The story of Flappy Bird has much in common with the Greek myth of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun, causing his wax wings to melt and sending him plummeting to his death, in a rather ironic but pretty harsh lesson about hubris. Yep, Flappy Bird is almost exactly the same, except instead of wax wings you prod the screen to make him fly, and theres more repurposed (read: stolen) Super Mario graphics. A sort of test piece by aspiring developer Dong Nguyen, the game became a surprise hit when it hit the app store. A surprise because on paper the game should have zero appeal, consisting as it does of some aforementioned half-inched Nintendo graphics and incredibly simple gameplay where you try and get a bird (which looks more like a fish) safely through a side-scrolling level. People leapt to the challenge of getting the bird-fish as far as possible. Nguyen was the real winner, however, as at the height of its popularity his terrible game was pulling in $50,000 a day from in-app advertising. At least until he suddenly decided to take it down, presumably because of the negative attention the game had drawn, and the phenomenon disappeared as quickly as it arrived.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
