROMinisce about a Genesis gem: Kid Chameleon.

This game is Super Mario Bros. on crack.  Most of the over 100 levels fall somewhere between hard to insane, and the non-linear level progression gives unparalleled freedom: the game can be completed in as few as 27 levels (excluding the Plethora cheat) or as many as 90!  Moreover, most players will be completely unaware of this as these forks depend on your choice of helmet at any given point.  These helmets impart different attack and Platforming abilities to Kid, requiring a bit of elemental puzzle-solving on your part.  In fact, if stuck with the wrong ability in certain places, you may be forced into a dead-end or run out of time working around the obstacles!

Even the collect-questing has an interesting spin – instead of direct translation to extra lives, health, ammunition, or power-ups, the diamonds in this game work as a sort of currency toward one of the above through 20-diamond and 50-diamond helmet abilities.  This means another dash of decisiveness and a great reason to catch ‘em all besides obsessive completionism.  These components plus the developers’ sadism (in the form of scrolling murder walls and endless hazards) combine to become the longest and most difficult game at the time according to many players and reviewers.

But even my love of insane difficulty has its limits.  If you played Kid Chameleon in its heyday, you’ll not-so-fondly remember the first 15 or so levels.  That’s because the original Genesis release had no method of saving your progress – not even a password system!  The secret pathway “bridges” and the 100k Trip are cheap stand-ins, and the lack of a checkpoint system is less of a motivator than an artificial play-time inflater.   Kid Chameleon’s re-releases (PC, PS2, PS3, XBOX360, Wii VC) and ROMs have features that solve this problem, leaving nothing to be disappointed in except the uninspired carbon copy bosses.

At times, you feel like you might have an aneurysm from missing platforms and other tedium.  Though that sounds like a non-endorsement, it is in fact what makes older Platformers great: they required you to hone your skill to absolute perfection before you could progress.  The three Ps of video games (Practice, practice, and practice) take center stage here, making the final achievement – completion – all the more satisfying.

To sum it up: games like Kid Chameleon work because jaded gamers enjoy the challenge of getting their asses beat non-stop from a simple set of ideas taken to insane proportions.  It’s not just a game… it’s epic war with the programmers.

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Tags: company-sega, emulation, erdtirdmans, genesis, platformer, reviews-buy, ROMiniscing-epic, single player, wii vc

This entry was posted by ErdTirdMans on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Action, Adventure, ROMiniscing, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.