Chameleon Twist 2

By the time Chameleon Twist 2 was released in Japan in late 1998 and in English territories in 1999, the N64 had seen a swathe of solid releases, including a handful of platformers, most of which Chameleon Twist 2 feels dated and rudimentary against in comparison.

The original Chameleon Twist was criticised for being made up of small, boxy rooms; Sunsoft appears to have attempted to remedy this by creating open, floating Super Mario 64-esque levels set against ugly static background images. The level design is lifeless, haphazard and boring, and much of it can be traversed by running and jumping Mario-style with little use of the series' greatest draw: its tongue mechanics. Whilst the original game's confined spaces gave the developers the chance to throw in puzzles and other tasks requiring the use of your chosen chameleon's tongue, they seem to have lost sight of this in the transition to more open spaces. Gameplay and control is otherwise much the same as in the original, though you now have a parasol to float around with which can be opened by pressing Z after jumping.

One of the first game's strongest points was its great boss fights. This time around, bosses are both less interesting and more repetitive, some encounters playing out in exactly the same way as each other.

Visually, Chameleon Twist 2 is unimpressive; embarrassing, even, this far into the console's life. Ugly sprites are used excessively, even for large objects such as trees, and most of the geometry is low-effort. Textures are big, bland, stretched and compressed beyond recognition in some cases. The obvious benefit to all of this is that the game runs well provided your character's tongue isn't extended to full reach, which pulls the camera back significantly and brings much more into view.

A lukewarm platforming experience, Chameleon Twist 2 is disappointing, both as a sequel and as a game.