Astro Chicken

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This article is about the side game from Space Quest III. For the hypothetical self-replicating spacecraft concept, see Astrochicken.

Astro Chicken was the name of an arcade game embedded in the 1989 Sierra On-Line graphical adventure Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon. The game was later re-released as part of "Nick's Picks", a compilation of arcade games previously embedded in Sierra adventure games.

Gameplay consisted of attempting to land a chicken on a trampoline. The mechanics of the game were similar to those of Lunar Lander, with the exception that the chicken would rebound unharmed if it struck the trampoline too forcefully. When the chicken landed safely, it would exclaim "Bacock!" (Space Quest III featured AdLib sound, which had no digitized speech output capability. Therefore, this exclamation was simply written onscreen, comic book-style. The player was free to provide his or her own chicken sounds.)

In the fictional storyline of SQ III, the Two Guys from Andromeda were enslaved by ScumSoft (an evil software company, obviously inspired by Microsoft), where they were forced to create games such as Astro Chicken. Consoles of the game can be found throughout the game universe, such as the Monolith Burger fast food chains (a spoof on McDonalds). During the course of SQIII, the player can find a hidden message from the Two Guys after beating the Astrochicken game multiple times.

The name was likely chosen in parody of the Astrochicken thought experiment by Freeman Dyson. Note that the game was intentionally simple and bizarre; it was supposed to be representative of the cheap, unfathomable games produced by ScumSoft's staff of unhappy programmers. A sequel, Ms. Astro Chicken, appeared in Space Quest IV.

The Astro Chicken theme music is a variation on the Chicken reel, a traditional folk song best known for its use in animated cartoons.

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Space Quest
Official Series Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter
Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge
Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon
Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers
Space Quest V: The Next Mutation
Space Quest 6: The Spinal Frontier
Characters Roger Wilco
Other Games Planned games | Fan-made games
Production Two Guys from Andromeda | Sierra Entertainment
Minigames Astro Chicken | Ms. Astro Chicken
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