Future Tense

World’s Nerdiest Ripoff Artist Ports Flappy Bird to the Commodore 64

Flappy Bird for Commodore 64

A match made in technology heaven.

Screenshot / YouTube

At a time when all the ripoff artists in the mobile gaming industry are trying to make a buck on residual Flappy Bird mania, indie game nerd Sos Sosowski has made a version of the hated/beloved smartphone game that is pretty much certain to not make a buck. That’s right: You can now download Flappy Bird for your vintage 1980s Commodore 64 (or, more likely, an emulator thereof).

It’s hard to pinpoint just what’s so refreshing about the idea that someone would make a version of an obsolete game for an obsolete computer, just because. Maybe it’s that the two rudimentary technologies seem somehow right for each other. Maybe it’s just nice to know that there are some computer programmers out there who aren’t chasing the next $6.4 billion payday. Maybe it feels good to be reminded that there are still people in the world with enough time on their hands to build something just for the sake of building it.

Speaking of which, incredibly, Sosowski’s creation may not even be the most arcane version of Flappy Bird I’ve seen. That honor goes to Fawn Qiu, who used an Arduino board and some servo motors to hack toegether a real-life Flappy Bird in a box.

There is also, of course, a Flappy Bird for Minecraft, and—why not—one for the TI-84 graphing calculator.

It’s tempting to say “get a life,” maybe. But really, a life that involves building funny games just for the hell of it doesn’t sound like such a bad one.

Previously in Slate: