Collection Flappy Bird

Flappy Bird is the most extraordinary story in mobile gaming. Dong Nguyen made it in a few days, it sat unnoticed for months, then went vertical in early 2014 to the point where it was reportedly earning fifty thousand dollars a day in ads. He then removed it from the stores because he felt guilty about how addictive it was.

The game itself is one tap and one rule. The bird falls, you tap to rise, and the gap between the pipes is not generous. There is no difficulty curve - it is fully hard from the first pipe, which is precisely why scoring four felt like an achievement.

The Mario-style pipes were noted at the time as being extremely close to Nintendo's, which is part of what made the whole phenomenon feel like a fever dream.

Phones with the game still installed sold for absurd sums after the removal, which says something about scarcity.

This collection covers the bird and the pipes in their original pixel form.