Retro Gamer talks to the man behind the Spectrum classic Chuckie Egg

Every system has a killer app or a series of titles that makes it stand out. Game Boy had Tetris, NES had Mario, Master System had Alex Kidd In Miracle World and the Mega Drive kicked off an obsession with all things hedgehog related. The Spectrum isn’t any different and if you ask any owner what games stand out, you can guarantee that alongside Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy, Chuckie Egg will get a mention, while many others will cite the BBC Micro version as one of that format’s major stars. 

For teenager Nigel Alderton, the Spectrum would become a pathway to a new world of game creation. “My first computer was a bog-standard ZX81 with 1K of RAM. My parents soon got fed up with me using it on the family TV so they got me a portable black-and-white telly for my bedroom. I loved [the Spectrum]. For a programmer it was such a simple piece of kit to use because you could bypass the operating system and control the hardware directly. Its weaknesses were the blocky character-based colour and lack of a sound processor or reliable storage media.” 

It would be during Nigel Alderton’s mid teens that the talented programmer would get to put his newfound skills to use. “I think I was about 15 when I got a Saturday job in [the A+F] shop serving customers, duplicating tapes, fetching bacon butties for the programmers and management and just helping out in general. I got £7 for the day, which wasn’t bad at the time. I’d been working there for a few months when I told them that I was writing a game myself and asked them if they would look at it. All the programmers there had games published themselves and I was just the kid who made the tea, so they were mildly amused by my request. But one weekend I showed one of the programmers my unfinished ‘Eggy Kong’ game and I still remember the pride I felt when I saw his reaction. Suddenly he was talking to me on a level – asking questions and taking an interest. I never thought of offering it to anyone other than A+F.” 

A+ F Software was founded by Doug Anderson and Mike Fitzgerald in 1981 who began publishing titles for the Acorn Atom and BBC Micro and were responsible for games such as Polecat and Early Warning. However, it would be Nigel Alderton’s ‘Eggy Kong’ (renamed by A+F Software as Chuckie Egg) that would launch the company into the spotlight and make its fortunes. 

Nigel’s original title of ‘Eggy Kong’ highlights the influence of a certain gorilla created by Shigeru Miyamoto. “It was inspired by arcade games that I was addicted to at the time. The newsagent on the way to school had classic games like Donkey Kong and Scramble. At one point it had a lesser-known game called Space Panic. Chuckie Egg is a cross between Space Panic and Donkey Kong. Almost every weekday for a couple of years I put a good part of my dinner money into those machines,” recalls Alderton. 

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