[typing]
Well here's something I never thought I'd be reviewing:
"Chip's Challenge 2," the official sequel to "Chip's Challenge."
The original was first released for the Atari Lynx in 1989
but eventually saw increased popularity due to its inclusion
in the "Microsoft Windows Entertainment Pack" in 1992.
If you'd like to know more about those, then I've got a full review video,
so just look at those at another time and let's move on right now.
Chuck Sommerville, the developer of "Chip's Challenge,"
had pretty much finished developing this sequel back in 1991.
But there was a problem.
The publisher, Epyx, had gone bankrupt.
Many of their assets were sold to a Christian media group, Bridgestone Multimedia,
and they were not interested in bringing the new game to market.
Sommerville tried to release it on his own,
but Bridgestone would only continue to negotiate if he handed over a large undisclosed sum of cash up front.
He wasn't able to afford this,
further attempts to renegotiate the rights went ignored for years,
and the game was forgotten.
In the meantime, he developed and released "Chuck's Challenge," which I also reviewed in the past,
but it was more of a stand-in for "Chip's Challenge 2" rather than a true sequel.
Finally in April of 2015, it was announced that the rights to "Chip's Challenge"
had been granted to his company, Niffler, Ltd.,
and the sequel was released on Steam on May 28.
Has it been worth the decades-long wait?
Well, yes and no as that depends on how hardcore a "Chip's Challenge" fan you are.
Personally, I was psyched to finally be able to play this thing that was long considered vaporware,
if only for the curiosity factor.
But as with so many things that languish for such a long time,
it's normal to be a bit disappointed in the result.
"Chip's Challenge 2" is a game that acts like it just emerged from a 25-year coma,
not stopping to consider what decade it's in.
As a result, it looks and plays just like a game from 1991,
complete with MIDI quality music
and low-res graphics that can't be upscaled to modern resolutions.
Now I think that I prefer it this way, myself,
in the sense that in such an unusual case, I want the original artistic intent to be preserved.
But being that it's being released as a new game on Steam in 2015
with a price tag putting it in the territory of far beefier games,
it's not going to be an easy sell to everyone.
That said, it really is a proper, enjoyably tricky sequel to the original game from 1989.
For starters, the look and feel of the game is highly familiar,
falling somewhere between the Atari Lynx version
and the Windows 3.1 game, in terms of aesthetics.
I can easily see this being exactly how Chuck Sommerville originally envisioned the game back in '91,
and it's just cool to be able to see this finally step out of the shadows.
But it's a bit of a letdown that it's such a bare-bones program with only the most basic of options,
and certainly nothing like the ability to play at a scaled-up widescreen resolution.
The game window is restricted to the same play area as it was originally, which is fine, I suppose,
but it would be nice to at least have the option for some art around the edges instead of just black space,
or even just to be able to play the game in fullscreen.
And even though it's a Steam game, you can't use the Steam overlay,
and achievements are an old school pop-up dialog window straight out of Windows 95.
[laughs] Okay. Actually, I kinda dig that, so whatever.
The graphic styles and designs of the levels are all awesome, though,
and there are 79 additional features to play with,
consisting of new game elements, abilities and monsters.
In some levels, you can even play as Chip's companion from the first game, Melinda the Mental Marvel.
She not only looks different but can access certain areas that Chip cannot
and has different strengths and weaknesses.
But even with all the new textures and logic, the basic gameplay remains.
It's a top-down, tile-based logic puzzle game with a timer and a goal for each level.
There are a number of chips to collect, which are often in plain sight,
but grabbing them quickly enough is another story.
200 hundred of these levels await you this time,
created by a number of talented designers,
but the goal is always to reach the swirly exit tile by way of logical object manipulation.
The new items, tiles and enemies make for some new absolute mind-benders,
with things like dynamite, railroad tracks, electric wires, logic gates and bandits.
But again, it really is just more "Chip's Challenge" with very little in the way of evoluton.
If anything, it feels like an iterative expansion pack, and there's nothing wrong with that, I guess,
it's just that I feel that it could also have done a bit more to appeal to gamers of 2015,
instead of just those of us from the early-'90s who never got their fix.
For instance, "Chuck's Challenge 3D" included a rewind feature that made playing with game logic a breeze,
but no such feature is on offer here.
Again, I can understand keeping the original game's integrity in tact,
but I also would just like to enjoy this with some new optional features
to get past the parts that didn't age so well.
It does let you skip levels at will, but sometimes I'd rather just retry from a certain part
than punk out on the entire thing.
Ah, well. It's is what it is.
And what it is is a game for a niche audience of "Chip's Challenge" fans and retro puzzle gamers.
The fact that it is now purchasable at all is a serious accomplishment and I'm seriously happy to see it!
I'm not so happy about the bare-bones nature of it, being a 2015 release and all, but
I can also excuse it in a special case like this.
I'm also not so keen on the level editor being an extra piece of $3.00 DLC.
Ugh! I could have don't without THAT bit of modern gaming business practice.
But if you buy it in the pack alongside the original game on Steam,
you get everything for five bucks at the moment, so it's no big deal.
If you've been curious about the sequel, or have never even tried the original,
it's worth giving "Chip's Challenge 2" a look.
But just go into it expecting a game from over twenty years ago,
and the tappings, or lack thereof, that come with such a thing.
[ragtime piano]
And it you enjoyed this video,
then perhaps you would like to watch my reviews on "Chip's Challenge 1" for the Lynx and Windows 3.1,
as well as my review of "Chuck's Challenge 3D."
As you could see, I quite enjoy these games.
So, uh, yeah. There's coverage, if you'd like to see it.
And you can also subscribe to the channel to be notified whenever there's more stuff,
which happens every Monday and Friday.
There's also Twitter and Facebook and Patreon, if you'd like to do some extra things,
social and monetarily-wise... if that's–
Is that a phrase? I dunno, I just said it.
And as always, thank you very much for watching.