I loved Kid Chameleon, it was indeed incredibly hard and I never managed to beat it back in the day either. You're right that it doesn't get enough love and to be honest it could probably benefit from a current-gen remake; the whole concept is pretty awesome.
There used to be a Sonic comicbook here in the UK (imaginatively called Sonic the Comic) and they ran a Kid Chameleon strip for a while. Was a very cool take on a game that had very little storyline.