Folks, it just does not get more rad than this.
Kid Chameleon was developed and published by the good folks at Sega in May of 1992. This was a good time for Sega – at the time, Sonic the Hedgehog was still a smash hit and sales were booming – a Sonic boom, if you will. The game is regrettably unrelated is unrelated to the song “Chameleon,” which was sung by a kid at the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest.
I always enjoyed the backstory to this game – essentially, you’re a rad 90s kid who went to an arcade and got kidnapped by a cool new VR game. I figure we’re about six months away from that happening for real. The “chameleon” part comes from his ability to change forms through a series of helmets, which give him different cool abilities. You can be a tank, a samurai, a Jason Voorhees ripoff that throws axes, and a bunch more. It’s awesome.
Picking up a new helmet gives you full health (some give you a higher max health than others). If you have a helmet and run out of health, you change back to regular old, weakling Kid Chameleon, left to try and find a new one. You’re decently fast as your regular self, but your health is dangerously low and you have to be *super* careful.
While it’s a “run around and jump on bad guys” sort of game at its core, one of the most notable things about Kid Chameleon is that, especially compared to similar games of the time, it is absolutely massive. You’ll need to play through about 50 levels at a minimum, but there are branching paths and hidden things that brings the total level count to over 100. One hundred! That’s absurd for a game like this. There’s also no password or other sort of save option, so make sure you’re ready for the long haul.
Thankfully, if you can deal with that, it’s a really fun game! The different ‘suits’ all play really differently, and the levels are interesting and varied, with a bunch of cool, weird enemies in all of them. The music’s cool and 90s as heck – it’s a great retro experience. There are a decent number of extra life and continue pickups to help you get through it all as well, which is nice.
If you want to check this one out but don’t have a Genesis, there are a few different “Genesis Collection” compilations where it’s available. There’s also a *mobile* version available for free in the usual app stores. This version is similar to the original, only with more weird advertisements for how to invest like a woman:
I’m mildly surprised this never got a sequel (Kid Chameleon, not the Ellevest advertisement). He did show up in comic strip form in Sonic the Comic for a while (which is true of a lot of Sega characters of the time), but that’s really about it. Now that the 90s are cool again, I wonder if it’s only a matter of time.
Our improbable run of truly great games continues next week with one of the greatest portable games of all time, and one that’s a remarkably timely choice. See you then!