The Wonder Years 8.07.08: Week 67 - Alfred Chicken

Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 08.07.2008

If you thought a blue hedgehog was an unlikely protagonist, get a load of this guy.

Welcome to the column where all gamers of a certain age come to wallow in 16-bit nostalgia. I'm your host, Owain J. Brimfield, and I'll be discussing some of the hidden gems and instant classics of gaming's golden era. Some of these games may crop up in downloadable form at some point, some may be consigned to the annals of history. Either way, they're worth tracking down if you missed them first time round, or replaying if you were lucky enough to catch them. Let's take a trip to:

ALFRED CHICKEN

(Twilight Games, Super NES, 1994)

So what did we have last week, a bat? Well, Aero turned out to be such a memorable mascot that an overwhelming zero readers seemed to recognize his starring game, despite it being a better-than-average platformer. I'm quite sure that there were many less-convincing protagonists throughout the 16-bit era though… at least a bat makes sense as a lead character in an action game (after all, they can fly, and do have some aspect of a "cool" mythos surrounding them). However, occupying the bottom rung of anthropomorphic animal character design hell, sharing a squalid bedsit in Croydon with Edd the Duck¹, comes the endlessly pointless Alfred Chicken, a bright-red fowl whose game originally shipped with a free poster in the box (because lord knows everyone wants to decorate their room with imagery of cartoon chickens). And yet, despite seemingly possessing all the redeeming features of a sharp kick in the stones, being as he is a rather redundant amalgam of the least-prepossessing animal on the planet and a poorly-designed sports team mascot, he's actually somehow rather charming. Perhaps due, in part, to the fact that his game is a surprisingly decent if not entirely memorable entry into the platform genre.

Alfred first appeared on our home console screens on the NES a year or two previous to his 16-bit outing, around the time his presumed roommate Edd was stinking up DOS boxes UK-wide with his own brand of licensed platform shite. Fortunately, Alfred's own title was slightly more successful and led to a half-sequel, half-remake on the Super NES, which sometimes goes by the moniker of Super Alfred Chicken - not strictly accurate, but unsurprising given that 9 out of 10 SNES games tended to be Super this-or-that. The story behind the game is rather hit-and-mess, and truth be told I can't actually remember the central plotline, but it has something to do with all of the eggs in Alfred's homeland being abducted, and him being compelled to rescue them from the forces of evil. Of course, it's a thinly-veiled excuse for some Kentucky fried adventures in toyland. Incidentally, some people out there will have you trying to believe that Alfred is a parrot, and not a chicken - don't believe them. If the name of the game wasn't clue enough, there's the simple fact that he also can't fly.


¹ One has to presume their landlord is Gordon the Gopher.

Yes, Alfred is actually a pretty lame duck of a chicken. Not being able to fly, he resorts to utilizing the handy springs that populate his world in order to cover great distances. There's a disappointing lack of arse/egg weaponry, too, a component of gaming that wouldn't be faithfully covered until a few years later when a certain green dinosaur took a starring role in a Nintendo game of his own. Still, Alfred can peck at the ground, which certainly comes in useful in popping the balloons that, for some reason, represent the central level mechanic. Popping all the balloons leads to a boss fight, y'see, and so on until all twenty levels are thoroughly pecked and the tasty eggs rescued. There's also a divebomb attack in Alfred's arsenal, but it seldom gets used given its tendency to lodge him into the ground, shortly to be pulverized by one of the many clockwork mice that populate the game. A "can of worms" power-up can also be unleashed at times, which is fun inasmuch as you can live the cliché.

Oh, but if it all sounds a bit run-of-the-mill at this stage, a little drab and formulaic, it somehow manages to be rather a jaunty little title. The music, while repetitive, is relentlessly upbeat, and it's quite hard to find tiresome a chicken collecting jam from a flower. Everything is nicely colorful, with Alfred himself being a rather impressive little sprite (admittedly no more so than other '94 game characters, but pleasing nonetheless), and while rescuing eggs is undeniably more entertaining if you were playing this game back in the haze of your gaming youth in the 90s, it's hard to argue against. Certainly, if there were ever a more inoffensive game than Alfred Chicken it wasn't released in 1994.

Of course, Alfred has long since squawked his last, and despite the oddly random bit of campaigning from fans that somehow led to a 3D sequel five years back or so on the PlayStation, Alfred has essentially gone the way of the dodo. Whether or not the cartridge is still out there in some second-hand stores I'm unsure, although I did once come across a copy of the NES original for sale (yes, I was that excited... ba-zing!). The fact of the matter is that you're pretty unlikely to run into Alfred Chicken in this day and age, and I really just wanted to use it as an illustration of the types of game that used to knock around firmly in the middle of the road, but still represented a pleasant gaming experience. It's no earth-shattering Mario-killer, but it's a fun romp, and Alfred himself is surprisingly loveable, to the extent that man can indeed love bird. If more games like this existed, the world may not be a better place particularly, but I'd certainly feel a little bit safer going to bed at night. Peace out, y'all.

Alfred Chicken trivia

• One of the promotional tools used to promote the game in the US was a toll-free number set up so that gamers could phone Alfred himself and listen to some spiel about his game. You have to wonder why they haven't tried that with Mario yet.
  
• No less silly was the entering of an Alfred Chicken political party in a local by-election here in the UK. Somewhat surprisingly, they didn't even gather the lowest number of votes, although they were the subject of a ministerial investigation.
  
• The developers of the Playstation sequel were Mobius, better known these days as Rockstar UK, developers behind the handheld ports of the GTA and Manhunt games.

The Videosphere

Let's take a look at this week's video highlight of Alfred Chicken in action. Here's a video of the game's opening overlaid with some "amusing" textual commentary from YouTuber CrazyQuark, whom I suppose we should thank for taking the time to upload this vaguely funny little look back at the game.




General indulgences

Every week in this section I'll endeavor to provide you, the faithful readers, with a fascinating insight into the various forms of entertainment currently dominating my spare time.

This week, I have been mostly enjoying:

Wii Fit, whose science I immediately discarded after it told me I was 20 lbs overweight but somehow still had the fitness age of a twenty year old. What an odd game that really is. The skiing is pretty funny though, and you'd have to think someone will make a decent title based on that sport sooner rather than later.

The X Factor by Iron Maiden, which isn't a great album (although 'Man on the Edge' does feature the single greatest musical rhyming couplet since the first two lyrics of 'War Pigs'), but does mean I now own every single one of Maiden's studio albums. Score!

Peep Show, the first-person sitcom that crops up here from time to time, as I finally got hold of the fourth season on DVD. If anything it's even better than before, and led me to order the fifth straight away. The bit with the dead dog is surely destined to go down in TV infamy.

and shelving, which is now at a premium in my study. Thankfully I managed to purloin an extra bookcase off my parents and jam it in a corner, so no longer does Futurama have to live rammed away at ceiling height.


And finally…

Thanks for reading folks; as always, reader feedback and suggestions are welcome. Next week in "The Wonder Years" - a game with a legacy of great intention. Until then - keep it real, keep it retro.