Are You Ready To Play The Ultimate Game of Chicken?To be fair, I'm confident (read: I have no idea) what happened is that some friends made a tech demo that somehow got picked up and the publisher decided to run with the temporary assets. (The name screams "placeholder art".) That left them in a bind trying to determine how to sell it. Quickly-tedious "egg" puns? Check! Reference to the incoherent plot? Got it! Vague comparison to other games? Roger that! Once again, I gather the copywriter didn't actually play the game, since it's quite weak on details. (The screenshot caption tells me that the game contains both secret passages AND hidden rooms.)"A Hero For The Nineties" - Electonic Games
Available for the NES, SNES, & GameBoyAlfred Chicken is the hottest new game to hit your video game system! Get ready for non-stop egg-citement with Alfred Chicken, the hero of the '90s!
Egg-splore five way out worlds and warp space!
You'll face uncertain danger as you guide Alfred along his menacing journey to rescue his kidnapped egg buddies from the evil Meka Chickens and thwart their plot for World Domination.
Fight your way through some of the most bizarre worlds imaginable. Make mincemeat out of Meka Chickens and dodge their deadly traps.
You've played other heroes, now try something with some real challenge! If you're looking for non-stop excitement and thrills-a-plenty, look no further 'cause Alfred Chicken is here!
Secret passages, extra lives, hidden rooms and puzzles!
For an Alfred message call
1-800-ALFREDC
Ultimately the angle I think they ran with is "will appeal to Mom & Dad, terrified by Mortal Kombat, as totally gormless and without any offense potential whatsoever. Good, clean fun with the first and third optional." This game may have been fun (screenshots suggest similarities to fellow travelers such as Robocod, Zool, or Trolls) but the marketing effort is managing to simultaneously do too much and too little. (Wonder what clucking you heard when you called that phone number! Apparently they also ran a man in a chicken costume for European Parliament. Guys, this ARG isn't going anywhere.)
I am deciding whether it is cute or sad that they want their chicken to be the "Hero of the 90's".
ReplyDeleteNote to future archaeologists trying to reconstruct our time period by reading this blog and my comments: Alfred Chicken did not become the "Hero of the 90's"
Are you so sure? Who has a better claim on the title? I know that it's not the hero the decade would have chosen for itself, but isn't it somewhat appropriate? You want to be cool and transgressive, but you just actually end up ridiculous and irrelevant. Truly a hero for the end of history!
ReplyDeleteI guess that with "fact" and "opinion" being what they are, we can't definitively say that Alfred the Chicken is not the hero of the 90's
ReplyDelete...but he might be breaking the trademark that Alfred the Butler has.