Retro Gaming Zoo #2

Humans are stupid. Animals are always better than stupid humans, everyone knows that, and it's something that's also true in the world of video games. A tremendous variety of weird and wonderful animals have starred in games over the years and here I'll be taking a closer look at some of them. Next up is:

Creature #2 - Flicky of Flicky
Type of Creature? Bird  Realistic Portrayal? Yes

After the recent tomfoolery with a certain chat/film group to which he lends his name, I figured it was a good time to take a closer look at Flicky, the plucky blue avian star of Sega's 1984 arcade game and subsequent conversions. He is very bird-like too, which is surprising for the day. He can run around and has a decent flappy-assisted jump, both are which are invaluable for collecting the helpless little 'Chirps' around the short looping stages and avoiding the hungry cats that also scamper about the place, and that is about the extent of his ambitions too. He's just doing what any responsible squawker would do. I'm not sure how realistic the actual stages are since later ones seem to take place in space, and I'm not sure how adept any bird would be at holding a net to catch catapulted Chirps either, but as a character Flicky is definitely very realistic for video game standards. Happily we got to see his likeness again along with many of his colourful brethren, and on their apparent home turf too, in Sonic 3D: Flickies Island, but nothing since then. Come back Flicky/Flickies! :)

Is His Game Any Good? Yes, it's mighty good! The most celebrated version is that found on Sega's own MegaDrive which was actually slightly superior to the arcade original (although in fairness, it was released some seven years later!) but I have yet to play a version of Flicky that isn't tremendous fun. Check the full review here.