I've been in the strangest mood for Knuckles' Chaotix recently. It just kind of hit me out of nowhere how much I miss that game. I recently went on YouTube and looked up some of the music tracks from the game, just for shits and giggles, and they were brilliant. Speed Slider's theme in particular stood out for me and ranks in my personal top 10 video game tracks of all time. The song was rich, vibrant, and the music itself even behaved like a roller coaster with its exciting ups and downs and carnivaly flavor.
I miss this game in general.
In light of the recent news that Sonic CD may very well be hitting XBLA in the future, I can't help but wish that Knuckles' Chaotix will be brought to online stores someday. I have some very fond childhood memories of that game, and the gameplay mechanics, while not absolutely perfect, were brilliant and fresh in my opinion. True they were irritating at times and slowed down the game's flow slightly compared to most Sonic titles of the day, but it was still fun to play with the physics.
The game itself also had it's own unique artistic flavor that set it apart from other games of the Sonic universe. The game was also chock-full of gimmicks, from the rubber band physics (which I loved) to trivial power-ups like the equivilent to New Super Mario Bros.' Mega Mushroom. Things like changing size didn't really seem necessary, but I still enjoyed the gimmicks for what they were. The Chaos Rings, rather than emeralds, also set the game apart just that much more. I slaved tirelessly to get those things, and even though all they did was give you a different splash screen for the ending credits that featured Sonic with the Chaotix, I still had fun collecting them for the feeling of completion.
Also, probably most of all, I miss Mighty. I know I'm definitely not the first one to say this, but I really do miss that guy. Mighty was my bro!
There was just something about him that was aesthetically pleasing to me. Maybe it was his sleek, shiny red shell, idunno. I always imagined as a kid that if he hit you with his spin jump that it would really hurt because he had that hard armadillo shell! I was kind of disappointed that he really couldn't live up to his name in the game, but I hoped at the time that maybe he would return in the future to change that. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Eh, I suppose I kind of miss Heavy and Bomb a little too. Just the idea of breaking the norm and playing as one of Robotnik's ex-badniks was a neat idea, or at least I thought so. I'm assuming that a reason why Mighty hasn't returned in a game is because I think I remember reading somewhere that Sega does not recognize Knuckles' Chaotix as main cannon, but whatever.
As I said before though, I really hope deep down that there is at least an off-chance that this game will make it to online stores for purchase on consoles in the future. I kind of doubt this will happen though since I'm assuming that the game may be viewed as "too obscure" or "too unheard of by the general public because it was on an obscure console addition" to be a "sound business decision" to add it to the stores. This makes me sad. I've tried playing this game on emulators, but every 32X emulator I've come across requires the system bios to be downloaded and somehow applied to the emulator, which I still can't figure out how to do.
There really isn't a single focus I had in mind when I started this thread, I just wanted to rant about how I really miss this gem and that I hope there is a chance that someday it may become available to us again. Thank you all for taking the time to read my rant. I welcome any thoughts, opinions, or insightful info on this topic.
