Chameleon
One of the nice things about being away
from MAME for so long, is that there is a whole new world full of games
that were not available the last time I played. One of them is a cute
little game called Chameleon. The game was made in 1983 and really has
a classic feel to it. You are a chameleon and your goal is to eat all
the chicken eggs and kill all the chickens. Sorta think of yourself as
Perdue's worst nightmare. Being a little chameleon, you have one power
and that is your tongue. You use it to attack chickens and to pull
yourself up levels. And it comes in handy as you will have your hands
full. There are alot of eggs to eat and quite a few angry chickens
running around.
The game starts off easy enough as there are alot of
eggs to gobble up. Just go up to them and shoot the tongue and you can
eat them up. But watch out as the chickens are not too keen to you
eating their babies and will come after you. You need to hit the
chickens three times with your tongue to kill it. The first two just
stun it. And you need to eat all the eggs and kill all the chickens to
move to the next level. A nice little touch is that if you let an egg
go too long, it will hatch into a dangerous little chick. Much like
their parents, chicks can kill you. You are just a little lizard after
all. And if this was not enough, you have a big buzzard that throws
what looks like very dangerous Easter eggs at you. The buzzard cannot
be hurt, so don't bother.
A few nice touches are how
you can climb around the levels like a lizard. You will soon realize
that you need to move around as their are eggs that are on the other
side of the screen and since you cannot jump over a hole, you need to go
down and back up to get there. You can shoot your tongue out from below
to get the eggs, which is a nice touch. There is also a warp log that
will send you from one side to another, much like Pacman.
Another nice touch is that
the levels are different. The second level is a mine level which offers
new challenges. This adds to the desire to keep playing as you want to
see what is up next. Overall, it is a cute little game and a fun game
to boot. The character is very cute and I am happy they did not saddle
him with some lame name. I would rather just be a chameleon than end up
being called Changy the Chameleon or Leon the Chameleon. It is always
nice to find a little treasure like this game. Once again, it is a game
that without MAME, would most likely be lost to most people forever.
This is just a review of the arcade machine. If you are looking for the
actual arcade machine, you may want to check out ebay. Click below to
see if you can find this game.
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