In those distant times, when trees were big and computer games, on the contrary, were small, “popularly” there were only two genre classifications of game projects. There was a distinction between “shooters” (aka action games) and “adventure games” (in scientific terms – arcades). The kids adored both types of toys and enthusiastically pounced on those sketchy and monotonous examples that we can now only look at with nostalgic tenderness.

When colliding with Crazy Chicken: Atlantis, there is a clear feeling of being in the past. It seems that we have before us a real “adventure game” of the era of the nineties, with typical cartoon graphics, crystal coins hanging above your head for collecting and, of course, a complete absence of a sane plot. Therefore, the arcade evokes quite contradictory feelings: on the one hand, it’s nice to feel like a child again. On the other hand, it’s hard to believe that these antiques were created and produced by our contemporaries.

And why do we need that Atlantis??

If naive gamers purchased the game disc https://boomerangcasino.co.uk/games/ in the hope of seeing how an enterprising chicken searches for and finds Atlantis, then they will be sorely disappointed. We were left with horns and legs of the plot: a sign printed in a blurred font with text that outlines the background story of our “rooster-like” hero’s encounter with the conditions of further advancement. The name and the “officially” declared surroundings have as much to do with the gameplay as penguins have to do with the Arctic.

Actually, the gameplay is extremely simple, even for an arcade. A chicken in a big cowboy hat runs, jumps, swims and even almost flies from platform to platform, while simultaneously shooting at enemies and collecting various bonuses hanging in the air, as well as lying on the ground or under water. All the typical attributes of an “adventure game” are present here in full. Perhaps the only non-standard thing to note is the timer. Our hero has four lives, each of which has a certain period of time. If we did not manage to complete the level before the deadline, a life is taken away, and the chicken is thrown back, either to the very beginning or to an automatically saved point.

The meaning of collecting coins, crystals and other joys of life, as always, is unclear. If everything is more or less clear with cartridges and grenades (you have to deal with the enemies somehow), then various valuables are traditionally useless. The gameplay is absolutely monotonous, even the monsters differ very little from level to level. Basically, we fight with plant creatures, quite friendly in appearance, but insidious in essence.

A chicken is not a bird

Controls – the cornerstone of any arcade – are no different in convenience. Our ward does not know how to move carefully. Apparently, failed flight ambitions are getting in the way. To move the chicken in the hat one step to the right or left, you will have to make eight movements before the hero takes the required position. In a situation where you have to deal with point-by-point targeting of an object (to get onto a rope hanging from above, for example), such a sweeping nature is, to put it mildly, annoying.

The graphics are quite consistent with the other characteristics of the game. Either the developers deliberately decided to make a kind of retro stylization, or it just happened that way, but the static backdrops, practically unchanged from level to level, the minimum of textures and bulky objects force us to remember our childhood with “adventure games” again. For some reason, the figure of our hero looks three-dimensional. As compensation or something??

All in all, Crazy Chicken: Atlantis – very cute children’s toy from the nineties era. Why it was released in 2008 is a mystery. Unfortunately, as a modern project, the arcade does not stand up to criticism at all. But as a nostalgic reminder of the years of our distant youth, it will do just fine.

Pros: funny main character; memories of the nineties.
Cons: now, alas, it’s not the nineties.