**SEGA’s Flicky finally available on Amstrad CPC!**
Flicky never came out on the Amstrad CPC. Here it is: a port of SEGA’s 1984 arcade game, written from scratch in Z80 assembly for the CPC 6128, using the graphics, levels and game logic of the arcade machine.
Guide Flicky through 48 rounds and bring the chicks (Piopio) back home, while dodging Nyannyan the cat and Choro the iguana. Grab an object and throw it to stun the cats, and lead a long line of chicks to the door for big points!
**Features**
- The 48 rounds of the arcade game, with the bonus rounds
- Chicks, cats, Choro, throwable objects, the thrower hiding in the house
- Smooth hardware scrolling with double buffering
- Music and sound effects from the arcade sound board, on the AY chip
- Animated title screen and attract demo played with the arcade’s own inputs
It does look as though AI has been used (I’m opening a can of worms here, and I’m happy to apologise and retract if I’m wrong), but at least the result seems good. This engine would be great for a remake of New Zealand Story.
Though… why on earth do AI-assisted games always list their features in the same bullet-point fashion?
I don’t know how it plays and it puts me off from trying because to me it screams ‘AI’. Even from the video one can tell that no work was done on the graphics which are awful. So, to me this is ‘AI slop’ until proven otherwise.
And this brings me to the other thing that is bothering me a bit. @Gryzor Should the flood of ‘unidentified slop’ released at itchio be tagged as ‘AI slop’? If you find that too cruel towards unidentified slop released at itchio, how about an itchio tag or, even better, @XeNoMoRPH have a thread named ‘Games released at itchio’ and drop everything in there.
If any developer of such games or anyone else feels they have something worthwhile to say about that game, then go to games category and open a proper thread.
Looks like ‘programmer converted’ graphics from originals like was done with Double Dragon and Double Dragon 2 (?) to me. Sure it would be better with proper artist involvement.
The scrolling looks like push scroll, maybe using hardware scrolling, maybe using software but as I mentioned before if the character’s movement is less than the hardware scroll speed then you have to compromise on cpc.
I think in general we need to be careful (as a community) to label everything as ai slop otherwise it may be harmful to cpc game development. I don’t have a problem if the games are in a news category and if it is clear they are ai developed, label it so, if no mention then assume not but can come along later and tag it if proven to be.
There will always be varying quality in games both 100% made by a person and made with ai assistance.
Perhaps it is just me (well, we all understand it’s not only me) but I am leaning towards the ‘guilty until proven innocent’ as the better way to approach new digital things these days. If you believe this (or any other release) is legit, I am trusting your understanding of programming and I am trusting your judgement.
Yet, as a personal ‘however’ and to bring the ‘community’ aspect into the conversation, I’d expect the creator of any release to register and get involved with this community; post his thing, talk about his thing, offer/receive opinions etc. To put it in simple words, I’d prefer that response/explanation above to come from the creator, not from someone else. Else, next time, it’s going to be ‘Xenomorph posting, rexbeng criticizing, Arnoldemu giving the benefit of doubt’; again and again and again. If it’s about three people, you don’t call it a community, rather a ‘get a room’ situation.
If I wanted to just look at reels of posts of what appears to me as ‘fastmade content’ (either being AI games or videos or converted/AI generated graphics) I’d be on X, or FB, or whatever socials.
If the author states that no AI was used then I guess there’s no easy way to discern if it is AI-generated or not. Sure we can discuss it, and if we reach some consensus we may put something under AI, but until then, not much can be done…
Fair enough then, from now on I won’t post any news, videos, tweets, absolutely nothing at all. We’ll just wait for the author to do it themselves if they’re interested.
I think that starting to classify games as AI simply because they resemble AI to someone, even though the creator states they didn’t use AI, is quite dangerous since there can be nothing more devastating than having devoted time and effort to creating something manually only to be unfairly labeled as AI. And that would discourage the creation of non-AI content on a massive scale, since it could still be classified as AI anyway.
Authors who try to pass off AI works as if they weren’t have an individual problem of dishonesty that will be discovered sooner or later, so this is a less harmful problem than false positives. In short, the principle of the presumption of innocence should prevail until proven otherwise.
I understand the arguments, but these are peculiar times. Any author is welcome to come over, share the work and ideas, regardless them being AI or not, as long as he is honest about it and willing to read other peoples’ opinions. Making sense while at it, also helps.
If he doesnt care about it, why on earth would he be discouraged by what ‘random people in some forum’ think?
Ultimately, why would I need to argue with Xenomorph or mr Y or mr Z over somebody else’s game?
On the topic of the game itself, I had a quick 10 minutes with it and I found that I’m every bit as bad at it on the CPC as I am historically on the Mega Drive version
It plays pretty well, the scrolling isn’t the smoothest but also isn’t distracting, graphics do look a bit messy in places but I was able to keep track of what was going on.
I’ll give it another go later on and see if I can actually get the hang of it a bit.
At the same time, a totally unknown developer comes with a port like this, although possible, we’re in 2026 and unfortunately this is the world we are living in.
If everybody was honest, things would be very easy.
I know I’ve felt annoyed myself by @XeNoMoRPH in the past because he beat me to open a thread here for my one games but despite that I think his contribution is valuable and welcome (at least from my PoV).
It is true that too much AI can be a bit overwhelming. IMHO @Gryzor suggestion of a new category is brilliant, but then… It may be hard to tell if the authors don’t disclose the information (or even worse, they lie about it).
I see that Xeno’s position can be awkward because he’s the messenger. Not sure what is the answer other than patience and being nice to each other.
Yes, he did the port with Claude Code using the open source DOS version I released some years ago. So it is using my C code for enemy logic, the map data, etc.
The guy contacted me. Sent me the code, we had a few friendly emails. He told me it was for fun and that he was fan of the game, and didn’t plan to release it.
Apparently he changed his mind. He’s not complying with the open source licence so I sent him an email, with no response so far.
This is disappointing because it is clearly my game. He didn’t even bother to change the name or reskin it with some other theme.
Well, at least on the itch page he says “Inspired by Gold Mine Run by Juan J. Martinez.” so he credits you… but “inspired”? lol Looks absolutely identical! (Although I think the darkness is a new touch) Why not just out right say “This is a direct conversion of…”
To be honest, re-skinning and giving it a new name would be a worse thing to do - that would then be more a theft of code and concealing it.
I hope he gets in touch and resolves this with you. Because it does look like a cool game.
