The Collection Chamber: BUD TUCKER IN DOUBLE TROUBLE

Will you save the day?

Will the world be enslaved by the evil genius Dick Tate?

Will anyone actually bother to read this far?

Find out when you play BUD TUCKER IN DOUBLE TROUBLE!

Zany Plot!
Bud's adventures take him to the bustling metropolis of Barryville, where he becomes entangled in a plot involving an over-friendly Welshman, a bungee jumping elephant and two of the ugliest hula girls in history!

When an eccentric professor is kidnapped and his latest invention stolen, it's up to Bud Tucker, pizza delivery boy and owner of the biggest quiff this side of Memphis, to save the day!

~ from the back of the box

Bud Tucker in Double Trouble was the Newcastle developer's Merit Studio's final PC game before reinventing themselves as connoisseurs of console shovelware under the name Eutechnyx, better known for budget PlayStation racers than point-and-click adventures. That makes Bud Tucker something of an oddity in their catalogue; a fully voiced, cartoon adventure overflowing with British humour, surreal situations and enough innuendo to make a Carry On scriptwriter blush. It proudly wears its LucasArts influences on its sleeve, but beneath the barrage of knob jokes and talking worms lies a surprisingly competent adventure. The question is whether its distinctly British personality is enough to elevate it beyond a competent imitation.

The setting certainly doesn't make life easy for anyone trying to pin it down geographically. Bud himself is unmistakably American, yet practically everyone he meets in Barryville speaks with a different flavour of British accent. Welsh oddballs rub shoulders with Cockney creeps, posh aristocrats, German scientists and every variety of eccentric in between. Bud's old friend Professor Frobisher Goonhilly has perfected a duplication machine, only for the magnificently named Dick Tate to steal it in pursuit of world domination (there's some obvious Back to the Future influences too). Naturally, it's up to pizza delivery boy turned reluctant adventurer Bud to rescue the Professor before Tate fills the world with duplicate disasters. It's hardly Shakespeare, but the script knows exactly how ridiculous it is, and that's half the fun. Even the manual gleefully introduces the story with fake biographies and tongue-in-cheek newspaper articles, perfectly setting the tone before the game even begins.

Dialogue trees are worth exhausting just to see what funny lines the writers have come up with (left).

The map screen. There aren't that many locations, but there's a lot to do in each of them (right).

Visually, the game looks like it desperately wanted to sit beside the likes of Day of the Tentacle on shop shelves. Chunky pixel art, exaggerated caricatures and colourful backgrounds give Barryville plenty of charm, even if it never quite reaches that LucasArts' level of polish. Bud himself is particularly expressive, with countless little animations bringing him to life, even if that means you'll witness him casually scratching his crotch more than you'd like. Apparently that's his defining personality trait. The audio fares rather well too. Every location enjoys its own bouncy soundtrack and ambient effects, helping each screen feel distinct, while the game is fully voiced throughout. You can even here an old biddy in the shopping mall casually complain about the youth of today in hilariously Pythonian fashion. In 1996, speech wasn't entirely mandatory, but it was rapidly becoming expected for any adventure hoping to stand out, and Merit wisely committed to recording every last terrible pun with glee.

Like many adventures of the era, the puzzles often delight in making simple jobs absurdly overcomplicated. Need a fishing rod? Obviously you'll require a chainsaw fish to cut down a tree branch, steal some thread from a stranger's jumper and somehow persuade a talking worm that volunteering as bait is in everyone's best interests. Window stuck shut? Naturally, soap is the answer. Logic occasionally takes a holiday to the moon, but thankfully it doesn't take up residence. While it edges surprisingly close to Discworld's infamous brand of insane complexity (and there is still merit to that approach), most solutions can eventually be justified once you've accepted that Barryville operates according to cartoon surrealness rather than reality. Even if it can be increasingly bizarre, they're rarely outright unsolvable. I wasn't ever particularly stuck in Barryville like I was in Ankh-Morpork.

Use your words! You have the option to view the verbs as text (left) or icons (right) by pressing F1.

I prefer the one on the left.

Mechanically, everything is as you'd expect for an adventure game of this era. Nine classic verbs line the bottom of the screen: Walk To, Look At, Talk To, Open, Close, Give, Pick Up, Move and Use. If you've ever played any adventure - specifically a LucasArts one -from the early nineties, you'll immediately feel at home. Conversations present multiple dialogue choices, your inventory is effectively bottomless thanks to Professor Goonhilly's gloriously over-explained "Multi-Dimensional Personal Pocket Transporter™", and a growing town map eventually lets you travel between discovered locations. A handy F1 shortcut even swaps the verb interface between text labels and graphical icons, though I always found the text version quicker and clearer. It's an old-school interface through and through, but one that remains perfectly serviceable today.

Comedy is naturally the star of the show. Boasting over 500MB of recorded speech on the CD, the writers clearly intended almost every interaction to deliver a punchline. Some land beautifully, others eek out groans over giggles, giving the overall success rate something around fifty-fifty. Still, there's an infectious enthusiasm to the script and those that perform it that it carries the weaker jokes. The biggest name attached to the production is undoubtedly Rik Mayall, whose over-the-top performance as Dick Tate steals every scene he appears in. It's almost disappointing that the villain spends much of the game off-screen because Mayall injects exactly the manic energy you'd expect from the star of Bottom and The Young Ones. The remainder of the cast performs admirably too, delivering the game's endless parade of regional accents with impressive commitment.

The game is filled with a perverted seediness that feels just shy of being creepy (left). To contrast,
the villain has a childlike innocence to his evilness. Voiced by Rick Mayall, he gets all the best lines (right).

Of course, subtlety was never the name of the game. One moment you're chatting with a giant floating brain or stepping inside a homeless man's cardboard box only to discover an impossibly spacious mansion within. The next you're visiting a sadistic dentist working in his underwear, looking like he'd wandered out of a late-night screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. When the humour isn't surreal, it's smutty. One of your earliest destinations is a strip club where a full dance show is witnessed, the local plug shop assistant appears to possess an alarming catalogue of kinks, and almost every conversation contains at least one double entendre. Even the hero's name isn't exactly innocent. It's all gloriously juvenile, occasionally groan-worthy, and unmistakably British.

Bud Tucker in Double Trouble wasn't destined to sit alongside adventuring greats like Monkey Island, Sam & Max or Day of the Tentacle even if it desperately wanted to be. It never really needed to. On its own merit, it's an entertaining adventure with some solid British comedy sprinkled in. Buoyed by colourful presentation, likeable voice performances and puzzles that are more inventive than infuriating, it's a fun time that doesn't overstay its welcome. Yes, the humour can be painfully juvenile, and yes, you'll probably roll your eyes as often as you laugh. Even so, I found myself chuckling more than once, and that's enough to recommend it. Adventure veterans looking for something a little off the beaten path should have a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon with young Bud. Complete newcomers, however, are probably better served starting with those LucasArts classics before venturing into Barryville's peculiar little corner of gaming history.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses ScummVM to allow the game to run on modern PCs. Manual included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 11.

File Size: 295 Mb. Install Size: 426 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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