Super Chicken?
Super Chicken?
It’s amazing where you can find second hand games these days, especially in places you’d never expect to.
A few years back, my parents were on holiday in Corfu and called home to tell me they were in a game shop in the capital (Corfu Town). After reading out what goodies this shop held, they left the shop with a few pirate NES games and a Japanese Gameboy game that didn’t seem to exist (according to the internet).
The game that supposedly didn’t exist was ‘Super Chicken‘, the name written onto the Gameboy game’s box on a label. Considering they had picked up pirate NES games, I decided this was another pirate game, possibly a ROM hack of another game.
Upon their arrival home, I was pleased to find out that it wasn’t a pirate game after all. In front of me was a relatively unknown Japanese game. A quick search of the product code DMG-PFJ threw up the roughly translated name Peetan (or Pitan).
Kaneko Super Chicken…
Peetan is a frantic action puzzle game that was released in 1991 by Kaneko. It never saw release outside of Japan, something we’re all too familiar with. Kaneko has taken a unique approach to the puzzle genre, offering some quick thinking gameplay combined with see-saw physics! The games’ protagonist finds herself laying as many eggs as she can, in hope to propel her hatchlings back to safety from a hungry wolf.
By carefully laying the eggs above from the see-saws, they slowly work their way down the level and depending where they land, changing the angle of the see-saws or launching the chicks higher. If the wolf manages to get hold of a chick, a quick lay of the egg on his head will release it, otherwise it’s swallowed up.
What makes Peetan such a good puzzle game is how you have to juggle between the chicks, see-saws and wolf all at once, but also being able to link them all together in a combo. For example, a carefully laid egg in one move could rearrange the see-saws correctly, launch a chick upwards and stun the wolf. The video will explain this point much better.
Screenshots:
Peetan (Nintendo Gameboy) Gameplay Screenshots
Collector’s information:
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Final thoughts:
I’d recommend Peetan to any Puzzle game fan or Gameboy collector, but in all honesty, once you’ve completed around four or five levels you’ve seen everything this game has to offer.