Alfred Chicken (NES) Playthrough
163A playthrough of Mindscape's 1994 platformer for the NES, Alfred Chicken.
Alfred Chicken is the story of a bionic chicken on a quest to save his lady friend and his unhatched egg buddies from the diabolical Meka-Chicken clan. With a little help from Mr. Peckles, a sentient sunflower, our titular cock-of-the-walk sets off to cluck and savagely peck his way through five stages of eggcellent Euro-platforming action.
Alfred was created by Twilight, a small English developer known for its 8 and 16-bit computer games based on popular TV and movie licenses. The original 1993 Game Boy version marked the company's first foray into the console game market, and it was later adapted and remade for several platforms, including the NES, SNES, GBC, Amiga 500, Amiga CD32, and the PlayStation.
As one of the eight games published for the NES in 1994, this version is notable for being one of the final official North American releases for the system.
Twilight's roots in the 80s UK computer gaming scene are apparent from the outset.
Cartoonish anthropomorphic mascot? Check.
Open-ended level design with collectable items? You bet.
Cheerful backgrounds and fluid animation? Present.
Music loaded with more arpeggios than you could shake a stick at? Duh! Of course!
You'd be forgiven for thinking it was an Ocean game at first glance, but don't let that put you off. I avoided it the longest time - Ocean's games thoroughly soured me on this style of game - but biases be damned, Alfred Chicken won me over.
The level designs are some of the best I've seen in a Euro-platformer. The stages are easy to navigate and are large enough to provide a sense of exploration without making you feel hopelessly lost and frustrated, the light puzzles are intuitive and fun to solve, and the enemy placement feels fair. It's so nice to play a game like this that doesn't rely on cheap traps to provide the challenge.
The object of each stage is to find and peck all of the balloons, but you can grab all sorts of stuff along the way. Diamonds and presents count toward extra lives, the can of worms creates a temporary rotating shield, and clocks provide time extensions. Secret rooms hold jars of jam that allow Alfred use projectile attacks, and if can you find all four watering cans, you'll be given access to the final stage and the best ending.
Alfred Chicken isn't a long or challenging game, but it feels good to play, the music is catchy, and it has a lot of charm. I had a lot of fun with this one, and if you were still playing NES games in 1994, I imagine this would've been a great weekend rental.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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