Cosmo Chicken

In mid 1995, after years of programming in Basic, I decided to try something new. I switched to Borland's Turbo Pascal, version 7.0. Since I didn't want to write the standard boring beginners' stuff, I thought I'd do something more interesting with the power Pascal offered me. I learnt how to program for VGA and how to access sound cards. That was poured into Cosmo Chicken.

The game itself is based on the Astro Chicken subgame found in Sierra's Space Quest 3, but added plenty of other stuff. This includes the platform getting smaller on later levels, a dog chasing the chicken, a homicidal worm launching V2 rockets at the chicken, landmines... er... spacemines, and moving platforms. And, to combat those hazards, you can also drop an egg at the expense of some food. Hitting a moving platform with an egg will stop its motion, hitting the dog will incapacitate it for a few seconds, and hitting the worm or rocket will neutralise them.

The current version is 1.7, released on 26 October 2021, fixing a bug that crashes DOSBox or would at least result in incorrect sound being played.

Note: to play it at the intended speed in DOSBox, I recommend setting DOSBox to 9000 cycles.

• Cosmo Chicken can be downloaded here.