Chuckie Egg 2

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Chuckie Egg 2
Loading screen of the ZX Spectrum version.
Developer(s) A&F Software
Publisher(s) A&F Software
Pick & Choose
Designer(s) Pete Waterfield
Sean Townsend
A'n'F R&D Team15
Platform(s) ZX Spectrum
Commodore 64
Amstrad CPC
Atari ST
Amiga
Release date 1985
Genre(s) Arcade game, Adventure game
Mode(s) Single player
Rating(s) Crash 81%
Sinclair User 3/5
Your Spctrum Hit, Hit, Miss 14
CPC Zone 7/10 13
Input methods Joystick or keyboard

Chuckie Egg 2 is the sequel to 1983 hit computer game Chuckie Egg. Released in 1985 and featuring the same lead character, Henhouse Harry, the game took players beyond the single-screen format of the original into a large, explorable factory. Here, Harry had to assemble a toy-carrying chocolate egg from its constituent parts (sugar, milk and cocoa powder) and deliver it to the dispatch lorry. On completion the quest restarted, with more monsters and an alternative toy.

Contents

[edit] History

Chuckie Egg had been a slow but consistent earner for its publishing house, A'n'F. With quoted sales of over a million copies on a variety of 8-bit platforms,1 a sequel was inevitable. Nigel Alderton, the author of the original Chuckie Egg, had been working on a Mr. Do!-style follow up that never came to fruition.2 With Alderton's move to Ocean Software, A'n'F took development in a different direction.

To aid in their publicity, A'n'F organised a Chuckie Egg 2 competition, pitting contestants against each other in regional heats and a national final. Crash, a gaming magazine popular at the time, was tasked with adjudication.3 Prizes included silver and gold egglets and up to £500 cash. The winner of this contest is unknown.

Chuckie Egg 2 seems influenced by a number of ZX Spectrum games available at the time, most notably Atic Atac (late 1983) and Sabre Wulf (1984). Both of these feature wide roaming in a large environment, and Chuckie Egg 2 can be viewed as an attempt to bring the "Chuckie" franchise to these more modern, immersive styles of game.

[edit] Description

(Description follows the ZX Spectrum format of the game, but differences from other versions are slight)

After a loading screen depicting the A'n'F logo, the game title and a cracked egg between sheaves of corn, the game opens with an explanatory scrawl:

Harry has to make a giant egg, to do this he must collect from around the fun factory, cocoa, milk and sugar. Eight of each of these must be dropped into the correct vat.
To add to the confusion each egg must contain a toy kit. The eight parts of this can also be found in the factory. These are cyan and must be dropped in the toy maker.
Once you have completed an egg you must take it to dispatch. You will then be able to start on the next egg, but this time you will have more monsters to contend with...!!!
You may use a joystick or if you prefer you can define your own keys for playing with.

Page two continues:

The game contains a save option which can be used at any time, you will be able to select your own key for this purpose.
The game is designed to be an arcade/adventure in the true sense. So remember that you will find items that can be moved from place to place and then used to get out of tricky situations.
A couple of hints, you find most factories need power to work. You only have two hands for carrying things unless...! Some pipes are more slippery than others.
Don't forget to enter the competition. Have fun.....

Henhouse Harry....

The next screen displays a high score table, which at the start of the game displays only the name "A&F" and all zeroes. Players have the option to play the game, redefine keys, load a saved game or save the high-score table.

As the game begins, Harry is deposited by truck next to a sign warning him to beware of the dog. A crescent moon shines above and a bird flaps across the sky. From here Harry moves through 120 screens arranged in a 10x12 grid, one at a time. Harry's entrance screen occupies the top-most left corner of this grid making much of the factory underground. Screens are populated by a variety of characters including alligators, spiders, birds, bubbles and hoovers, most of whom kill Harry on touch although some simply repel him. Unlike in Chuckie Egg, Harry is also killed by a long fall. The game begins with five lives, and the successful completion of each commodity (eight each of milk, cocoa, etc. dropped into the vat) results in a bonus life being awarded.

The game is further divided into thematic sections. Milk is collected in an ice zone, cocoa in a purple zone in which most enemies are monkeys, sugar in an industrial blue zone and the toy in a brick zone that bears the most resemblance to the original game. The egg maker, which needs all ingredients and the toy to function, is located in a zone infamous for allowing Harry to fall to his death through the "slippery" pipes.

Several tranisitional zones exist between these task-centred areas, and due to the game's non-linear layout a number of these can be bypassed in any successful completion.4

After delivery of the completed egg, the game restarts. Extra monsters are now present, most notably in the two additional aligators in one of the first screens, but the game remained essentially identical. In a further twist, different toys are constructed in each of the first four iterations of the game. These are: a motorbike, a vintage car, a yacht, a space shuttle.5

Scoring is somewhat random in character. Players receive points for moving to a new screen for the first time, as well as for picking up (by moving over them) various objects including fruit, tools and eggs. The scoring received for these objects is inconsistent both between screens and each time the game is played.

A short video of Chuckie Egg 2 gameplay is available on YouTube. A full RZX format play-through of the game, running in excess of six hours, is available for download here.

The first "action" screen of the game
The first "action" screen of the game

[edit] Platforms and availability

Chuckie Egg 2 was originally released on cassette by A'n'F Software (or subsidiaries) for the Amstrad CPC, Sinclair ZX Spectrum (where it is sometimes referred to by its subtitle "Choccy Egg") and the Commodore 64 priced between GBP£6.90 and GBP£7.95.6

It was later bundled on a Virgin Group Now Games 2 compilation along with Airwolf, Cauldron, Tir Na Nog and World Cup.7

It was ported around 1988/89 to the Amiga and the Atari ST.8

Chuckie Egg 2 is now available on several emulation platforms, including all those on which it was originally published.9

[edit] Reception

Chuckie Egg 2 is often remembered as existing in the long shadow of its predecessor. Reviews at the time of its release were lukewarm.

In its Issue 24 "Lookback at 1985", Crash magazine noted:

A & F were also back with a follow up trying to recapture the enigmatic success of Chuckie Egg with the appropriately named Chuckie Egg 2. In addictive terms it wasn't a patch on the first game, but it did offer numerous platform leaping locations and plenty of adventure elements to keep fans happy for some hours.10

This was despite rating the game at 81%, one percent higher than the original Chuckie Egg.11

Sinclair User Issue 39 added:

There is little or nothing original about the program, which relies heavily on all the old conventions of the genre, although to be fair A&F can lay some claim to having established a few of those conventions themselves. The graphics are lurid and not of the best detail, but have that special Chuckie Egg quality all the same. An improvement is the abolition of the requirement to complete each screen before proceeding further. That is no longer necessary, and the resulting maze of exits and entrances to different screens is one of the more complex we have seen.12

CPC Zone concludes:

While Chuckie Egg 2 is not quite as gripping nor as addictive as the first game it is worth checking out if you are a JSW [Jet Set Willy] fan.13

[edit] Innovations and legacy

Chuckie Egg had popularised platform games, but Chuckie Egg 2 introduced gamers to several innovations that even modern games struggle to achieve. Amongst these are:

  • Cross-screen play - Harry was required to complete tasks over several screens, and actions in one screen affected events in another. Commodities had to be picked up and carried some distance to each vat and switching on the generator causes the egg mixer, many screens away, to create the egg. Harry must then make his way there to pick it up and take it to dispatch.
  • Multiple enemy types - unlike its predecessor, Chuckie Egg 2 was filled with enemies of many different sizes, shapes and speeds of movement. Enemies of the same design even interacted with Harry differently on different screens (some hands killed, others repelled).
  • Huge play area - Chuckie Egg's original eight repeated screens were vastly expanded in this sequel. Manic Miner had only 20 screens and Jet Set Willy 60. The original 1983 Lode Runner, however, boasted 150 screens and the 1984 Sabre Wulf 256.
  • Multiple entrances/exits - several screens allowed Harry a choice of exits. Short cuts were also available to allow seasoned players to skip whole sections and progress more quickly.
  • Non-linear play - Gamers could choose the order in which to complete the tasks of the game. There was no set order to the milk, cocoa, sugar and toy collection and players were therefore free to pick their own routes through each zone. The inclusion of baskets that allowed Harry to carry multiple items (but reduced his jumping ability) added a strategic aspect to the game.
  • Transitional and hub zones - Due to the non-linear play, some areas of the game existed with no immediate goal. These areas allowed players to roam and facilitated the choice of paths available.
  • Free roaming - several of the above innovations allowed the game to be completely open. Few screens were "cut off" by completion, and areas could be revisited multiple times.
  • Infinite play with different goals - Chuckie Egg 2 did not end on completion but restarted. Though differences were small (more monsters, a different toy) the game had potentially limitless replay appeal.
  • Save game feature - gamers were able to save their progress in-game, and also save their high-score table (a feature leveraged by the original high-score competition publicised with release).

Many of these innovations were given very early exposure through Chuckie Egg 2, and have gone on to be refined and updated in the later games of the Mario series, Spyro the Dragon, Tomb Raider and the popular freeware game Knytt, among many others. The Dizzy series is often cited as a direct descendant of Chuckie Egg 2's pickup-run-jump-drop-repeat game style.

[edit] Useful Links

[edit] References

1 The Chuckie Egg Professionals Resource Kit, History
2 The Chuckie Egg Professionals Resource Kit, Sequel
3 Crash, Issue 15, Issues 15
4 Speccy Screenshot Maps Map
5 The Chuckie Egg Professionals Resource Kit, Chuckie Egg 2
6 Your Spectrum 16, Review
7 Retro Scene, Now Games 2
8 Hall of Light, Chuckie Egg II
9 The Chuckie Egg Professionals Resource Kit, Home, see links bottom left
10 Crash, Issue 24, Lookback at 1985
11 Crash, Issue 17, Reviews
12 Sinclair User, Issue 39, Review
13 CPC Zone, Game Reviews
14 Chuckie Egg 2: Choccy Egg (Sinclair ZX Spectrum) (1985) YouTube video
15 The Chuckie Egg Professionals Resource Kit, Authors