Chip's Challenge 1

Depending on how long you’ve been gaming (or alive for that matter), you might remember Chip’s Challenge, a puzzle game that originated way back in 1989 on the Atari Lynx and was ported to multiple computers such as Windows, MS-DOS, Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, and Commodore 64.  If you grew up on computer games back then, there’s a good chance you’ve played this one.  Well, twenty-six years later Chip’s Challenge has been re-released via Steam, so it’s time to see if the game has held up all through all these years.

If you’ve never played Chip’s Challenge, the goal is to basically navigate each stage while getting to the goal and, possibly, collecting chips and various items along the way.  A lot of the time you’ll have to gather a certain number of chips before you can clear the barrier blocking the goal, but not always.  Sometimes there will be no chips to collect at all and you just have to reach the goal, sometimes there will be more chips than the number required (you only have to collect the number required to clear the barrier), and you might not even have to collect any chips at all despite them lying around the stage and having a counter that shows how many more to collect (that honestly threw me for a loop the first time that happened).

However, the stages aren’t as simple as just getting the chips and getting out.  Most stages have multiple enemies to avoid and the occasional trap to get past, such as water, ice, fire, and conveyer belts.  To help navigate these traps you’ll occasionally find various types of footware to help you pass such as ice skates so you don’t slip on ice or flippers to swim in the water.  There are also keys to pick up to unlock various doors and sometimes you have to figure out what order to collect everything in or else you might wind up stuck and having to start the stage over.

A lot of the stages in Chip’s Challenge have a puzzle-like element to them.  Like I just said it can be a matter of having some of the pieces right in front of you but you’ll have to collect them in the proper order or you’ll find yourself stuck and restarting the puzzle.  Other times the stages are very straight forward and you just have to dodge some enemies to get to the goal.  If you’re ever really stumped on a stage you can simply skip to the next one.  This has its benefits, mainly allowing you to go to any stage you wish.  If you’re like me and like the feeling of accomplishment from finally finish a tough stage, just don’t skip the stages.  If you want to have them all opened up so you can work on any stage at any time, just hold down the F5 key for about ten seconds and you’re set.

Graphically the Steam version is okay, and I say that because outside of the character sprite the game looks pretty much the same as it did back on Windows 95.  Chip’s sprite actually has animation this time around as well as the green conveyer belts, but the rest of the sprites look nearly identical to their Windows 95 counterparts.  The game itself even works nearly identical once you start with stage navigation being done with WASD and having your standard Windows program menus.  In terms of music and sound, by default it’s kind of irritating.  You can control the volume level of both but if you have them both turned up to around the same level, the music actually fades most of the way out whenever you collect an item, then gradually turns back up.  That being said I tend to keep the sound effects completely off, but kind of like twenty six years ago the game just loops a couple different generic-sounding tracks over and over again.

There’s not really much more to say about Chip’s Challenge.  Back at the very start of this review I asked if the game still held up twenty-six years later, and it does…to an extent.  In terms of gameplay it’s the same Chip’s Challenge you played all those years ago whether it via Windows 95, the ZX Spectrum, or even the first version on the Atari Lynx, and I enjoyed that.  However, it would have been nice to see something of an upgrade in the graphics department.  I’m not saying to make it first person in full 3D (though that would be awesome), but to bump up the graphics a bit.  I don’t typically complain about graphics in my review, I feel that the gameplay is more important, but it just looks like not much has been improved.  However, the fact that the game is only two dollars on Steam I can look past that.

Overall, Chip’s Challenge is a fun game and a nice throwback to the 90s.  For two dollars you’re getting around one-hundred fifty stages of enemies, traps, and obstacles to overcome, some of which are really simple, some more complex.  If you already have a working copy of the game on your PC and don’t care about Steam achievements or some slight animation upgrades, you’re not really missing out on anything by skipping this one.  However, considering for a total of five dollars you can get Chip’s Challenge 1 and 2, plus a stage editor for 2, and considering that the latter two have never been released before now, five dollars for essentially three games is a pretty good deal.