Best Level Ever: Any of the desert levels- if nothing else for the graphics but they're also not nearly as hard as some of the other levels. They're also one of the least-used environments in the game so it feels like a treat to play something different.
Game-Breaker: Downplayed, as the best powerups in the game - namely the Cyclone and Skycutter - are also the rarest. While one can bypass entire levels with either of these two powerups, they would have to do so avoiding hazards in order to make the most out of them.
The Iron Knight's permanent health increase can become this in some parts of the game. Because the health carries over between forms, as long as you avoid actually dying, you can gain a potentially enormous amount of hit points permanently, making enemies and environmental hazards that cause damage a far lesser threat. However, it won't help against many of the hardest levels, which generally involve instant death due to murder walls or bottomless pits.
Low-Tier Letdown: You wouldn't think Juggernaut, a tank that shoots skulls, would be a bad powerup, but Rule of Cool doesn't override how overly specialized it is. Its odd shape allows it to jump into horizontal crawlspaces and prevents it from entering narrow gaps; while the former can help in certain moments, the latter is an obstacle that is encountered time and time again with this mask. Despite being a tank, its no more durable than any of the other masks, failing to offset its poor speed and hill-climbing ability. Not coincidentally, the Juggernaut mask is often found in the very levels it would be inappropriate, with Forced Entry being a prime example (see That One Level). If you think of trying to preserve the Juggernaut helmet for boss levels, don't even bother as the developers already made the penultimate levels that make that impossible to do without cheating.
Bloody Swamp, the absolute worst of the Murder Wall levels and the hardest level in the game. The death course is intricately designed to slow down the player as much as possible, containing ghost block barriers, rubber block corridors, shooting block puzzles, and horizontally-moving platforms. It's infamously hard amongst those who have played the game, easily capable of eating up every single life and continue a player has accumulated to that point. Not helped at all by the fact that after you've died on it once, you're back to playing it as plain old Kid Chameleon and no helmets. Not even the Cyclone retrieved in the previous level isn't that much of a help either. Many players choose to take the much safer path, despite the tempting extra lives in the previous level.
While not as difficult as the above, Forced Entry is an exercise in frustration. The Murder Wall is as fast as it is in Bloody Swamp, yet you are only given the Juggernaut to start, which can neither climb up the hill nor fit in the gap that contains the flag exit; you will have to use the upper exit to win or lose the juggernaut helmet before reaching the bottom exit. There's also two different paths one can take at the end: if you go in the lower path but don't go through the gap, you will hit a dead end with a sign that says, "TOO BAD." Taking the lower path in the beginning of the level means you will have to through this without a helmet. There are hidden blocks that will troll you when trying to jump over the ninjas. When reaching the flag part, there is a helmet power-up, but you won't be able to make it to the flag on time. Many players will take the the alternate path instead just to avoid this level.
The Forbidden Tomb is this if you don't know the Easy Level Trick (a hidden Red Stealth Helmet), which can be finished in under 40 seconds. Otherwise, this is a puzzle level where the player has to destroy the blocks on the right side of the level to reach the flag below them. The reliance on power-ups to smash the blocks may be a contributing factor, but the main obstacle is time: there are no clock bonuses for this lengthy puzzle. There is a reason why this is the only level that will automatically give you a time bonus as 0 seconds.
Dead-end Elsewheres are the level equivalent to Goddamn Bats, but Elsewhere 28 is by far the worst of the bunch. You need to uncover vertical staircases using the Cyclops mask, yet avoid the lava column in the center of the stage (with two more on the sides higher up in the level). This requires critical precision on the use of Eye Clops's hidden-reveal waves and jump timings. Otherwise, you fall back to the beginning. The only reason why some will try this level is to get the Cyclone helmet so that Alien Isle isn't as annoying to complete.
Alien Isle, mainly for the section where you have to wait for the lifts to reach zero so you can hop over the tall pillars, all while aliens are incessantly blasting you from above. It's an easier part if you happen to have Cyclone, but good luck still having it before this part of the level.
The Final Marathon is, as the name implies, a long level that's right before the final boss. It's full of bottomless pits and imps that drop from the ceiling. And unless you're playing on an emulator or a compilation with save states, good luck having enough lives left by this point in the game to learn what to do through trial and error.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: For a stretch of a "character", the Murder Wall; between being Nightmare Fuel and responsible for some of the toughest levels in the game, it's left a far stronger impression on players than the game's actual Big Bad, Heady Metal. In spite of this, it hardly plays a role in the game's story (or what little there is), being treated as just one of many obstacles for the player to overcome.
Unintentional Period Piece: Good God, could this have been made in any era butThe '90s? The cover alone is particularly a time capsule for what the early 90s considered to be cool. Leather jackets and sunglasses, skateboards... the list goes on and on.
, the pyramid area