Chip's Challenge

Chip's Challenge is a tile-based, puzzle video game for several systems, including the hand-held Atari Lynx, ZX Spectrum, DOS, and Windows (included in the Microsoft Entertainment Pack and Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack). The original game was designed by Chuck Sommerville, who also made about a third of the levels. Most of the conversions from the Atari Lynx original to other formats were carried out by Images Software of Fareham.

The basic plot of the game is that high-school nerd Chip McCallahan has met Melinda The Mental Marvel in the school science laboratory and must navigate through Melinda's "Clubhouse" (a series of increasingly difficult puzzles) in order to prove himself and gain membership to the very exclusive Bit Buster Club.

The game consists of a series of 148 two-dimensional levels (149 in Microsoft's version) which feature the player character, Nerdy Chip McCallahan, often called just Chip, and various game elements such as computer chips, buttons, locked doors and lethal monsters. Gameplay involves using arrow keys, directional pad or mouse to move Chip about each of the levels in turn, collecting enough chips to open the chip socket at the end of each level, get to the exit, and move onto the next level.

Levels can be skipped by entering an appropriate four-letter non-case-sensitive password. For the PC versions, game progress is automatically saved. On the Windows version of the game, the passwords can easily be cracked, thus making it a simple matter to skip levels without playing; if one is having a lot of trouble with a level, the game allows the player to skip to the next level. The Microsoft version has another, hidden, option, "Ignore Passwords", that appears in the Game menu when one of several key combinations is pressed, including Control-D.

In the Lynx version of the game, entering the password "MAND" gives the player access to an Easter egg: a Mandelbrot set and a Julia set fractal plotter.

Progress is not just measured in terms of completed levels but also in terms of the player's score, which is a sum of the scores obtained on each level. Level scores for timed levels can be improved by completion in less time than previously, and scores on all levels can be improved by using fewer attempts to complete the level.