Chaotix: A Look Back

Chaotix: A Look Back

The Sega Megadrive 32X. Raise your hand if you recall it. Now, raise your hand if you ever possessed one. I'm sorry for your loss.

The 32X came out at a time when Sega, after living on a tower of excessive complacency for the preceding few years, realized that the Megadrive's 16-bit rule was coming to an end with scary news of Playstations, Jaguars, and other 32-bit powered gear.

Sega Japan and Sega of America were told to work together to make a 32-bit add-on for the Megadrive. This add-on would be called the 32X. But strangely, another part of Sega Japan was simultaneously working on what would later become the Saturn, a better 32-bit CD format. This was done in secret, and Sega of America had no idea about it while they were working on the 32X. This famously strange move was made more stranger by Sega's choice to ship both consoles at about the same time, which was a bit of a death wish.

What happened? The 32X was dead before it even started. It had an old-fashioned cartridge format, a silly operating procedure (two power supplies, an extra video cable, and even some crazy anti-magnetic clips to keep it snugly in the Megadrive cartridge slot), and bad software support right from the start. It lost to the Saturn, which was then destroyed by the Playstation and Nintendo 64. A sad story at the time, but a great deal for retro collectors who are running out of money; it's not too expensive to get, and there are only about six fantastic games before you can say your collection is "complete"!

So, Chaotix. The only Sonic game that is 32 bits and two-dimensional. But a Sonic game that doesn't have Sonic. And a Sonic game that was sold on a gimmick. When it first came out, the game got a lot of bad reviews since Sonic fans wanted more Sonic and fewer Knuckles. It quickly slipped into oblivion, thanks in part to the limited shelf life of the 32X. This is too bad because, if you can get beyond its shortcomings, there is a challenging and smart platform adventure with a novel twist inside.

Picture a world where you are always connected to a friend by a strange band of energy that looks like an elastic band. They have to follow you as you move and jump when you jump. This is a nightmare idea and the fundamental heart of Chaotix's gameplay. Does it work, then? Hmm... kind of. Chaotix is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.

The player controls both characters at the same time, which is a result of one of Dr. Robotnik's nefarious experiments. They must learn how to utilize this calamity to their advantage by making the link tense to give them speed, clear barriers, and go up platforms.

Sega took a big risk by designing the physics engine that gives this movement style, and it doesn't always pay off. The stages in this game are built differently than those in other Sonic games. Everything has to be spaced out more so that the bouncing, spinning (sometimes out of control) duo may bounce throughout the levels. You will often become frustrated when you get trapped above or below where you want to be and have to pound the buttons to get the characters to move so you can continue on. Then there's the continual chance of bumping into adversaries (of which there are, wisely, a lot less than usual) and unfairly losing a bunch of rings. You'll spend a lot of time careening around aimlessly, which is entertaining at first, but then you really want to get there and gather all the Chaos Rings (the new name for the traditional Chaos Emeralds). Progress can be slow and annoying, but after a while, when you stop thinking of it as just a "Sonic game," Chaotix starts to get under your skin and show you its intricacies. I can't promise you that you'll ever really master the crazy system, but you'll definitely smile the first time you send your mammals speeding off in the right direction, clear a loop, kill an enemy, spin through space like a ballerina, and then land neatly at the level exit sign. That's Sonic squared, plus a little bit more!

Chaotix is a must-have for any collector, even if you don't care about the gameplay. The 32X's new spectrum of colors is completely showed off, with each new level (selected at random) taking place at a different time of day. This essentially gives each stage around four different color palettes (and there are about 30 of them!). Every time you play this game, it feels like a whole new experience. Sprite scaling is also used to great effect; new power-ups let characters shrink to a microscopic size or grow into a huge, pixelated monster. And then there's the extra level...

Your character has to collect blue spheres (like in Sonic 3) while running up walls in a fully 3D world. This makes the tunnel spin with the player, which makes the game very hard and makes you fall out of the bottom of the tunnel, swear, and throw your controller across the room. A Sonic special stage has never needed such a tricky mix of strategy and quick thinking.

Chaotix was a brave new idea that was almost wonderfully done, but it needed one more round of playtesting (perhaps because it was rushed out for the console's hilariously late arrival!) to be a true masterpiece. On top of that, there were never enough people who had the hardware to play it.

Sega, please put Chaotix on the next Sonic Compilation so everyone can appreciate the weird, stretchy parts of this imperfect but still great game!

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