Flappy Bird (sort of) makes a return after ten years

A mix of mobile nostalgia and addiction

Cast your minds back to 2013 and you’ll probably be able to recall memories of the phenomenon that was Flappy Bird. For those who don’t remember, it was a mobile game that became an unbelievable (if brief) success, possibly one of the most popular iOS and Android releases of its time. Well, now it’s back. Kind of.

GitHub user somhi (via Time Extension) has managed to bring Flappy Bird back from the dead. In this instance, it’s been ported to the likes of the Analogue Pocket, so the game is once again playable on mobile devices, just not one that many people are aware of.

The Analogue Pocket was released in December 2021. Essentially, it’s a handheld gaming system that allows you to play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance titles. No emulation, either. This thing uses the actual cartridges from the OG devices. It’s described as the “ultimate tribute to portable gaming” and there are optional adapters for the Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket, and Atari Lynx. Check out our review of it here.

What happened to Flappy Bird anyway?

Given the enormous success of Flappy Bird in such a short span of time, it’s a wonder it didn’t last much longer. However, it was reported that its creator Dong Nguyen felt guilty about the addictive nature of the game. Although he was raking in around $50,000 a day from ad revenues and sales, Nguyen decided to remove the app from both the Apple and Google stores in February 2014.

There was a version of it released for Amazon Fire TV in August of that year, but for all intents and purposes, Flappy Bird has been dead for almost a decade. If you do miss its simplistic gameplay mechanics and that rush of dopamine, you can always check out somhi’s port for the Analogue Pocket, if you have one, that is. Who knows, maybe other versions will come out off the back of this.