Retro spotlight: Knuckles' Chaotix

Knuckles' starring role on the 32X didn't do quite as well as his big-screen debut.

This column is “Retro spotlight,” which exists mostly so I can write about whatever game I feel like even if it doesn’t fit into one of the other topics you find in this newsletter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

This isn’t news by any means, but Sega really hurt their short- and long-term prospects as a console maker in the mid-90s with their handling of the transition from the Genesis to the Saturn. A not insignificant part of the problem was how they split their focus between an expensive add-on for the Genesis, the 32X, and their actual 32-bit system. Energy directed toward the 32X was energy that the Saturn didn’t get, whether that was coming from third-party devs or Sega themselves, and there might not be evidence of this problem more significant than that of Knuckles’ Chaotix.

Chaotix was originally going to be a Saturn launch title, until Sega realized they weren’t going to have it ready in time. As this interview with former Sega of America CEO Tim Kalinske explains, the game was over budget and out of time, so it was converted into something else:

It was another one of these things where we just needed titles, because we didn't have enough. The original game was long and it was taking too long to get done, so the decision was made to cut it into parts and introduce it quickly on 32X and that was a simple decision because there were too many needs to have more products on the 32X, it wasn't going to be ready on Saturn, it was too big, it was taking too long, it was over budgeted, it was behind schedule — all those reasons.

Here’s the issue: the 32X needed titles because the 32X existed. As Kalinske points out in his defense of the add-on in that interview, “We knew that the 32X wasn't a significant new platform, everyone knew that, the idea was that we could at least make a claim of 32 bit technology to extend the life of the Genesis.” The 32X was just $160, which made it relatively inexpensive as add-ons go, but the bigger issue there is that Sega, and in Kalinske’s words, “everyone” else knew that it wasn’t a “significant” platform. Which meant it wasn’t going to be supported, which meant what little support did go to it was likely a wasted effort. The 32X, released in November of 1994 in both North America and Japan, ended up with all of 40 games on it, 10 of which were developed by Sega teams, 19 of which were published by Sega.

The Saturn — also released in November of 1994 in Japan, and May of 1995 in North America — had a weak launch lineup and little support out of the gate in large part because Sega decided to release it early to win a race to market with the Playstation — this hurt them both with customers and with retailers, and they were just never able to recover from these issues, not until they left being a first-party developer behind. What also didn’t help the Saturn, though, is that it didn’t have a mainline Sonic game on it. Knuckles’ Chaotix, before it became that game, was supposed to be a mainline Sonic game on the Saturn by way of Sega of Japan, and Sonic X, which Sonic Team was working on, never materialized in that or any form. It’s hard not to look at the 32X and Sega forcing themselves to be dedicated to supporting it as part of why things went down the way they did.

Now, I’m all for new platforms and experiments and risks, but with Sony’s Playstation entering the market, Sega probably should have been focusing on preparing to make the Saturn the best platform it could be, instead of spending time and energy and development resources on what Kalinske called a “claim of 32 bit technology” with the 32X. Coulda woulda shoulda and all that, sure, history played out the way it did instead of how it could have, but it’s difficult to discuss Knuckles’ Chaotix without also discussing why it exists in the first place.

Sega decided not to continue to push for that mainline Sonic game on the Saturn, which would inevitably result in there being no mainline Sonic on the Saturn: in between those events was Knuckles’ Chaotix, the only Sonic-series representation on the 32X. It is not a game many people have had the opportunity to play: the 32X sold just 800,000 units. It hasn’t seen a re-release, outside of a brief stint on the subscription service, GameTap, and it doesn’t emulate particularly well, either, so even people who are willing to put in the kind of effort needed to experience the game are probably not walking away from it saying it’s a must-play experience. It’s certainly worth a look for Sonic completionists and its general oddness compared to the rest of the series, but it’s also perfectly acceptable for your reaction to Knuckles’ Chaotix to just be, “oh yes, I read about that,” instead of “I must play that.”

Here’s why it’s weird: it has actual co-op play, for one, and the second character matters whether they are controlled by a human or the game. Second, it’s all about rubberbanding. Chaotix is the name of the group of pals Knuckles is working alongside in the game, but it also works as a description for how you’re going to be moving around within the game. It is chaos, through and through.

You don’t really move throughout Chaotix’ levels by running the way you normally would in a Sonic game. Instead, two of the protagonists of the game (of your choosing) are tethered together, basically handcuffed by the rings they hold, and you need to figure out how to move all four of their legs and their momentum together in unison. You’ll do a whole lot of slingshotting, whether it’s running to the left while forcing your second character to stand in place and then releasing the appropriate buttons to use all that momentum to send you both hurtling to the right, or it’s using tension to slingshot yourself up to the platform your partner is on. Things are rarely as simple as just jumping on or to them, because the two of you aren’t actually moving in sync unless the slingshotting forces it. It’s actually a pretty nifty system once you get the hang of it and understand the rhythm of things — it looks like a Sonic game, and some of its conventions are very much from Sonic games, but it is its own thing, too.

The problem with the gameplay is basically everything else. The levels just aren’t very interesting! To compensate for the general weirdness of the controls and to give players less to worry about, there just aren’t many obstacles or enemies to consider: your focus is, nearly always, just on how to physics yourself from Point A to Point B. Exploration isn’t really a major highlight like it can be in Sonic games, either, despite the slower pace of things, because again, the game just wants you to figure out how to cross those gaps and climb those platforms and propel yourself up the ramps. Once you do get the hang of it all, the levels all start to feel a little too same-y, despite their varied environments, because what you are doing is all there is to do. The only challenge here is in figuring out the physics, and once you’ve done that, nothing else stands in your way.

In my review of Kirby and the Forgotten Land for Paste Games, I wrote that, “there is a difference between ‘easy’ and ‘boring.’ Forgotten Land is certainly not boring: it is brimming with worthwhile things to do and see, and is loaded with levels that do not feel like a chore to replay immediately after playing them the first time.” Chaotix is the wrong kind of easy: it is boring. There are moments where it isn’t boring, but the boredom will eventually find you, as there is not much to do to see, no challenge to overcome, no danger you’re ever really in, and basically no reason to revisit. It is a game where, once you understand the core concept, you should feel free to put it down: you have experienced what there is to experience.

And that’s a shame, because there are so many nuggets of good ideas here. It’s wonderful, for instance, that the characters play a little differently — Knuckles might be tethered to a partner, but he’s still Knuckles, and can still glide and grab on to walls to climb them, which can be useful when you’re oh-so-close to reaching an item or ledge and don’t want to rubberband to try to reach it again. The rubberbanding is a real pain in the ass if you just want to play a traditional Sonic game, sure, but I do think there’s something fun about all of it — it’s interesting enough that I’m upset about the rest of the game not being interesting enough. The characters look and animate well, showing off the added power of the 32X and what we had to look forward to in the true 32-bit era, but the lack of enemies and varied obstacles kept the game from being able to fully show off what this add-on was capable of.

Then there are ideas that are just sort of annoying, like that your next level is selected at random, that death brings you back to the level-select and character-select lobby, that there isn’t more to do while you’re listening to your typical for the era quality Sonic-series soundtrack. Which is unarguably the best part of the game, by the way. It was the first soundtrack Junko Shiratsu and Mariko Nanba would work on for Sega, and in the case of the latter, the first in what ended up being a pretty lengthy stint as one of the composers for Sonic, stretching from 1995’s Chaotix through 2010’s Sonic Colors.

The bonus levels where you collect Chaos Rings aren’t up to par, either. It’s unclear to me if this is an emulation problem or one inherent to Chaotix, but they lack the gameplay smoothness of the standard stages and of Sonic’s past pseudo-3D bonus levels, and they look significantly worse than the rest of the game, too: choppy, unappealing, and boring without even the neat physics manipulation of the standard stages? Sign me up, I guess.

Knuckles’ Chaotix deserves a revival, though, despite my misgivings about the initial offering here. And not just in the “old games should be available to play” sense, either. Some ideas within deserve a second look — a sequel or a game with a similar concept could do well and be fun to play! This hypothetical game would just need more variety, more challenge, and a development cycle that doesn’t have it ping ponging between platforms and goals like the characters within it through their environments.

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