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Chip is willing to do anything for Melinda the Mental Marvel, more than anything, because he wants to join Melinda's exclusive computer club, the Bit Busters. Finally Melinda has offered him membership, but on one condition! Chip must find his way from one end of Melinda's magical clubhouse to the other, picking up cosmic computer chips along the way.
If that sounds easy, then you've never been to Melinda's magical clubhouse. It's awesome inside, but tricky, and a little scary too. There are teleports, invisible walls, force floors, water traps, locked doors, and plenty of monsters. There's magic, mystery, and behind the scenes there is Melinda, keeping score on your progress and providing helpful hints.
As you succeed in helping Chip move through each level of the clubhouse, Melinda gives you a secret password that allows you to return. And Melinda rewards perseverance. If she thinks Chip has tried long enough and hard enough on a level, she'll let him sneak through to the next level. But it takes a lot of perseverance to impress her. How big is the clubhouse? 144 levels is the rumor. But some claim that Melinda is still building. In any case, it defies dimensions so don't get lost.
Chip's Challenge was originally written for the Atari Lynx, a fact that alone makes it special. The Lynx FAQ lists only 76 games that were released for this platform at all (as many or even more were announced, but never released), most of them ported from other platforms (as, for example, Ishido, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure or Loopz). As far as I know, Chip's Challenge is the only Lynx game that was ported to other platforms. Chuck Sommerville always liked the original Lynx version best:
Chip's was originally written for the Atari Lynx, in my opinion, the best version. The IBM version was a conversion done by the games group up at Microsoft, directed by an old friend of mine, Tony Garcia. This is probably what the "thanks to Tony" is all about. The original had only 148 levels. I don't really care much for the IBM version, since the monsters jump from square to square, instead of sliding across in 1/4 square increments like the original does. It makes it much harder to see which way they are going. This was one of the very few games I was able to do from the heart, instead of just writing a game a publisher asked for, I wrote it for myself. It will always have a special place in my heart. The game was started at home, since I could not get company approval for development. It was first done in low-res on the Apple II with colors defining the tile types. The simple map and logic code was done this way. After I got up a few simple levels and components to demonstrate it, I was able to prove it could be fun. Epyx was anxious to get as many games for the launch of the Lynx as possible, so gave me the go ahead, since it looked like the logic design was simple enough. We got an artist or two to do some character graphics, I took leftover songs the sound department had done for some other games, hired Bill Darrah, a puzzle desiging guru and friend of mine to help design levels, and got the help of all the other Lynx programmers who were waiting for their games to make it through test to help design levels as well. I designed about 1/3 of the levels. Bill Darrah designed about 1/3 of the levels, and the rest were done by everybody else. After we got a bunch of levels together, We got an army of testers to make sure each level could actually be solved, and rated them for difficulty. They were grouped into easy, medium, hard, and very hard. The game was done in record time with all the help of the designers and testers. It took about 10 weeks from start to finish, a time unheard of now, or then.
The Lynx version had a special level, accessed with the password MAND, which, as far as I know, was not taken over to any other version. It was not really a level, but a Mandelbrot generator. Alone the idea of a Mandelbrot generator on the Lynx, a handheld device with a 160×102 display, is awe-inspiring.
The Windows 3.x version,
distributed as part of the Windows Entertainment Pack, is probably the
best known. Graphics were completely redrawn, of course, but gameplay
is more or less identical, including level design.
A single level (145: Thanks to…) was added to the Windows version, but it contains
only credits and has no impact on gameplay. The other
differences are mostly marginal.
The real difference, maybe, is that the Windows port was done somewhat sloppily. Chip's sprite isn't properly animated, the monsters, as Chuck Sommerville points out, jumped from tile to tile, the only music are two short and therefore repetitive midis, and the programmers obviously relied mostly on Jaime C. Villacorte's notes.
I notice that this page gets a high number of visits from Macs. But for all I could find out, there never was a Macintosh version of this game, though there are lots of sites offering Macintosh cheats. I have no idea whether Tile World compiles on OS X, and if, how well. There is, however, one game with very similar gameplay that is available for OS X:
Even dedicated Chip's Challenge sites are sometimes unaware that there were more versions than Lynx and Windows. Chip's Challenge was released on at least the following platforms:
In gameplay and, to a degree, graphics, most of these are identical with the original Lynx game. The DOS version has nothing of the sloppiness of the Windows port. It supports every graphic adapter of the time and is even fairly playable on a Hercules card, and it has both Adlib and Roland music.
Ironically, although the game was developed on an Apple ][, there never was an Apple ][ version released, at least as far as I could find out.
A planned Chip's Challenge 2 never came out, because Chuck Sommerville does not own the rights for Chip's Challenge himself, but fan-made levels exist.
This interesting screenshot was posted to a message board. It is supposed to be taken from a first version of Chip's Challenge for Windows with graphics very similar to the original ones used for the Atari Lynx and Amiga/ST/DOS, though Chip himself has already lost his nerdy appearance and has become a walking smiley. Note that it also has a different icon.
Up to now I couldn't find out if this is authentic, or if it was just the result of someone playing around with Borland Resource Workshop.
And here some places where you can download the Windows version: