Floppy (computer game)

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Floppy is a computer game by Greg Hale and Ted Cohn, released on the Apple II in the early 1980s.

The game takes place in many different single screen levels, where the player's goal is to push a blue marble on top of a blue tile. There are however many obstacles along the way: brick walls you must work your way around, brown marbles which you can crush but which can also crush you if they fall on you, holes or dead angles in which the blue marble must not fall lest it become unretrievable, and moving enemies: green unicorns, which move in repetitive patterns horizontally, and blue crabs, which relentlessly chase the player both horizontally and vertically. You can also collect onions and throw them at the enemies to temporarily put them to sleep.

Floppy was a popular game due to its inventive mix of strategy (how to get the blue marble across) and action (good timing is often required) and to the impressive amount of levels, each of them very different from one another.

It was also one of the first home computer games which allowed the user to create his own custom levels.

Floppy would also be released as "Flappy" (06/14/85) in Japan as a port for the Nintendo Famicom, under DB Soft. The graphics were improved and players were given a choice of three spirited new songs rather than the clunky soundtrack of the original. A key difference in the second version is that there is a code displayed after every five stages so that players might continue their game at a later time.

[edit] Storyline of "Flappy"

The beautiful planet of Blue Star, home-planet to a young boy named FLAPPY, is invaded by Dark Emperor Ngalo-Ngolo. The proud inhabitants of Blue Star, wanting neither war nor the invasion, self-destruct along with the planet on a path of self-determination. FLAPPY, however, is boarded onto an escape capsule headed for neighboring Planet Seviras by his father and so survives. From his capsule he sees fragments of the exploded Blue Star rain down incessantly on Planet Seviras.

Wandering aimlesslessly about Planet Seviras, FLAPPY reaches an oasis where he suddenly hears a voice from the sky saying, 'Gather up the fragments of Blue Star, the Blue Stones, to this Blue Area. When all of them have been gathered...' FLAPPY, believing a miracle has just occurred, begins on a journey to gather all the Blue Stones.

(However, events in the game with no direct correlation to this story, such as the Red Stones that appear in FLAPPY95, also appear without any known or apparent meaning.)