It was hard having a Dragon 32 in 1983. Although it had seemed like a good idea to buy one the previous Christmas, the lack of sales led to a small number of software companies bothering to write games for it. Other than Microdeal, who must have been either clinically insane to only develop games for it, or seriously minting it in a competition-free market.

”My babies! I had to sit through half of Gravity’s Rainbow
to lay that fucker!”

For some reason though, A&F Software must have seen a gap in the market, and a chance to make a tidy profit from its key title of the time, Chuckie Egg. Far more famous for being a huge hit on the BBC and the all-conquering Spectrum, it got released in all its chicken-and-egg advertising glory for my beloved Dragon very soon after. Available for the meagre sum of £6.50 (so already £1.50 cheaper than Cuthbert In The Jungle) it was the crack cocaine of the platforming world.

Eight levels might not seem very many, given that Manic Miner managed 20, but that isn’t the point here. Chickens (or emus or whatever) are the point, and indeed the problem. Every run through those increasingly familiar 8 Levels sees a slight variation of the foes you face. Some people had enough trouble with the elevators, never mind the possibility of a huge great bird chasing you around the screen, oddly unhindered by the platforms and ladders. Never mind the sheer lunacy of trying to dodge both kinds of enemy at the same time, in greater and greater numbers…

Aaaagh. The green, the green!

Frenetic is probably a good way to describe the gameplay. This ain’t no graphical delight, but it is fast, and very zoneish. Hours would pass as I battled round the levels, and I always ended up with a blister on my thumb from pressing the space-bar too much.

Chuckie Egg 2 never made it to the Dragon 32, but I do remember the Atari ST version being totally unplayable because some fool had decided that a nice, gameplay-obscuring graphical backdrop would be a good feature.

Chuckie Egg is fast, tightly designed and will do damage to you if played for too long. But I love it all the same.

ELY, October 2004.

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