[This post is part of a collaborative Sonic retrospective based around the games on Sonic Mega Collection Plus. To read more, please head over to the central post!
This one is written by Adam Frost, who you can find on his website or on Twitter as @_AdamFrost. He previously wrote about PGA Tour Golf II. ]
Even on its Mega Drive release in 1991, I remember Flicky feeling old-fashioned. For me, as a teenage gamer, the cartridge had little to offer compared to its contemporaries on the Mega Drive: games with depth and ingenuity, like Revenge Of Shinobi, PGA Tour Golf and Sonic The Hedgehog. Next to those heavyweights, Flicky felt like something that belonged to a more whimsical past. I wanted to like it, but found playing it about as compelling as wearing school shoes on the weekend.
All of that makes complete sense to me now, since it turns out that Flicky began life as an arcade coin-op released by Sega in 1984. The Mega Drive version is a faithful translation of the coin-op, with no attempt to update or make additions to the original formula.
The game is a cutely rendered, swiftly-paced, collect-and-avoid platformer in which the player’s task is to clear each level of chicks by escorting them to the exit, whilst avoiding Tiger, the cat. This is helpfully explained during the intro screen in the form of a poem (of sorts).
Flicky can move left, move right, and jump. Simple. And yet, Flicky is far from an easy character to control: there is a considerable amount of braking and reacceleration time to account for when changing direction; she has a floaty jump, rising and falling slowly; and in most levels she will bounce off of any platform edges she hits, which often propels her into the path of a chasing cat. These factors amount to a steep level of initial difficulty, and, as with many 80s coin-ops, the unwary can lose all of their three allotted lives in seconds.
The game’s scoring system gives the player a classic risk vs reward decision to make: chicks can be escorted to safety one or two at a time, but taking the more dangerous option of delivering them as a job-lot racks up bigger points.
Cats can be jumped, but this requires precise timing, and even when jumping them successfully Flicky’s train of chicks is likely to be decoupled. Fortunately, Flicky is not entirely defenceless. Each level is dotted with household items (things like telephones, teacups, pot-plants and, erm… trumpets), which can be used to bowl over the pesky felines and temporarily take them out of the game. These items are finite, however, and are picked up on contact and thrown whenever Flicky jumps. Since a well flung trumpet is often the only way out of a tight spot, it’s advisable to use them prudently.
In later levels, the quest is further complicated by the addition of a second enemy type: Iggy, a speedy green iguana who can crawl along the underside of platforms. Sounds pretty innocuous, but contact with Iggy deals Flicky the same fate as being caught by a cat.
Variety is provided in the form of a bonus game, which crops up after every few regular levels, in which a pair of cats launch chicks skywards (using see-saws, of course) leaving it up to Flicky to provide the hapless youngsters with a soft landing by catching them in her net. The results of these levels are inconsequential to your progress, but you’ll want to ace them to keep your score high.
One thing that is crucial to success in playing the game is reading the wrap-around nature of the screen. The gameplay area of each level is essentially a single screen; move left or right and the screen scrolls in an endless loop. This means that enemies exiting one side of the screen will immediately reappear on the other. So, when travelling right, keeping an eye on what is happening on the left side of the screen is key to avoiding catastrophe.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that, despite underwhelming memories of the game, I enjoyed Flicky a lot when I played it in the run-up to writing this blog post. Freed from my 1991 ideas of the standards a 16-bit game on a cutting-edge console should meet, I was able to approach Flicky on its own modest terms, and in doing so found plenty to like: brisk pacing; elegant and economical design; gameplay that rewards the player equally for pattern memorization and quick reflexes; high difficulty without unfairness… In fact, viewed through the lens of today’s diverse gaming landscape, this 1984 game feels less dated than many of the Mega Drive titles that were state-of-the-art in 1991.
It is fitting that Flicky made it into the Sonic Mega Collection since the benevolent bluebird went on to make multiple appearances in the Sonic series, as well as several other Sega games. Sonic 3D: Flickies’ Island (known as Sonic 3D Blast in some places) was also included in the Mega Collection.