"Chakan - the forever man" is based on an American comic book series by Robert Kraus and is one of the few games that have been developed in America and officially never found their way to Japan.

Chakan is a powerful, but cursed Warrior who defeated death in his arrogance and for this was condemned to eternal life. The suffering of the innocent victims meant Chakan is doomed to hunt all evil creatures of the different worlds and kill. Until evil is completely destroyed, the curse will be taken from him.

I have the following composition of events taken from the official Chakan homepage: he came for me that day on a misty plain and even now I still hear his words to eternity later: "You have served me well Chakan and sent many souls to me But, you have grown too strong and powerful. I’ve been summoned to slay you this night."
He smiled, then said, "To a man of death from Death himself, a wager?" "If you win, Chakan, you shall live forever: if I win, your soul is mine to do with as I wish."
I in my vanity, foolishly accepted.The battle, he said, will be fought on the following levels... the physical, mental, mystic and psychic. It will be fought on this world and toe to toe we clashed into other planes of existence, with sword and spell. The worlds shook and trembled at our powers. I attacked with such fury, such might, that even death was taken aback. Seizing the sound of my fury, I fell the dark sovereign. I had defeated death!
"Fulfill the wager, Lord of the dead, give to me the gift of eternal life!" Those were my words as I raised my arms in victory, but I should have known you cannot defeat the Harvester of Sorrows.
"Foolish," death said, "long before your world and long after, until the last star if to my touch, I shall be." You cannot slay that which does not live. You are a tactful swordsman, so I will not back out on our wager. "I grant you the kiss of eternal life, but," smiled death " for your pride I will temper my gift with this curse." the Reaper laughed.
"Each nightfall evils will be shown to you, and the pain of their victims will be your pain." You will never know rest as you wander this world searching to slay the horrors that haunt your sleeping world. You will suffer grievous wounds, but you will not, and as eternity rolls on, you crave my touch. Your face will bear my visage, and your eyes will burn with hellfire.
Withered as saying, my face and my eyes blazed with infernal fury.
"Let it not be said that I am the without mercy," death grinned, "there shall be an end to your curse if all the beasts of the dark are slain, then you may find rest".
It what then that death left me the once proud Chakan, clutching the ground in agony. And now I live an eternity in which my sleep is haunted by nightmares and where pain is real and unforgiving. How long till the end?

As you can see from this, Chakan is a tragic but extremely interesting character, which provided a good starting point for basing an entire game on and the developers of Sega made a good choice in deciding he would therefore make an excellent character with plenty of depth for a platform game.

Chakan, graphically, looks extremely appealing: Chakan is represented as a strong warrior with two razor sharp blades. With the wonderful hat which conceals something his infernal facial expression and the squirrel belts he looks absolutely dangerous and deadly.

The game starts in a dimension beyond space and time (I called the neutral zone), from which Chakan can enter into the four desired existing worlds. These are theme based on the four elements (fire, water, air and Earth) and are divided into three sections. A short information flow gives a high-level overview of the current situation and evil that to combat the player when entering each world. The first world you should visit is the water. Before entering this, you should familiarize first in the neutral zone with its capabilities. Can you direct Chakan with his sabres in all directions attack or jump high in the air? Jumping includes the double jump triggered by again pressing of the jump button at the highest point of the jump. If you missed the point, the effect remains off and you fall to the ground. During the double jump a whirling attack can be triggered by additionally pressing the attack button, Chakan can also avoid numerous creatures with his flying double jump capability, in my opinion the most important this is timing as a miss very often means immediate death. Well, the death not being Chakan’s really as we know him to be immortal – confusing no?

When you ‘die’ you immediately revert to the neutral zone and must attack the whole game segment from scratch. This also happens when Chakan loses his entire energy represented as some skulls. And already the first level proves that the game is absolutely not a picnic. Numerous recurring enemies and a crippling river flow have demanded several attempts from me, until I could finish the first phase of the first world. And all this only using an invisibility spell. Alchemy plays an important role in Chakan because everywhere you will find colourful bottles from which a variety of magical effects can be put together. You can also make yourself invincible, improve your bounce, destroy all enemies on the screen or improve his weapons with fire, ice, or Flash. The use of Alchemy should be well considered, however, because due to the limited capacity available only two or three spells are available. Anyway, once you master the first game section, you enjoy a new weapon, a metallic claw you may use now. The purpose of this weapon is clear in the second level section that has proved difficult to the point of despair. With the claw you can attach it to certain places, to then with enough momentum swing to greater heights, which are not accessible with the double jump. The second section, which consists of mainly only such jump passages, requires a lot of sensitivity because the Talon is very difficult. This section was solved after many ‘practice’ attempts and curses and I entered the final area where the villain is waiting for me. I unfortunately did not get to play this fully, because a much heavier "claw game" ate up virtually on my entire remaining time supply. When this happens you return, as you so often do, to the neutral zone and to my horrors I realized you had to do everything again from the start. Frustrated, exhausted and weary after a long morning playing, I briefly looked at the other worlds, but that is where my first Chakan session terminated and I went to bed.

But then hauntingly, and after a good sleep, I could not wait to return to the game and defeat the powers of evil! With my existing experience, I could finish the first world this time after numerous attempts. The first boss looks visually quite creepy and can be easily overcome with a simple tactic. The other three worlds and large follow the same principle. The only major difference to be found is there are different weapons to be found in the other worlds to use. The learning curve on the other levels is pretty similar but gets harder each time, so be warned – this game is hard to beat.


Chakan strictly speaking is therefore only to be recommended for real hard core players, for whom no challenge may seem insurmountable, even so, for me, I found it difficult even on “easy”. But I personally like the game very much and am inclined to cheat considering the level of difficulty. It is also worth noting that this is one game that actually benefits from being on an emulator as I would have never finished Chakan without playing with the possibility of saving my progress at any point of the game, as on the original there was no way to save and no password function, despite the extremely high degrees of difficulty and the large scale of the game! This would prove more than frustrating because after some hours you are generally tired and not properly can concentrate on what is happening and the ability to save would be a ‘lifesaver’. I take my hat off to the original Sega pioneers who completed the game without taking a break or leaving their machines on pause for days at a time.

To sum up, Chakan is a credit to anyone’s collection and the true test of any gamer. Because of the great comic book template the manufacturers have trusted to players a masterpiece with some well executed technical characteristics. For the mega drive (Genesis), Chakan has really beautiful graphical settings. It is relatively smooth and well rendered with an atmospherically ‘dark’ setting. The music fits wonderfully to the environment and gives lots of depth and a more than threatening atmosphere and it truly a game to inspire the imagination.