Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers is a bit of a weird game for me. Almost as far back as I was new on Twitch and as a speedrunner, EndySwe had encouraged me to check it out as a new speedrun. I didn’t really like watching people run it much on Twitch, and outside of Zone J which is largely considered a universal musical banger, I didn’t really like the music in it either. Still, Endy would often tell me to learn it anyway, and I never really tried it out or played it. Endy would often tell me the game is perfect for a beginner: solid controls, great music, but the biggest thing he would often say was the controls were very, very, very tight.
One day though, maybe after Endy’s 10000th message about it, I ended up trying to learn the game.
Here we go Endy. You ready? I’m going to write it in public.
🚨 ENDYSWE WAS RIGHT. I WAS WRONG. I SHOULD OF LISTENED TO ENDY EARLIER. ENDY IS ALWAYS RIGHT! 🚨
Endy honestly was right. I still maintain Chip & Dale is a weird watch, as I still prefer watching other speedruns for sure, but the game infinitely plays better than it looks– so much in fact I would say it maybe has some of the best controls for NES speedrunning, period. When Endy originally tried to pitch it to me, there was a lot of RNG in the game, but, since then, there was a RNG lock discovered that actually makes the game 100% free from RNG. The combination of the responsive, excellent controls, huge community (well over 100+ runners), healthy community Discord where new runners can directly ask for help, and the fact there’s zero RNG make this an excellent first speedrun choice for someone new, or honestly, a great speedrun choice for someone more experienced.
I stopped running Chip & Dale after achieving 2nd place with a 9:52.
What’s absolutely bonkers to me is how much the run has progressed since then.
Look at where I’m at now:
It’s pretty insane to see how far people dropped it down after I had 2nd, and the fact I’m in 13th place now!
Kat and I decided to learn the speedrun around June of 2022. We finished our mini grind at 4th place with a 9:35, and there’s a lot to say about Chip & Dale as a co-op run. In terms of co-op NES runs, it’s really up there and a very strong offering. Sinister1 and GeneralAndrews re-routed the game to exploit zips, and we replicated their old 9:17 and learned the strats/flower math. The co-op run itself is a little Dale heavy; that is to say, Dale does more work, but Chip in optimized Chip & Dale co-op does a lot to support Dale in the background. Dale does all the bosses, for example, and there’s a few screens carrying Chip through everything is faster, as if both chipmunks are on screen at the same time, the game can lag. So the strat is Dale just carries Chip through everything.
I really enjoyed my time with Chip & Dale. My 9:52 was relatively free from errors, but I was smashed by a weasel in Zone J (affectionately nicknamed thereafter as the “Dave weasel” by Tecate). I ended up making an on-the-fly tutorial for <10 times in that game that you can find here:
Will I return to Chip & Dale anytime soon? Probably not. Kat and I will likely run co-op again soon; however. I don’t really have a huge drive to come back to this one solo, and I really don’t have a great reason for that. 🙂 Never say never though.
And lastly, I uploaded my old Chip & Dale savestates for the old Everdrive, here.
If you have a partner or friend to rope into co-op with you, Kat and I also uploaded our co-op savestates for it, here.
As EndySwe once told me: Check it out!
Chip & Dale is a really good speed game.