So….purple is my favorite
color. Yep. And I guess in 1995 it helped me notice this
chameleon character from Knuckles Chaotix,
a purple chameleon named Espio. Eventually
I learned that his name is part of the word “espionage”, spying. Makes sense; chameleons blend in with their
immediate surroundings, so that name totally goes with him, and nowadays, he’s
been portrayed as a ninja character, sporting ninja stars and ninja leave-blades
and others of the sort. But I think it
makes him cooler than before.
See…way back in 1995 I thought he
was a girl. I was reading a video game
magazine and found a description for the Knuckles
Chaotix video game for the SEGA 32X system.
When it mentioned controlling the characters, it used the pronouns “
him/her.” It must have confused me,
because if all the other characters were male then it must mean that the purple
character is a female. (Really it
doesn’t matter, there’s nothing wrong with males wearing purple at all). The peach-colored area of this chameleon’s
chest was heart-shaped like a female character in the Sonic universe might have
(think Sally Acorn of Sonic SAT AM
fame). So for a while, yeah, I thought
Espio was a girl. A very kinda naked,
very cranky-looking girl.
I used to give him a nickname,
because I’d get nervous (shy, blush) whenever I said his name, so for a while I
called him “Metrio.” It rhymed with
“Espio” didn’t it? Around then I’ve heard of the word “metro” before but I
didn’t understand what it meant. I
was…lessee, 1996…I was around 10 or 11 years old.
I made up a song about the
Chaotix Team too, or was it just Espio? (Actually
a lot of Sonic-related characters or stuff had inspired original music from Sis
and me…all of which we now both agree is stupid, but hey, we were kids and had
fun with it.)
Years later when he makes an
appearance in Sonic Heroes, his voice
sounds pretty masculine. Maybe it
helps. What is his actual age,
anyways? I was sort of disappointed that his voice
sounded as deep as it did, but over time I got used to it. Even now I like his voice in Sonic Rivals 2 and then Sonic Generations when Sonic has to
shine searchlights on him and do a homing attack to progress through the
challenge.
It’s funny…ever since I was
fascinated with Espio, it became apparent over time that the chameleon turned
out to be my favorite lizard, really my favorite reptile. In fact, if someone asked me if I had a
favorite dinosaur, I’d say mine is a triceratops—because it reminds me
of the chameleon. Hey…maybe the
chameleon might be a distant descendant of the triceratops, but I dunno. That is a job for research at a later time, I
suppose. They certainly didn’t have skin
that blended with their surroundings. I thought
it was so interesting that chameleons
can do that. Heh. Sort of makes me want to read up on
chameleons now. How they do dat? How do they change the color of their skin to
match the color on the thing they stand on?
Didn’t a couple of TV ads this year feature chameleons? (A paint commercial and one other company.)
So…that’s
my history on how I became a fan of Espio the Chameleon. Pretty cool, huh? … Or weird.
Whichever is closer.
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