Chakan: The Forever Man

Chakan: The Forever Man is a dark action platformer for the Sega Mega Drive from 1992, whose protagonist is a cursed warrior condemned to eternal life and wandering between worlds until he finds a way to die. The player moves through a series of separate, thematically distinct levels – from graveyards through icy lands to strange alien landscapes – each with its own visual style and set of enemies. Chakan fights with a sword and other weapons that can be found and upgraded throughout the game, and thanks to his immortality he always returns to the game after dying, which sets it apart from classic platformers with a lives system. The player can also move freely between levels and return to places already visited if they haven't yet found all the items needed to progress further.

The graphics rely on a dark, gothic atmosphere with a distinctive color palette and finely drawn backgrounds, while the music underscores the grim, dark tone of the entire journey. The game is known for its high difficulty and non-linearity – the player can choose the order of levels and search for weapon upgrades, giving it a touch of light RPG flavor. The controls and combat are precise, but the game does not forgive mistakes and requires patiently learning enemy patterns. The variety of environments, from graveyards to alien vistas, also means the player rarely encounters two consecutive levels with the same visual or gameplay backbone.

In its contemporary context this was an unconventional, atmospheric title that stood out from the Mega Drive's generally cheerier output through its dark tone. Today Chakan is valued mainly by fans of more obscure platformers and by collectors as an example of bold, distinctively styled design, even though its difficulty discourages less patient players. It's among the titles that well represent the darker, more mature side that the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive occasionally explored in the nineties. It's precisely the combination of non-linear progression, RPG elements, and dark visuals that makes it a title that stays in players' memory longer than many more easily forgotten platformers of the same era.

Why play it: For fans of darker, distinctively styled platformers with RPG elements and non-linear progression, Chakan is worth attention, even though its difficulty will put off less patient players.