Kid Chameleon review - Sega Megadrive

The local arcade is packed with kids, all lining up to play the latest, most realistic video game they've ever seen. It's called Wild Side, and it uses holographic images to immerse the player in a strange world. But there's a problem... Kids are literally getting sucked into the game, and now several of them are trapped.

Throughout more than 100 levels, you'll take on several different forms, such as a Berzerker, a Micromax, a Maniaxe or a Skycutter, which will make you much more powerful. It's up to you, Kid Chameleon, the best gamer in town, to get yourself inside the game so that you can defeat the game's boss and bring your friends back to reality.

Retrospective comments

The first thought that enters your head when playing Kid Chameleon is probably 'Mario Clone'. The game steals ideas from Nintendo's finest, such as jumping on the heads of enemies and bashing item boxes from below. It's not the first game to copy Mario and it certainly won't be the last, but back in the early 90's when the Sega/Nintendo war was at its height, it seemed like Sega was running out of ideas. Thankfully there is at least one aspect of KC that makes it stand out from the crowd. By putting on various headwear, Kid is able to transform into several different characters (hence the 'Chameleon' of the title). These range from a knight in armour to a Splatterhouse-style axe murderer! Each has special abilities that can be used to successfully complete each level. And boy, the number of levels is amazing. There's loads of stages to play through here - unfortunately the rather bland design means you may not have the willpower to see them all. Compared to the aforementioned Nintendo classic, KC is sadly lacking. There's some neat ideas here and the idea of having several different characters is certainly original, but the execution is sloppy. The graphics and sound are hardly groundbreaking and the level design doesn't have any of the inventive qualities found in the Mario games. I'm sure many Sega fans have fond memories of this and nothing I say will prevent them from enjoying KC, but to anyone else I would recommend you save your points and download a Mario title (or Sonic) if you haven't done so already.

Have your say about this review

Godpikachu - 10 Feb 2009, 13:27 GMT

While kid chameleon most definatley borrows heavilly from titles like super mario 3, it does offer a little variation on the original source material.

Each helmet has its own uses and failings, which helps to keep gamplay fresh, the problem is is that you never know what helmet youre gonna get, and sometimes when you are bashing away at prize boxes, you can end up getting a crappy helmet that you dont want.

Some of the secret areas require certain helmets to access, which is fine in a way but when you have the helmet you want and then hit a prize block expecting diamonds but instead ending up with a different helmet, it can be pretty annoying.

Levelwise, this game is HUGE, with multiple paths to complete the game (something of a novelty for the time), but the lack of a password system or save games renders this concept moot as every time you switch off your MD, you start again from the very beginning, which is annoying as hell.

Graphics wise, its what youd expect to see in an early 90s MD game, the sprites are colourful and cartoony, the backgrounds and terrain features are nicely defined so you know where you should be jumping, but one complaint i have here is that the enemies dont have much variation, you face the same bad guys over and over but they are just recoloured.
This isn't usually a bad thing, except that the different coloured baddies dont get any extra powers from levelling up other than they are slightly harder than their lower level counterparts.

Overall, this isn't a bad game, its certainly not a brilliant game either, but, its playable and challenging, while still being somewhat fun to play as well.
A good game to have in your MD collection, but if you're just looking for a platformer, try out the sonic games first.

Dan - 18 Mar 2009, 10:28 GMT

The idea and theory of Kid Chameleon was way better than it's implementation. Bland levels which often adhered to the "leap before you have chance to look" platforming philosiphy felt out of place with the style of game it was trying to be (Mario basically), and overall it wasn't worth much more than a wet wank.

Rich - 18 Nov 2009, 23:58 GMT

The only thing this game was ever lacking in was presentation, the core game play is just so perfectly implemented, with each of the masks playing very differently to each other, as well as the choice of mask deeply affects oncoming levels as a certain direction in a level may require you to have picked up and kept a mask from 3 or 4 levels previously. The secondary abilities of each mask also create yet another layer of strategy, especially when taking into account the length of the game mixed with the fact that Maniaxe's mask allows you to buy extra lives in exchange for gems.

Talking about the length of the game, Kid Chameleon is long, very long, but understanding the separate paths and different mask strengths really helps you to make quick progress, and gives the game a level of depth.

I still come back this this game from time to time to see if I can find something new, whilst Mario World was played for a month and then forgotten about (what a great month that was though)

Steve - 19 Jan 2013, 21:15 GMT

♫♫ Kid, Kid Chameleon, my botom smells like poo! ♫♫

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