Where were we?
Kid Chaos does the Sonic thing of... okay, it does every Sonic thing, but the thing I'm thinking of specifically is giving you a hero that can run fast and then daring you to be able to control him and make it look good. The difference being that Kid's equivalent of Green Hill Zone (called The Green Hilltops, I kid you not) pulls funny tricks on you constantly like having smooth underground ramps full of tasty bonus apples for you to run through before it dumps you headfirst into a pit of spikes with no barrier. I laughed.
Part 1 of my post ended with, well...
Balls.
Never mind that. I'm refreshed and re-energized and ready to give this thing another go. Back to level 1-1!
mecha-neko proceeds to play though the first three levels of Kid Chaos a second time and then dies to the same bloody ball again.
*dingadinga dingadinga dingadinga dingadinga* HA HA - HA HA - HA HA
You might be wondering what the difference is between 'Main Menu' and 'Exit'. It is a videogame mystery.
I'm starting to get a bit tired of the THE SECRET -GARDEN-'s graphics. It's very nice and all, but I got bored of it around the start of level two, and I was already familiar with it from the demo coverdisk (it's level 1-2). I was expecting to eventually see some big statues or flowers or something, expecting to climb up some kind of recognisable structure or gateway or set of platforms up a tower like I was going somewhere. All this place has been has been ORANGE BRICKS and slopey grass that disables my attacks and throws my jumping awry. Meanwhile, five minutes exposed to Santa's toy factory in RoboCod dazzles your eyes with every shape conceivable in colours yet to be safely named.
Just for a bit of a visual break, all the woodgrain on these screens takes me back to possibly the very first Amiga game I ever saw: Tanx. Anybody remember that?
Okay, let's try this again. I'm clearly not playing this game properly. The controls can't be that bad. Step one: practice Whizzing. No sniggering at the back.
Here's the very first enemy you see in the game, a happy little innocent bunny. I've prepared a two screen wide run up so I can reach sufficient speed in order to Whizz at the bunny, and...
As you can clearly see, the move is useless and this game is bullshit because the slightest incline knocks Kid out of the Whizz and makes him vulnerable to a terrifying poke from Mister Bunny.
On my third attempt to complete the first world I got a game over because of this bit of genius game design here.
I'm in a labyrinth of dark boxy passages like you'd want to find while looking for secrets in a secret garden. The way forward is an unmarked passage leading down, much like every other passage I've travelled through. So I gently push Kid off into the unknown: BLAM. Spikes. But notice that I don't get a HEALTH -50 penalty for touching these ones. My health slides from a full 99 to 00 without any chance of recovering. That's not playing by the damned rules. This pit is the only hazard that's done this so far.
I say it's the only hazard so far because on my next (and final) life I linger too long on a collapsing platform trying to time a jump to collect some apples but fall into a different spiked pit directly beside the exit door which also decides to dock me 99 health despite that not being how damage in Kid Chaos works you appalling bastard game.
And then the Game Over screen laughs at me again.
mecha-neko proceeds to play though these three levels of Kid Chaos a fourth time and finally gets to the exit door of the third Section.
Ronald McDonald may not be here to mock me, but the artificial habitat is not yet terrified enough of my capacity for destruction so I'm turned away to try to traverse all of the game's asshole traps again backwards in search of more flowers to destroy.
I don't even know if there's enough of the level still reachable behind all the vertical drops I took to give me enough flowers to complete the stage. I know I'll have to re-do those enclosed spiky ball pits again in both directions, ugh.
mecha-neko destroys 26 more flowers and heads to the exit door. There is no boss.
Kid starts off with one ball to kick and he has to destroy the entire wall in the alloted time. Power-ups include extra balls, extra time, a 'Laser Gun' which fires big bullets (which makes the bulletholes in the title screen logo belatedly make sense), and sneaky time penalty capsules as well in case you're having too much fun and want to have to peer really close to the screen to tell tiny brown-on-brown letters apart so you don't get stung.
Also the seagulls have returned to dump on Kid's head.
This might look like a bonus level by the way, but it's actually a boss fight! If you run out of time, you lose a life.
(I always thought the way you could be taken to a BONUS or a BOGUS level in Trolls depending on whether you spelled it with an N or a G was clever, and you could get bonuses from a BOGUS it was just harder.)
There really was no boss of THE SECRET -GARDEN-, unless you count that damn seagull that flies across the top of the wall. And you get no extra life for completing the challenge. Your reward for winning is winning.
There was no overall stats screen for THE SECRET -GARDEN-, and no level select or anything. Kid's on a mission going from A to B, and if you get 100% - 100% - 95% because you didn't know exactly how many Apples or Nasties were on the last stage before you exited then that's your fault, isn't it?
Section One: The Concrete Pathway - Tackle the mutations. Trunkits, blobs and barrels await. Avoid drips and razors. Fairly straightforward.
Nothing in Kid Chaos is 'fairly straightforward', you disingenuous bum!
I can't get over how murky and clay-orange everything is here. THE SECRET -GARDEN- was orange, but this place is orange. I shouldn't complain, given that this is a game for the original A500. If you stick enough RAM in the system, I'm told you can get Kid Chaos running on an A1000 computer from 1985 (that's the year the NES came out in the United States).
It never occured to me to check if there was an A1200 release of this with improved AGA graphics until now! The answer is yes and no. Despite being released in 1994, there was no A1200 AGA floppy disk release, but there was one for the Amiga CD32 console which has that graphics chipset.
White rocks - CD32 with AGA graphics
It's amazing how alternating between the two shows how making the wall rocks white and giving the plants additional shades makes such a difference. Everything is so much less... rusty. It's like night and day! Or sunset and day! The screen on the CD32 version is slightly narrower for no reason I can figure that makes sense, but possibly something to do with words like 'bandwidth'.
The CD version uses CD music tracks, which means that the game loses the escalating intensity as you move from one level to the next. The rest of the game is the same. The level layouts and physics are the same. There's no saving to the CD32's save RAM and the (compatible) passwords are just as harsh.
The second world has improved colours too. And the enemies are a different colour from the walls! Isn't that something!
The parallax scrolling here is nauseating. The lowermost set of large light grey bricks moves the same speed as the foreground so it looks like it's reaching out of the screen towards me and it looks all wrong.
This level is much like THE SECRET -GARDEN- except every platform seems to be just out of reach, even when getting a run-up from the ramps. Just how badly do I want all those apples...? Oh right. If somewhere looks accessible, it'd be foolish to not do my best to reach it 'cause this is a smash-'em-up, not a race. Try telling the music that, though. It's cranked up a few notches and now the drums are definitely trying to kill me.
Can you see that little bronze raindrop that Kid's about to collide with? Yep, that's a hazard too. I'm sure there's laws against describing what I'd like to do to the guy who thought that 'tiny drip kills you' would be a great video game convention.
As you're walking along a perfectly blank platform, up come tiny orange slime balls to hit you for huge chunks of health. And yes they'll knock you out of a Whizz since they appear so slowly. You might think that these things only appear on the slightly greener parts of the platform. Yeah, they probably do. But then, to confuse things even more, there are slippery platforms later on covered in goo that matches the balls but don't have balls hidden in them.
And so, mecha-neko dies and is sent back to THE SECRET -GARDEN- and has to wait for the game to load so he can quit to the menu and type in the password for THE TOXIC -WASTELAND- instead.
He then dies again more or less instantly because the password saved his number of lives.
Okay, there's only one thing for it. In the name of science and professionalism, I'm going to restart the whole game and replay it from world one, level one, getting every single secret and extra life so I can get a new password for this world that'll give me a fighting chance of getting to the password after that. I can't just show two worlds here.
The game doesn't tell you during the level when you've destroyed all the flowers, defeated all the nasties, collected all the apples or collected all the extras either, which is really annoying. Pressing P just pauses the game. Pressing Escape gives you an instant game over. Yes, even on this screen. Imagine my wonder.
My new password is LNEBEAIKTQK.
You can destroy both these and the orange slime balls with a somersault if you're prepared to execute the angled jump, so do these count towards the end-of-level 'nasties' count as well? There's just no way to know!
The other levels give you ten minutes to fumble about and find the flowers, but I didn't even have time to get killed by the cat-headed demon snake flying out of the scenery before I got zapped into oblivion.
This level wants you to keep moving constantly, hitting the time bonuses that are placed regularly through the level. You still have a destruction target to meet, and the level is full of invisible spikes, invisible enemies, impossible jumps and general unpleasantness.
There's tons of ramps and springs and bouncy things that will throw you all over the place (occasionally into wacky, fun spikes!). I flew right over this spike-lined pit of flowers on previous runs so I bet I stood no chance of hitting the destruction target, because this one is smash-'em-up and a race. That's right, I said it's spike-lined. Those little grey things? Spikes. Good luck bouncing Kid from one pod to the next for a few screens without making a single mistake or it's back to the previous level for you.
I'm having trouble winning this level, even with my super future emulation powers. There's nothing wrong with the level being this hard in principle. It just shouldn't be level five! And they ought to make upcoming spikes easier to spot and react to and not hurt you if you run into them from the side, and they can take out the damned slime balls that come out of the ground as you approach so you can't react to them. Some of the little anteater dudes shoot at you because of course they do and you can't tell which ones will and there's no warning and you can't see the projectile in any case. In short I'm having a great time.
I've got time. Forty-six seconds is an eternity. I can still bring this back!
So I start running to the left, and get hit by a tiny drip from the ceiling which puts me into my knockback animation sending me through the ceiling from beneath so I have to replay a big chunk of the level with all the apples and time bonuses used up. And then I run into the first set of spikes anyway and die.
-
No, I couldn't do it. Sorry. Even with seven lives, this is as far as my Kid Chaos post can go. I'll have to guess at what comes next - at a wild guess, I'd say 'the exact goddamn same but worse', because that's what Kid Chaos has for you - negativity and bad vibes. But I'll save that for the conclusion, because now it's time for...
THE ONE COOL FACT EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS ABOUT KID CHAOS
When I played the demo of the game from The One magazine back at the time, it was called Kid Vicious. Everybody knows that bit. I didn't know until a lot later that originally it was going to star a cat named Cosmic Kitten! (also named Claws)
Several people tracked down the artist and programmer for interviews over the years and put in all the work so I'm not going to retell Kid's story. You can watch watch dreamkatcha's video (YouTube link) (or read the text versions linked in the video description) if you want the full background, but this image of Claws that artist Andrew Morris shared in May 2018 after 25 years is too fantastic to not share.
I love you Claws, you derivative weirdo.
Until we got this image, the only image of Claws was in these screenshots from a trade show preview in 1993 in french home computer magazine Joystick, when he went by the name Kit Vicious.
You can read the original at abandonware-magazines.org
I am a bit miffed that the game was de-catted. Who takes a game with an action cat in it and uncats it? Okay, maybe that design is a bit too cheeky, but I don't care. The nineties were wild and he deserves to exist. I'm so used to seeing Chaos against these backgrounds that seeing the pointy-sneakered lykoi standing there looks fake to me.
I would love love love for Magnetic Fields to get out the old hard drives before they die and fish out this demo of Cosmic Kitten for posterity. It would make up for a lot of my experience playing the game.
I cannot believe they decided to add a third digit to the destruction counter when changing Claws to Chaos. Can you imagine how far your heart would sink seeing that counter rise up into the hundreds on the briefing?
CONCLUSION
I don't think Kid Chaos is all that fun. Shocking, I know.
Kid Chaos starts by luring you in with its immense technical and artistic skill and makes you think it's going to be one of those 'fun' games where you can throw yourself around and take some damage but as long as you get to the end you'll probably be okay. That impression lasts until about level three. (Cunningly, the authors chose to advertise the game in magazines with a demo of level two.)
Most Amiga platformers were really hard and Kid Chaos isn't an exception, but it feels exceptionally mean about it as well. It's precise and demanding just to move around in and then confronts you with a constant stream of hazards you can't possibly navigate and if you somehow make it to the end, you'll have missed the destruction target and will have to backtrack and find every route through the level to smash every object to be allowed to continue.
It asks a whole lot of the player and doesn't give them any way to gradually gain permanent progress except to master its huge half-hour tracts of agony through repetition and despair. You could say Kid Chaos flies like Sonic but plays like Rick Dangerous. That's probably not how it was intended, but it's how it ended up.
Occasionally, rarely, very rarely, you'll get into the groove and you'll enjoy all the little details in the background graphics that make it seem more real than the plastic static worlds of Zool and you'll see an obstacle that you think you can handle and you'll do a little run up and take a shot and you'll land it and feel like a damned videogame hero. And then you'll run into a drip and you'll die (inside).
There's no casual way to play Kid Chaos. It resists being played in an improvisational manner. You have to commit to it. For a novice player, getting to the next password feels like an empty victory since only a master can reach them with enough lives to make the game worth continuing from that point. In that sense it's somewhat like The Chaos Engine without the cool factor. And the upgrade system. And lots of weapons. And a voice saying "Special Power".
And I'm sure having the Game Over screen send you back to the point of the last password you used rather than the last password you obtained made perfect sense to the game designer at the time. Perhaps they just assumed you'd... never complete a world?
Unfair hazards aside, the general difficulty wouldn't be a massive problem if the game had any form of positive, inviting charisma, but it doesn't. It's all punishment for the ego, and repetitive scenery and dull colours for the eyes. I can't think of anything more damning than saying it's not even worth playing with cheats on.
I wish there were secret levels or animations or jokes or something, but there's nothing. There's no villain, no mad doctor or evil witch or army of animals all working against you for some deliberate reason. It's just an obstacle course. And it's an obstacle course you can't run fast in because you keep having to go back to hit the damned plants. (Knowing there was a plot-related reason for destroying those plants helped a little.) It's strange for a game this late in the nineties to have no gimmick power-ups for the protagonist. Kid never gets other weapons or shields he can keep. He's never big or small or multicoloured. There's no way to upgrade yourself or get yourself in a good position. The game has one thing it wants the player to be good at, but Kid's movement is hell and the only special thing Kid can do doesn't even work.
It's a disappointment that the CD32 version doesn't have any special features. There's no extra cartoon intro like Quik The Thunder Rabbit or Bubba 'n' Stix or RoboCod, no narration like The Chaos Engine. It's hardly fair to point it out, since the game was designed, programmed and drawn by two people (and a mysterious third entity responsible for the music who goes by the name of 'Pipe Smoker's Cough').
Unfortunately, Kid Chaos may be A GAME BY ANDREW MORRIS, SHAUN SOUTHERN, it's also A GAME FOR ANDREW MORRIS, SHAUN SOUTHERN. No regular human being can be expected to sit in front of these levels and these hazards and have a genuinely good time. If ever there was an argument to be made for letting other people who aren't you have a go of your game before releasing it if you want mass appeal, Kid Chaos would be it.
I'd like to play the Kid Chaos that includes a level select screen and saves your progress after every level. You could focus on a single ten-minute raid on a zone and getting it right instead of fretting about working your way through a deadly Section One you're pretty familiar with, exploring a Section Two you barely saw last time because you died from the time limit, nervously creeping through a Section Three you've never even seen before, and then somehow learning and mastering the rules to a bonus minigame that could be literally anything all in a row. The -RESULTS- screen would make a lot more sense because you could improve upon your records.
Mario and Sonic were slowly growing up and moving away from being marathon games, but the UK got games later than Japan and the US so we were always behind on ripping off their concepts. On that note, why do Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 get a pass for demanding you do the entire game in one run, with a (not-)optional objective that you only have precious, limited attempts at through the game? I dunno. Maybe 'cause they're fun and their music lifts your spirits. And they're a lot bloody easier.
If you want to put on a runny-jumpy Amiga game that you'll enjoy, go for Superfrog (the bland, nutritious choice) and RoboCod (the zany, blinding choice) and B.C. Kid (the wacky, Japanese choice) or Quik The Thunder Rabbit (the wildcard!).
If you go into Kid Chaos seeking misery, then you'll have a great time. You'll have it over and over again, in fact, until you get it right. Kid Chaos offers all the sprawling, innavigable, back-to-back death gauntlets you could want, and a set of pleasingly dependable if obscenely heavy physics to tackle them with.
Kid Chaos is doing the pose! Aaaaaagh!
Kid Chaos (Amiga) - Guest PostPart 1 - Part 2
If you'd like to to share your own thoughts on Kid Chaos, or take a guess at what the next game will be, you can use the box below.
I suspect some kind of shenanigans because the character in the Next Game box is from a game that (a) isn't out yet, and (ii) is a sequel to a game that Ray hasn't done yet.
ReplyDeleteHmmm.
Okay, I will bite; is the next game Octopath Traveller II?
(If it isn't then it can only be Octopath Traveller, unless I've gone mad.)
DeleteThe next game will be Octopath Traveler II! Even if I have to wait for it to come out first.
DeleteI'm waiting for the epic RPG showdown between MegaTraveller and Octopath Traveler! Who will win?
DeleteLike every Amiga game ever, this one seems like it would be a lot more fun if they just let you beat the levels by... beating the levels.
ReplyDeleteIt's true. That often helps an awful awful awful lot. If I play every Amiga game ever made, eventually I'll find the one that's a joy to move around in, looks pretty, lets me maintain progress and doesn't require twenty minutes of sofa cushion searching to open the exit door.
DeleteKid Chaos looks graet for a (very) late Amiga 500 game, I'll give it that.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't think I've seen regenerating health in a platformer before, and in very few games (if any) this early on. So that's quite interesting too.
It's just a shame that the gameplay is so broken. I don't understand why this happens 90% of the time on the Amiga. There's no reason why the Amiga can't have its own Sonic. The hardware is close enough to the Mega Drive it should be easy. But it just doesn't happen. It seems like more of a mental block on the part of the programmers than any real technical reason.
That said, there are hundreds of crappy platformers on the Mega Drive and SNES too, we just remember the good ones. Alas, the Amiga didn't get many good ones.(sad trombone sound)
That mental block is called "being European" ;)
DeleteYou might get a kick out of this, Kelvin.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDlr4BGI4HY
Some posts here https://keithbugeja.wordpress.com/category/amiga/
Also Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt is so much like I'd expect a 1990 Amiga game to be... but it's a Mega Drive game.
DeleteIt's a typical example of an Amiga platformer: only one or two developers, who can pull off great graphics and impressive effects on an already aging hardware - than unfortunately don't have a lick of a clue when it comes to gameplay or level design.
DeleteHuh. "Inspired by Sonic"...
DeleteThe little scrolling elevel previews remind me of Mayhem in Monsterland, which came out a year earlier. Hmm....
ReplyDelete