Chuckie Egg II  (Amiga)

This is IT !! Don't be fooled by the "look" of the main hero. This is one of the titles closest to the answer to the proposition, "What is the most difficult game?", and there is no difficulty setting. Therefore, all the people who pick up this at the store face this difficulty equally. And, the level of "difficulty" is tremendously endless, and it is so intense that you may fall backward. It could call you a "superhuman" just by being able to do the "minimum" of simply completing the game you bought. I will give you an introduction to the game that make me think so.

Is this a rip-off? Background of this game's birth:

You can't understand nature of that soon by my "bla bla bla" talk! First of all, take a look at this.



In 1983, "Manic Miner" and "Chuckie Egg" were two of the most popular platform games on ZX Spectrum at the time.
The side-view action games of this era were predominantly single-screen, item-collecting style games.
In particular, "Chuckie Egg" had a very simple gameplay style without even the "reaching for the goal" element of "Manic Miner".

The year 1984 came and went, and so did the era of "Jet Set Willy".
"Jet Set Willy" was a more magnificent and more flexible action game where you collect all the items scattered on a vast map with dozens of screens.
Other companies followed suit with "Jet Set Willy" type games, and "Chuckie Egg2" was one of these titles.
However, "Chuckie Egg 2" is a game that is far more dense than "Jet Set Willy".
There are two types of items: scoring items that can be picked up just by overlapping them (no obligation to collect them),
and essential items that can be picked up or placed with a specific button.
The stress of carrying latter items on maps full of danger can be a heavy burden.
(If you die while carrying it, the item is lost. All your hard work will be for naught.

The objective of the game is to make chocolate eggs and transport them to the final logistics.
For those of us who aren't familiar with candy, it would be hard to understand what this means.
It means that the toy is inside the outer shell of a chocolate egg (consisting of milk, cocoa and sugar).
It reminds me of the "Choco Egg", a Japanese design award-winning product sold in 1999 by a manufacturer.
I'm only a game nerd, and I don't know anything about candy.
I don't have any imaginations about whether "Chocolate Egg" is a rip-off or not, or whether the person in charge of the development has suffered from "Chuckie Egg2" in the past, though!
Anyway since the Spectrum version of "Chuckie Egg2" was released in 1985, this type of candy must have already existed in foreign countries before this.

Such "Chuckie Egg2" changed its atmosphere of only the main hero and the box art without changing the game content. Do you remember "Dizzy," which was a big hit in 1986? It was a game to control a character with limbs on egg. It would be unnatural to assume that Chuckie Egg series' makeover was not affected by it (chronologically). On the other hand, it should not be overlooked that before the Amiga version of Treasure Island Dizzy, the sequel to Dizzy, was released, the Chuckie Egg series of action games in which you control a character with limbs on egg was released on the Amiga. The original Dizzy, which was the first game where you controlled characters with arms and legs on eggs, was very similar to the Chuckie Egg 2 system, though! It could be said that the style of the later titles in Dizzy series was simply to ease the difficulty of games by allowing players to have more than one item at a time and using an HP meter, with the addition of a conversation element.

(Many of Dizzy's original releases on the Amiga.)

Even though it can say Amiga's games run on "CD32" console, the ABD of this game is "Lv.4". In other words, there is no choice but using WHDLoad. However, in the case of "Analogic FDD" which realizes "CD32+FDD" at the lowest cost, the means in Chip RAM (strictly about 1.8MB) is extremely limited. Even if you make a disk image with DIC, when you run WHDload, "Seek error" occurs. Looking at the contents of the product on Workbench, it seems to have a strange specification. Apparently, the slave for this game requires a complete ADF file (880KB). Create it with DiskWiz and use it under the name "Disk.1." ...And return to the shortage of RAM.  We want to "compress/decompress" when storing "Disk.1" together with slave and WHDLoad in one floppy disk, but when we execute WHDLoad through that process, we get an error of insufficient memory. To avoid this, create "Disk.1" with Diskwiz etc. every time you start it. It seems that this is the only way to load the game successfully. The first title screen blinks for a while, but when it stops blinking, the rest is normal. Whew... I'm tired before the game starts.

Especially the difference in the behavior of the main hero must have felt strange to the original ZX Spectrum users.
In the original Spectrum version, the main hero jumped in an arc slowly in the air, but in the Amiga version, he jumped in a high speed and you will feel more gravity.
This difference affects the difficulty when jumping over the enemies.
You will feel harder when you try to jump while holding down the directional key towards an enemy.

Furthermore, there are more traps and enemies than ZX Spectrum version.
However, this is only because the first round of the Amiga version is a higher-order round-compliant port of ZX Spectrum version.
(It's a more numerous placement than the fourth round of ZX Spectrum version, though!)
As we'll find out later, the Amiga version doesn't end there, even some part of terrain has been nastily remade.

Also, the main hero was changed from a human shape to an egg shape, and even the size of his collision detection has increased (horizontally).
It's a specification that you can't grab ladders and ropes with just the UP and DOWN keys if he is off by even 1 dot.
As a countermeasure you can immediately do, for example, jump sideways toward the target and immediately hold down your D-pad "Up" or "Down",
or walk toward the target while holding down your D-pad "Up" or "Down".
However, the aforementioned "countermeasures" are more likely to fail (for example, when it delays in inputting them at a moment's notice)
because the main hero's width and collision detection are much wider and more easily bounced off the edge of a platform and walls than in the original ZX Spectrum version.

On the other hand, grabbing a ladder or rope absolutely requires that you press your D-pad "Up" or "Down" when your character's centerline overlaps the target's centerline,
so there's no benefit to having the main hero (horizontally) fatten up in any way.

Therefore, even crossing the kennel and going indoors becomes a struggle. That is like "just going inside the castle" if we compare with NES version of "Dragon's Lair", though!
That makes us think about what percentage of this suffering is in the entire game. And that's human nature.
Let's read the description on the back of the product's outer box, shall we?



Yeah, I don't care, I don't care! (Lol)

At last we're indoors (the room with the * in the diagram above). On the floor is a quick death trap. Inevitably, you have to go grabbing rope. In this game, if you fall from a certain height, you will die. Due to the various specifications aforementioned, I feel that the judgement of falling death is more strict than ZX Spectrum version ...after you witness a death from a height difference that didn't bother you too much in ZX Spectrum version! If you are distracted by the items in the air, if you are distracted by an enemy and delay pressing your D-pad "Up" or "Down" for even a moment, you will not be able to hold the rope and you will fall to your death. ...All things being equal, this is the way it goes. Nevertheless, this area is still in the early levels of the game, so it's still easier.

It says if the number of tries (default setting "6") runs out, the title screen appears = it ends everything, we feel it's a joke, don't we!?
The vague end goal of "making and transporting chocolate eggs" flickers in my mind.   The world of 120 screens...
All we can think about is how anxious we are getting.   Where to go and what to do controlling this super lethal main hero.
We want to draw the big picture in my mind for completing this game.
This is the first thing that anyone who challenges a tough game has to have in mind.
In this website, I have divided all 120 screens into more than 10 areas based on the color of the background and terrain.



Yes, here's a recap (even for those of you who know the original ZX Spectrum version).
I'm going to chart the process for completing "Chuckie Egg 2", which is what you should do in this 120-screen world.



With above in mind, we face the Amiga version.
First of all, what we stumble upon is the "Amiga version's malicious terrain".

The third screen in Milk area. The image on the left shows the moment you enter this screen. Notice the bottom edge of the ladder in the center.   In the original ZX Spectrum version, the ladder penetrates through that platform, so you could climb this ladder from the bottom of the screen. In this Amiga version, if you placed the main hero under the ladder and jump, the main hero will only hit his head on the platform above. In the Amiga version, it's also impossible to jump over an enemy at the bottom of the ladder, and it means this is a one-way street from the right side of the screen to the left! In other words, what was obviously possible in ZX Spectrum version, which come here from Indoors area and collect Milk, is impossible in Amiga version.

Anyway, in the Amiga version, Milk area is impossible to capture and pass through
until you turn on the Generator in the cavern and the mobile and descending floors become functional.
Inevitably, you'll be forced to go through a large detour via Machine rooms (vertical hole) to get to areas below.

You may have a bad feeling when you saw "A" in the screenshot, but of course, there are "B", "C" and "D" in this game.
I call them "Evil spirits that live in Amiga version's MAP" in this website.

There are plenty of Amiga version-specific difficult spots, but these "Evil spirits", as I call them, will send you into the depths of despair time and time again.
More importantly, they can severely diminish a player's enthusiasm for the challenge, even though they themselves are not difficult spots.
As a result, the player is forced to take a completely different strategy than the original ZX Spectrum version.
How to deal with the rest of "Evil spirits"... have you been able to overcome them?

Just as we headed Machine rooms after despair of Milk area, we will come across this spot. The image above is the moment of death. It's not all about what you can see, that's for sure.　 For this "Evil spirit", "Break free from the stereotype".

The image above shows the moment you switch screens. The vacuum cleaner, which will kill you instantly if you touch it, will move to the right from this position.  If you can't deal with this "Evil spirit", you won't be able to escape from Sugar area after you put all Suger.

The thickness of the main hero is different, so you won't be able to refer the same strategy as ZX Spectrum version. The left jump from the platform at the bottom right does not reach the next platform. The blue spikes at the bottom of the screen, the pink device, and the bubbles blowing up from it are all instant death traps.

About ZX Spectrum version: