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Walker

Revision as of 03:54, 6 May 2021 by Eevee (talk | contribs) (reduce ms focus; mention nes trivia)
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The walker, also known as a dumbbell, is a monster that works similar to the pink ball, glider and fireball, but chooses a random direction to turn when it runs into something. This movement pattern can often lead to fits of frustration among even the highest-level Chipsters, and particularly among less experienced groups. Like the bug, the walker dies in water and on bombs, and treats fire as a wall.

MS ruleset

While Lynx walkers choose any random direction (even the one they're blocked in) and will simply idle for a tic if they chose poorly, MS walkers are much more aggressive and will only choose a random unblocked direction. In most situations, the only difference is a possible brief delay in Lynx that wouldn't exist in MS. However, in the tight corridors of Spirals, this subtle change has such massive consequences that Microsoft felt it necessary to alter the level.

The following diagram illustrates this, as well as the walker's other properties:

File:Walker demo.png

The walker, from where it is, moves east onto the trap, and is then stuck there until something releases it. In this case, Chip is at the controls. In the meantime, Chip may remove one or both of the dirt spaces. If he leaves both of them alone, the walker is repeatedly forced to move D and will repeat this forever until Chip removes a dirt space, which allows the walker to possibly move in that direction and kill Chip. If this space is already removed before the walker is released, the same two options hold. If both dirt spaces are removed, however, the walker has three options to choose from. In this level, only the eastern dirt would be removed, so that the bomb would be exploded. Should the western dirt be removed, and the walker chose this direction, the ice and force floor would redirect the walker towards the bomb.

There are two differences for the walker in Lynx mode: the walker considers all four directions, even if they aren't all legal moves (the MS walker simply doesn't add it to the random number generator), and if the walker chooses a blocked direction, it counts as the use of a move.

Trivia

  • The first Chip's Challenge level with walkers in it was Nice Day. Consequently, the route through it is not guaranteed 100%.
  • In the NES port, Strange Maze is moved up to immediately following Lesson 8, making it the first level containing walkers. However, all of them are stuck in traps that cannot be opened, rendering them mostly harmless.