Chapter 326: Flappy Birds I

Insightful foresight is always better than regretful hindsight. However, hindsight does come in handy.

People's publicized failures and mishaps just give you insight into many things.

Unlike Nguyen that didn't know what was coming, Alexander was expecting it.

Still, Dong Nguyen's experience with Flappy Bird can't be discounted since it's pretty much the foundation wherein Alexander built his Flappy Birds on.

It's not just the singularity and plurality that connects and differentiates the two games together. It also has to do with the many nuances that come in between.

The decision to go with plundering Flappy Bird was actually quite simple. Because it's simple.

Nguyen developed it in a matter of days and that's the kind of short development time that Alexander was looking for in his early games.

Tetris was just fixing up Pajitnov's code.

Cat vsv Dog was a matter of a few sprite designs and projectile illusions via simulated instances.

While Dino Jump was just setting up obstacles, changing landscapes, and escalating speeds.

For Flappy Bird, it was just a button to defy gravity and move ahead whilst the obstacles are just randomization of elevation.

The complexity in these games were mostly apparent yet Flappy Bird was simple as so.

It also helped that it is heavily influenced by retro pixelated games in its golden age.

Wasn't it just fitting to put this retro-celebrating game into a retro era that it should have been in?

Without a doubt, Flappy Bird was supposed to be the 2nd free bundle game in the roster because of these reasons.

Alexander ultimately decided against it and decided to put more pizzazz into the game by extending its already short development time some more.

He wanted to avoid Dong Nguyen's pitfalls and improve on what could be improved.

Flappy Bird was great in so many ways and Alexander just wanted to make it greater.

Flappy Bird was also lacking in so many ways and Alexander just wanted to make it not-so-lacking

Poor Nguyen missed his chance to do so but Alexander surely wouldn't.

For starters, he addressed its great plumbing issue. Mario the Plumber was not consulted for this because the fix was just opting not to use Nintendo's green pipes.

2-D pixelated pipe designs are understandably limited but isn't a not-green pipe just as fine? There's also the option to not use pipes at all.

The fix was as easy as that yet Nguyen got caught up in his fascination for Mario games to do anything about it.

With logic and hindsight, Alexander course corrected and even went beyond the pipe theme and picturesque green backgrounds.

New and special background designs and obstacles were available and it was tied to special other flappy birds.

Alexander calls it Flappy Birds for a reason. Flabby was not the only bird that could be played in this game, after all.

It wasn't just the big-lipped yellow bird this time around. Other flappy birds were going to be available too.

Bird-watching becomes dull when there's just one bird to watch. Wouldn't this logic also apply to a bird-themed video game?

Hence new birds such as Flabbita the Girl Flabby, Exotic Colored Birds of all Variety, Robot Bird, Ducks, Chicken, and so on and so forth.

There are only so few you could do with one flappy bird. With flappy birds and bird-like characters, there's clearly a lot more that can be done.

Aside from aggressively and addictively accruing higher points, bird collecting is now encouraged, and to add more heft to the game, random pop-up coins are now targets to look out for as well.

Alexander really turned around the cloning and knock-offs that plagued the original game with this one.

After all, there's only so much fun you can have with making flappy bird sprites.

Aside from making this a pixel-character exercise for his semi-game dev employees, Alexander went as plundering the bird designs of Flappy Bird clones that he had come across.

Could knock-off clones still pop up if he already cloned himself?

Alexander had to admit that he really has his way of turning negatives into positives. Nguyen that got drowned in negatives would probably be envious.

Alexander even went more above and beyond by adding non-flappy birds as special and high-coin-cost types.

Dragonball fans will be happy to know that Puar and Nimbus are available in the game and a Dragonball-esque landscape is locked for their flappy flight.

Tie-ins, easter eggs, and Creed-inspired expansions were rife and high-potential-ed in this one.

Flappy Bird had really turned into Flappy Birds and even to point of turning into Flappy Somethings.

Flappy Bird purists of the old timeline would probably hate him for this but Alexander didn't care.

In his opinion, the final product turned out great.

If anything, this concept isn't even anything revolutionary.

Alexander just drew inspiration from Crossy Road but less gacha-esque... and .Gears' very own Flappy Birds Family but improved.

Flappy Birds Family never really took off as its predecessor but it had promise.

Alexander even took the multiplayer aspect of that game with the two-player mode being incorporated into this game.

Of course, with the system leaderboard, the multiplayer aspect of Flappy Bird was going to be more than two.

The Tetris and Dino Jump leaderboards had already stirred the passion of gamers to excel like crazy.

The real-time validation that you're better than others was really ramping up people's competitive drive.

If the crazy and rage-inducing Flappy Birds were added into this mix, then the addictive craze of the original Flappy Bird would probably be amped up to the multi-fold!

Oh... the chaos that would unfold!

Then again, wasn't it just the perfect fit for what Creed Games was going for?

The game console wasn't called the Creed Chaos System for no reason.

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Controversies, allegations, and negative press. Success, legacy, and publicity. Things are most likely going to go in every way.

That's just how it is.

Alexander knew the risks but he also knew the rewards. What's done is done and he was just looking forward for what's to come.

"Has the Flappy Birds GameKeys arrived to where they should have?" He asked while fiddling with a sample GameKey in his hand.

"It would still take a while for some places but most of our comic book retailing partners should have readied their purchased stocks already." Miss Marker of Market Research was really quite versed in the company's operations and her bosses' interpersonal relations. "We've also mailed copies to Miss Barrymore and Director Spielberg as well."

Of course, there are aspects that she was quite clueless about. Like the GameKeys. "Little boss, isn't your GameKeys way too different from conventional video game cartridges?"

Game cartridges were bulky and blowable whiles Creed GameKeys were something else. It was very obvious to Miss Marker that. "They're very card-like and tiny."

"They better be. I chose this obscure cartridge-card tech for a reason and paid good money for Pre-Pixar to incorporate its nuances to the Chaos units." Alexander didn't just mix up Hudson Soft's TurboGrafx-16 in his console design out of nowhere.

In his opinion, their ROM-based HuCard or TurboChip being an alternative to costly chip-based cartridges was inspired.

"You should know that aside from the transceivers, this was an important change that stalled Chaos unit production." Alexander added. "I figured that if they're already that tiny and card-like, home consoles are just the start."

[All-round Emulation. PC, Home Console, and Handheld Parity.] This concept plan was going to take a while but GameKeys was Alexander's "key" to it.

Tiny video game cartridges mostly denote one thing in the video game industry, after all.

"GameBoy, ChaosBoy, ChaosMobile, ChaosMini. I've yet to decide on the final designation but aren't these GameKeys just the perfect fit?" Alexander fiddled some more with the gamekey in his hand. "With a planned porting cable, computer games will be at hand. Making these GameKeys even more fitting than it already is."

She was not tech-savvy but even so, Miss Marker couldn't help but think of the implications of her little boss' gamekey mutterings.

It was frighteningly planned and chilling, to say the least!

The little boss is known in the company to plot out his stories from start to end. However, this trait of meticulously plotting out business endeavors is only known to a few.

"Anyways, it's good that the Flappy Birds GameKeys are distributed already." Although Alexander says so, this game really had a lot riding on it.

This simple game really does have the fate of becoming somewhat grand.

Only this time, it was no longer the free-to-download game on mobile. It was now sold inside a small gamekey for a hefty $30 price.

"Should I ask Mister Advertiser to include Flappy Birds in the marketing campaigns?" Miss Marker asked since with all the TMNT, Dragonball, and Top Gun publicity they've been doing, the newest game wasn't really part of it.

"It's fine." Alexander made arrangements of his own.

His custom Pixar computer for HQ was close by and after inputting a few commands to Chaos... the process should more or less be instantaneous.

To think that with just a press of a few buttons... the menus of Creed Chaos Systems all over Creed Gamer households have already changed.

1/3, 2/3, and 3/3 texts have now shifted to 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4.

With 4/4 housing the 4th Creed Game that they could play.

A thick-lipped yellow bird was displayed with the game title that people will come to be acquainted with- Flappy Birds!