Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon/Astro Chicken

Astro Chicken

 * Upon appearance, toggle flapping to bring the chicken to a stop.


 * Based on the location of the chicken, use the necessary directions to bring the chicken to the center of the screen. (do that as soon as you toggle flapping for the first time) Use the down arrow to straighten out further descent.


 * Toggle flapping on and off to provide a slow descent. (Think of it as step-wise motion, where you toggle flapping off to achieve some downward motion and turn it back on as soon as the rooster begins moving downward)


 * Land the chicken on the A to get the BACOCK!


 * If the secret message did not appear, return to the top of the list, or insert buckazoid



Many consider Astro Chicken to be the least enjoyable part of Space Quest III, rivaled in it's annoyance only by the final battle against Elmo Pug. All in all, however, it is a very simple game. Landing 10 chickens can be done with just one buckazoid, although beating it without wasting a life is a bit harder. Consider the following.

1. Speed

Most guides consider it useful to lower the speed setting of the game as low as possible. In fact, the game's original hint book provides that as the sole solution to the minigame. However, with the speed setting set to an all time low, you face the problem of delayed response. In other words, since the chicken does not respond immediately, buttons are often pressed multiple times, which causes mixed messages sent to your poultry avatar. Although there is no one correct setting (and one should experiment with settings if one feels like mastering a cheeky arcade section of an arcane video game), values close to 6 and slower generally work well.

2. Controls

Possibly the biggest problem comes from the intuitive reaction to hold the Up key (after all, in most arcade games those controls would be expected). However, as Astro Chicken information screen tells you, Up Arrow toggles flapping. Thus, the best way to succeed is to hit it once and wait for the chicken to cease descent before pressing it again.

3. Death

The game gives you more feed than necessary to land every chicken. The reason why death occurs is because the game is buggy, and oftentimes chickens will proceed to bounce up and down on the platform in a quick succession until death. The general consensus is that this is a bug in the game and can not be avoided, although it does not happen often enough to get in the way of landing 10 chickens with just one buckazoid.