As recent as Sonic Superstars, the Sonic series has a problem with figuring out how to make co-op work. Because apparently splitscreen, or online co-op where everybody gets their own screen hasn't been a thought of solution since 1992's Sonic 2, the games struggle with keeping more than one player on-screen, without one of them getting left behind due to the other going too fast. Knuckles Chaotix meanwhile came in, and I think tried to solve this conundrum by slapping ring-shaped handcuffs on both characters so they never get seperated. And then, it made that a mandatory gimmick, the main mechanic of the game, even when you're not using the 2-player mode. In doing so, it has prompted me to ask it a simple question.
Why?
No, really, what is the point of this? The game seems to think there is one when it walks you through its tutorial with an admittingly pretty nice song. It tells you, hey, you can use your partner like a slingshot to charge up a ton of speed. Or, gain a bunch of verticality by tossing your partner up into the air, onto otherwise unreachable platforms. These are both things that the spin dash has already solved 3 years beforehand, but of course, in order to make these other moves more appealable, the spin dash ended up being nerfed so we can go full throttle with our whole handcuff concept.
But like, if they ended up making Knuckles Chaotix more of an explorative slower-paced puzzle game, and created a bunch of mechanics centered around having two partners, maybe we'd be cooking something here. That's why Sonic's not in this one, right? Because they wanted to make something a little different from Sonic's usual design? And yet, traditional Sonic level design was all they could put into the microwave. A minute passes, the microwave beeps, and a half-hearted meal comes out that had to be heavily compromised and homogenized into a handful of the same repetitive level patterns, because anything more creative and complex would've only made it clear how the tether gimmick doesn't work. All they did was add a chain 'n ball onto your playable character, and then dulled themselves down to accommodate.
What makes Knuckles Chaotix all the stranger for it, is that it clearly was a product of some passion, I mean, I think you can tell that somebody on this team really did want to create a solid Sega 32X title, even if their efforts could've been better spent on something with longevity attached to it. Not that they might've known the 32X was destined to fail. Either way, the art team knocked things out of the park, the levels are still surreal, but now with a much greater amount of graphical detail attached. There's a neat day/night system long before that became a big deal in 3D titles, even if it's kinda pointless here. I already mentioned the music has its moments, and... you know what? Very normal take here, these are honestly some of Sonic's best special stages, maybe next to the ones in the Saturn version of 3D Blast. Autorunners are fun to me in general, the visibility in this one is good compared to something like Sonic 2... and the 32X hardware is being put to proper use through its charmingly simplistic rendering of polygons, while still keeping a stable frame rate. It was a pretty impressive showing for its time, likely made by a team that wanted to push the limits of what this new piece of tech gave them.
Unfortunately, somebody got too fixated on that tether system. That somebody is me. But also probably the developer to some extent. I mean, they could've had a cool idea, they made a 10-minute prototype of it, and it turned out interesting so they turned it into a full product. But as development progressed, somebody had to have seen the cracks, right? Somebody must've known that while they certainly haven't produced a terrible game, the entire basis on which its formed on was restricting them from doing a whole lot with it. In the end, it was too late to cancel, and so they put their special little game out into the market. However, being special wears off with time. When you're making a prototype with a cool idea, you have to consider whether that idea can possibly maintain being special for the duration of a full-length game, and if not, whether you can expand the idea into something more complex. If you're unable to do that, that's when you end up with Knuckles Chaotix.
Why?
No, really, what is the point of this? The game seems to think there is one when it walks you through its tutorial with an admittingly pretty nice song. It tells you, hey, you can use your partner like a slingshot to charge up a ton of speed. Or, gain a bunch of verticality by tossing your partner up into the air, onto otherwise unreachable platforms. These are both things that the spin dash has already solved 3 years beforehand, but of course, in order to make these other moves more appealable, the spin dash ended up being nerfed so we can go full throttle with our whole handcuff concept.
But like, if they ended up making Knuckles Chaotix more of an explorative slower-paced puzzle game, and created a bunch of mechanics centered around having two partners, maybe we'd be cooking something here. That's why Sonic's not in this one, right? Because they wanted to make something a little different from Sonic's usual design? And yet, traditional Sonic level design was all they could put into the microwave. A minute passes, the microwave beeps, and a half-hearted meal comes out that had to be heavily compromised and homogenized into a handful of the same repetitive level patterns, because anything more creative and complex would've only made it clear how the tether gimmick doesn't work. All they did was add a chain 'n ball onto your playable character, and then dulled themselves down to accommodate.
What makes Knuckles Chaotix all the stranger for it, is that it clearly was a product of some passion, I mean, I think you can tell that somebody on this team really did want to create a solid Sega 32X title, even if their efforts could've been better spent on something with longevity attached to it. Not that they might've known the 32X was destined to fail. Either way, the art team knocked things out of the park, the levels are still surreal, but now with a much greater amount of graphical detail attached. There's a neat day/night system long before that became a big deal in 3D titles, even if it's kinda pointless here. I already mentioned the music has its moments, and... you know what? Very normal take here, these are honestly some of Sonic's best special stages, maybe next to the ones in the Saturn version of 3D Blast. Autorunners are fun to me in general, the visibility in this one is good compared to something like Sonic 2... and the 32X hardware is being put to proper use through its charmingly simplistic rendering of polygons, while still keeping a stable frame rate. It was a pretty impressive showing for its time, likely made by a team that wanted to push the limits of what this new piece of tech gave them.
Unfortunately, somebody got too fixated on that tether system. That somebody is me. But also probably the developer to some extent. I mean, they could've had a cool idea, they made a 10-minute prototype of it, and it turned out interesting so they turned it into a full product. But as development progressed, somebody had to have seen the cracks, right? Somebody must've known that while they certainly haven't produced a terrible game, the entire basis on which its formed on was restricting them from doing a whole lot with it. In the end, it was too late to cancel, and so they put their special little game out into the market. However, being special wears off with time. When you're making a prototype with a cool idea, you have to consider whether that idea can possibly maintain being special for the duration of a full-length game, and if not, whether you can expand the idea into something more complex. If you're unable to do that, that's when you end up with Knuckles Chaotix.