Chameleon Twist

Developer: Japan System Supply Publisher: Sunsoft

Released: November 30, 1997 Rated: E 7/10

Coming in as an early entry to the pool of the N64’s signature genre, Chameleon Twist operates like something of a discount Yoshi title. The use of the chosen animal comes from a platformer based on using a prehensile tongue for puzzle solving, traversal, and ingesting items to spit back out as an attack. And while the rest of the premise was seemingly cooked up by a dice roll, or maybe too much Jefferson Airplane — the titular chameleon follows the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland down the rabbit hole and transforms into a cartoon version of itself — Chameleon Twist fills the gap of a 3D Yoshi title nicely enough.

After an arbitrary selection between four differently-colored chameleons to use as your character, you’ll be whisked off into a world of formation-moving enemies, ledges that are high-but-not-too-high, and conveniently-placed poles across long gaps. An isometric view gives a good view of the stages, though as with many early 3D platformers, the camera is far from perfect, particularly if you need to maneuver it yourself. On the other hand, the touch of the analog stick comes through well in tricky situations making it once again clear how fitting a home the N64 is for the genre.

Each stage ends with a boss fight, which are rather clever and satisfying by game’s end with some fun concepts (example: a big-ass cake)

Most of the difficulty comes from Chameleon Twist’s unique mechanics, mainly more intricate ways of using your character’s tongue to grab onto things. Holding B starts the lizard’s tongue extending automatically until it reaches its limit or finds something to grab onto, picking up items along the way if it runs into any. If it goes all the way out, it will retract after a moment, whereas if it reaches a pole to wrap around, you’ll have a second to cancel or begin rotating around the fixed point before being pulled over to the pole you’ve grabbed. Along with spitting things back at enemies after grabbing them, these are all your mechanics, and while they make for a fun and novel little adventure, there’s a bit of twitchiness to them that can prove frustrating. Most of it comes from the odd choice to have everything happen automatically instead of giving the player time to react and act deliberately even when there’s no other sense of danger in the level. Admittedly, this would probably make the game too easy, and easy plus short (there are only six levels) is definitely not a recipe for good press, but the control scheme, as simple as it is, wouldn’t feel like an issue if the need for good timing wasn’t entirely self-enforced.

While Chameleon Twist is short any way you look at it, it at least does so by not having its level design be lots of cookie cutter filler. Even with jungle and desert themes being close to your typical platformer archetypes, I don’t think any of the six worlds are done lazily either from a level design view and certainly not in presentation. The visual design is actually rather strong across the board and the music, while not as ear-wormy as your Banjo or even Bomberman titles, is solid run and jump fare that doesn’t get on your nerves. Kids Land, Ghost Castle, Bomb Land, and Ant Land make up the remaining four, and lots of bright colors, texture variety, and different enemies all feel pretty fresh. Even without hitting up the Japanese-inspired Ghost Castle until the very end, it may occur to you that the “Japan” in developer “Japan Supply System” is adding in a little design influence as well, and I often found myself feeling like it had at least some artistic crossover with Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon.

That ice cream sandwich is a more iconic mascot for this game than any of the interchangeable chameleons.

Chameleon Twist isn’t always going to feel worth the squeeze to run out and find one, even if that initial playthrough takes you longer than its average five hours or so. A light multiplayer mode based on being the last chameleon standing and a strictly score-focused collectible in each stage’s array of crowns might make for some replayability if you need it, but there are much deeper adventures to get yourself into. Still, Chameleon Twist is a fun little romp with an interesting mechanic that’s very easy to pick up and play in an afternoon, and sometimes that’s all you really want out of a retro game you haven’t played before. In fact, it might be the perfect flash cart game, if you just want to pick a game out of a list that you haven’t played before and not worry if you ever come back to it.