Chuckie Egg

aka: Dragon Chuckie Egg, Eggy Kong
Moby ID: 16344
ZX Spectrum Specs
Conversion (official) Conversion (unofficial)

Description official descriptions

In the game you play Hen House Harry who has to collect 12 (a dozen) eggs from each level, while avoiding the ducklings. The levels each occupy a single screen, and are made up of platforms, ladders and lifts (or elevators), and are thus similar to those in classic platform game Donkey Kong. Corn can also be collected, which stops the time limit from ticking down and also stops the bonus, collected when the level is completed, from decreasing. The ducklings also eat the corn, however.

There are only 8 distinct levels. The ninth level is a copy of level 1, the tenth is a copy of level 2, and so on. However, on the second time around the ducklings that can use the platforms and ladders are replaced by the Mother Duck, who can fly around the level going through the platforms and ladders. On the third time around, you have to face both the Mother Duck and the ducklings, and similarly on subsequent goes round, when there are more ducklings.

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (ZX Spectrum version)

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 76% (based on 14 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 37 ratings with 1 reviews)

Chuckie Egg- in green!

The Good
Chuckie Egg was one of those games everyone had, everyone liked and nobody had a bad word to say about, but nobody got excited about.It stood out at the time as a whimsical game, at a time when most machine's catalogues consisted of text adventures, pac man clones and space battle shoot 'em ups that bore an uncanny resemblance to well known arcade classics. The Dragon version of Chuckie Egg is pretty much as you would expect- with a green background and the usual red-blue-yellow color suite. The game play is among the best of the various versions, a strong feature of a game that varies in difficulty between ludicrously hard and mind numbingly easy depending on which platform you are on. In this case the pitch is about right, and if you like the game it is worth checking out the Dragon version.

The Bad
Considering that they later produced a remarkably complex second game, Screaming Abdabs, which was a sort of souped up 35 screen Jet Set Willy clone, Chuckie Egg does not really push the boundaries in terms of levels of inventiveness or depth. Its sound does not really match that of games just a year or two later, although for its time it was about par for the era. Mind you that era was full of early games shunted over from the 16 k TRS-80 CoCo, most of which were underwhelming in the sound department to say the least. The machine could do so much more.

The Bottom Line
Basically what you expect- a great whimsical game of its time on the machine, but without the depth of later releases.

Dragon 32/64 · by drmarkb (105) · 2020

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Chuckie Egg appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Back cover

The Pick & Choose release of Chuckie Egg has the same wording on the back of the cassette as their release of Chuckie Egg II. This includes the line "this eggscellent game is guaranteed to be salmonella-free" in reference to a contamination scandal involving UK eggs in 1988, for which the country's Junior Health Minister Edwina Currie was ultimately forced to resign.

Cancelled sequel

Before leaving A'n'F to join Ocean, Nigel Alderton was working on a sequel, Chuckie Apple. This was never coded, however the design was completed, and has been made available on the Bagshot Row fansite (see Links & Searches). An informal competition to get someone to code the game has also been launched - perhaps one day Chuckie Apple will take its place in MobyGames as a completed work.

Development

Chuckie Egg was made in the school summer holidays when developer Nigel Alderton was about sixteen or seventeen years old. After two months of development, he took a one-level pre-release version to A&F Software, who released it in 1983.

Awards

  • Retro Gamer
    • October 2004 (Issue #9) – #28 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
    • Issue #37 - #8 in the "Top 25 Platformers of All Time" poll

Information also contributed by PCGamer77, piltdown man, Sciere and FatherJack

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Related Sites +

  • The Chuckie Egg Professional's Resource Kit
    A hugely informative archive detailing all known releases, the history of Chuckie Egg, polls, forums, gameplay tips, adverts, reviews, pokes, hacks & upgrades, retro remakes, interviews with CE coders and more ...
  • The Chuckie Egg Site
    Info and downloads for the original versions as well as Mike Elson's faithful Windows port of the BBC version
  • Wikipedia
    Wikipedia entry.
  • World of Spectrum
    Archive files / Download and play links / Additional material / Remakes / Player reviews / Magazine references / Magazine adverts

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 16344
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Silverfish.

DOS added by Dalroi. BBC Micro, J2ME added by Sciere. Tatung Einstein, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit, Dragon 32/64, Electron, Android added by Kabushi. Amiga, Atari ST, ZX Spectrum added by Martin Smith. MSX added by koffiepad.

Additional contributors: Martin Smith, Jack Lightbeard, samwise, formercontrib, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, ZeTomes.

Game added January 23, 2005. Last modified March 8, 2024.