 |
This was a real trip down memory lane for me, you know. Harkening back eight years or so, I was a young joystick juggler, wet behind the ears (as it were). “C+VG” was the magazine to read, Sega's Megadrive had just been released for £180 or so with a copy of Altered Beast. New games were £40, an expensive Speccy game was £15 and Star Trek: The Next Generation had just started airing across the pond in the US. And my Dad “found” a copy of a fifth season two-part story at the BBC with Spock in it… but anyway, another thing that was big was Chuckie Egg. It was big in Post Production at the BBC in Bristol on their (guess what) BBC Micro between edits in the same way that Quake and Team Fortress are now, and just as big at home on our all-singing, all-dancing BBC Micro with (brace yourself) 5 1/4 inch floppy drive!
|
|
On one of my three compilation game disks (I'm not sure how legal it was to be honest) was a certain classic I played time and time again. Space Invaders. Great little game. But there was also Chuckie Egg: loading faster than a snail hiking through treacle on a hot day (like tapes) it was a sure-fire hit. It was a simple enough idea: you, a podgy little yellow bloke with a wide-brimmed hat, ran around eight single-screen levels populated by ladders, platforms, lifts, blue birds (ducks? ostriches? geese? or maybe the hens of the hen house?), eggs and grain. Avoid the birds, get all the eggs and you finish the level. Get the grain to temporarily slow the time limit and bonus from counting down, or leave it to distract the birds. Touch a bird and you die. Fall off the edge of the screen and you die. Get crushed into the top of the screen by a well-meaning lift and you die. Run out of time and you die. It's a harsh world, but should you best the eight levels you get to do them again with the Big Yellow Homing Bird released from his cage chasing you down. Do them again and you repeat but with more blue birds. Why is your little bloke doing it? I never found out; I guess we all assumed he needed the eggs to make a huge omelette to impress his girlfriend or something.
|
 |
 |
The beauty of this game lay in its cunningly-designed levels and suitably nasty bird AI. Would it go down that ladder? Would it suddenly turn round and come right back at you? Could you nip in, get the eggs and get out before the bird got back? It was edge-of-your-pants stuff as you tried to outwit the blue guardians around the fiendishly-designed collection of lifts, platforms and ladders, leaping from lift to ladder, scurrying up to the next platform, collecting some goodies, leaping to the next section, navigating a number of small ledges before escaping by lift to the other side of the screen, blue bird beak carving the air behind you. It's all a bit like Indiana Jones on an archaeological escapade, hat included.
|
 |
And here it is on the Speccy, eggs, birds, bloke in hat and all. How does it fair on our favourite computer? Well, it's a bit of a mixed bag. A cheery tune greets you every time the game loads, choose start and away you go. The levels are all intact, the sound FX are a little more... er... humourous than I remember but OK and the graphics are nicely colourful. There’s some serious flicker when navigating ladders, but as you're always rushing around it isn’t really a problem. To be honest, there's just one serious problem, and it's been enough to bring other games to their knees: the controls.
|
|
When I first played it, I found them pretty difficult to use effectively. My Dad, who reckons Chuckie Egg to be the best game ever, was thoroughly disgusted as he walked off lifts to his death while trying to jump and I kept missing ladders I meant to climb. Frustration mounted as I ran around the bottom of ladders, trying desperately to grab a rug and climb to safety. Steam came out of my ears as the yellow bloke slid down ladders when I performed the same move that leapt him across platforms with ease. However, as we both persevered the game's old magic began to shine through once more and it wasn't long before the sounds of the yellow adventurer running through level after level filled the lounge once again. Once we became accustomed to the collision detection and key sensitivity, it all became a lot more fun; it took a while, but was ultimately worth it. Sure, there are still times when it doesn't come together despite the fact that the keys are pressed exactly as they were when it worked before, but such situations are rarely lethal.
|
 |
 |
The effect still remains to some degree though: you never fully trust the controls. Yes, it's still fun, but you never quite relax into it; you always remain on edge, watching for it to try and pull one over on you so you can try and recover it. For a game to be truly enjoyable, you need to feel comfortable with it, that although the enemies are out to get you, the game itself is gunning for you. Chuckie Egg is rather more like one of those trenchcoated guys from The X-Files: sometimes it seems to be working for you, other times it turns and shoots you in the back. And that pulls a classic down to just being pretty good.
|
Chuckie Egg - A&F Software - 1983
