Say-ga-drunk. There's always those games lingering out there where you might know the name or you might know the cover art, but you don't know what the actual game is. Chikon the Forever Man was one of those games for me, always available for rent, and always in the discount bin. My friend from high school owned this one, but neither of us really cared for it all that much. To the point that we started making fun of the title, imagining sequels that would be called something like Chikon the sometimes man, or Chikon the only Tuesday afternoons man, or something. The thing is, there's actually a lot to this game to the point that it's become a cult favorite, and it's in the running for the hardest Sega Genesis game out there, and maybe the hardest 16-bit game period. Chikon was made in December of 1992 by extended play and new romantic productions, namely Mark and John Miller, along with David Foley, who had previously worked on stuff like Spider-Man versus the Kingpin, Tasmania, and Tojaemon Earl. But as you can clearly see, Chikon is just slightly different than those titles. This is based on a comic created by Robert A. Kraus, which features Chikon, a master swordsman, who looks suspiciously like John Caridine, or maybe that's Eddie the Iron Maiden dude. One day, Chikon was feeling himself a little too much and decided to challenge Death itself to a fight. If Chikon wins, he's immortal. If he loses, he's a slave to Death for all of eternity. Chikon manages to win the fight, but on his way out, Death curses him with the task of vanquishing all evil everywhere. Eh, pesky death is always sneak and stuff into the fine print. Not only is Chikon cursed, but anyone who plays this game might as well be too, because holy crap this game is laughably difficult. You start the game in kind of an overworld with four different doors you can go through, each representing the usual elements we always see in games like this. There's Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Each of these worlds are split up into three levels each, and you can visit these worlds in any order. Get through all those, and you unlock four more worlds split up into three levels each, and there's no saves or passwords here, so yeah, this is a really long playthrough for an action platformer like this. You get a health meter with unlimited lives. Hey, you are immortal after all, but if you die at any point, you're back at the overworld and you have to start that level over. In case that's not brutal enough for you, there's also a time limit represented by the hourglass and the lower right, and that's not just for a single level or a single world. It's to complete all four worlds. When this runs out, you start all four worlds all over again. I mean, come on, man, this game is hard enough as it is. I will say what's cool is the way your character controls. You can use your swords in eight different directions. You can even hold down the attack button and use the D-pad to move your swords around, kind of like how Simon Belmont uses his whip and super Castlevania 4. There's a double jump, which you'll be doing plenty of in this game, just like Arthur's double jump and Super Goals and Ghosts. And there's a jumping sword spin, which is reminiscent of Luke Skywalker's spinning lightsaber attack and super Empire Strikes Back. If you've played those games, then controlling Chikon should at least feel a little familiar. The problem, however, is that the level design is just not balanced well. It's almost like when they tested this game, they decided after the fact to move every single platform just a little bit further out of reach so every freaking jump has to be absolutely perfect. Or you fall to your death or you fall to some lower platform. Where, guess what? Every enemy you just defeated has now respawned and you gotta do what you just did all over again. This is especially annoying because there's so many levels here structured to have you climbing upward with enemies swarming all over the place. And it doesn't help that seemingly every enemy takes at least half a dozen hits to go down. I should also mention quickly that without spoiling too much, if you're able to get to the final boss of this game, you get exactly one chance at him. And if you die, you start the entire game over again. Oh, that's just stupid. You can at least obtain some items to help you out, like a hammer to bust through walls, or a grappling hook to help you get to places you otherwise couldn't. And in addition to that, there's also an alchemy system where you collect potions you combine to give yourself abilities like powering up your swords, increasing the height of your jump, or returning invisible. The problem with this is everything is super cryptic, as you can see, so you're gonna have to consult the instruction manual to see what combines with what to create the effect you want. For example, combine two red potions to create yourself a handy fire sword to get through those pesky ice levels. The effect is temporary, though, and not every combination is all that intuitive, so you're gonna want to keep either the manual or a fact around. One thing this game absolutely nails is the presentation. The visuals here throughout the entire playthrough are freaking awesome. The backgrounds and enemies all stand out as something memorable. This is the kind of game you play with the lights off so you can really get immersed, and the music and sound design help out a ton as well. A really cool touch this game has is that once you complete the first four worlds, the next four still have the same themes but with slight alterations. Like Fireworld becomes lava world, Earthworld becomes mudworld, that sort of thing. It's a cool idea, and the visual presentation throughout every level really holds up its end of the bargain. I should mention quickly that if you want to know more about the behind-the-scenes development of this game, there's a fantastic in-depth article on Sega16.com that I have linked in the description. So yeah, Chican the Forever Man is one of those exceedingly difficult games that either agrees with you or it doesn't. The first four worlds are doable, especially with some practice, but the second set of worlds are just freaking ridiculous. Personally, for me, the game's difficulty oscillated a bit too much between rewarding when you finally do something right, and frustrating when you start wondering if you should be doing something that's actually useful with your time, like organizing your sock drawer. There are plenty of instances where it felt awesome to finally fully complete a world and move on to the next one, but more often than not, I felt relief that it was over with and out of the way more than any kind of sense of accomplishment. Compare that to a game like Hagane, where your character has a dozen abilities at his disposal, and you're gonna need to make use of all of them because of the sheer amount of stuff you got to deal with. With this game, the enemy and level design doesn't really match your character's capabilities, and as a result of that, it kind of feels like it's just difficult for the sake of being difficult. Still, like I said, I'd recommend trying this one out. The music and visuals are awesome, the back story is cool, but yeah, just be prepared for a lot of frustration. All right, that's all for now and I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day!