0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Alfred Chicken

Alfred Chicken is a series of platform games created originally by Twilight, the original game was released in 1993 in the UK for the Game Boy, Amiga, Amiga CD32 and Nintendo Entertainment System, a year later a sequel was released on the Super NES, along with the original game on the Game Boy and NES in the United States.

A remake of the original game was released on the Game Boy Color in 2000 in the UK, it was titled Alfred’s Adventure, the final game in the series would release on the Playstation in Australia and Europe, the game was simply titled Alfred Chicken a play on the term chicken alfredo, it was developed by Möbius Entertainment Limited, it released in April of 2002, the game is a children's platformer released towards the end of the Playstation 1's life cycle.

Alfred Chicken is based on the 1993 game with the same title that released on the Game Boy, Amiga, Amiga CD32 and Nintendo Entertainment System. The game has been fully overhauled with polygonal graphics and CD quality soundtrack, as well as all new levels, the basics of the original gameplay remain the same however, with the player guiding Alfred through platforming staging collecting as many gems as they can.

Balloons are strewn throughout the level and the play must peck them all free in order to progress to the next level, there is also a bonus on each level, find the watering can for Mr Peckles, a giant sunflower to receive the bonus for that level.

Alfred’s girlfriend Floella has been chicknapped by the malevolent and twisted (and badly named) MekaChicken, guide Alfred through worlds made of cheese, playing cards and children’s toy blocks and many more weird locations, as he hunts down Mekachicken and defeats his army of psychotic snails along the way in his quest to rescue Floella.

Alfred Chicken sadly was not well received by critics, the handful of reviews that are about from critics have this game averaging out at a 56/100 for it’s overall rating. The highest rated review which was a 65/100 from French publication Consoles Plus did praise the controls of Alfred however the remainder of their review conclusion was less kind.

With the reviewer saying, The realization is not really the strong point of this game. The sets, like the different enemies, are very crude. It's ugly. On the other hand, controlling the bird is very nice. We simply regret the very limited number of movements.

Computer and Video Games in a surprising review score giving the game  a high for them but an average 60/100 with the review praising the game as being good fun for kids, for anyone else though they boiled the game down into one sentence with the following, if you have a strong desire to collect random objects in bright environments, this could be for you.

German publication Gamers.at concluded this could well be one of the last games of the PS1/Psone era and if so who is it aimed at with the game being basically jump and run. French publication Jeuxvideo.com also agreed with Computer and Video Games in their conclusion, with the game seemingly aimed at young kids with anyone older likely to breeze through the game very quickly.

The lowest critic score for the game came from German publication GamingXP, with the review giving the game a 47/100 with their review concluding, Alfred Chicken" is clearly a game for children and should not be placed in adult hands. 6-year-olds will be delighted by colorful graphics and light control - and love the game. It also looks really nice, if the chicken moves through the rooms, flaps and is thereby also suitable for watching. Unfortunately, this can not hide the fact that the title is too simple and clearly too short.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who along with Retrogames.co.uk and eStarland.com don’t stock this title, either new or used, so we take a quick trip to Amazon.com, who unsurprisingly don’t stock the PAL only title.

We now switch to the co.uk version of the site where the game is available, however even here copies are light in number with just 2 on the market at the time of writing this, both are very good quality used copies of the game, the first is priced at £19.99, while the second is priced at £20.75, both come with shipping fees of £2.03, with total prices for the pain coming to £22.02 and £22.78.

Ebay.com like Amazon is light on copies of this game, one copy on sale is a good quality copy that ships from Germany, it is priced at $6.76 with an additional $4.05 for shipping, this totals $10.81 which converts to, £8.38 in the UK, in the Euro zone countries it will set you back €9.15 while in Australia it will set you back 13.62 Australian Dollars.

Another copy that is the disc only costs even more with a base price of $5.76, this copy then has a $7.52 shipping fee to add on top, there is a new copy on sale on Ebay, again this ships from Germany and is priced at $23.38, however shipping fees once again shoot the price up, with shipping fees you are looking at a price of $32.78.

Written by

P J Gibbon