Kid Chameleon review - Sega Megadrive

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.