Flappy Bird returns … but only to Amazon's Fire TV

I believe it was R&B superstar Aaliyah who said, “If at first you don’t succeed, press retry and flap again.” Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen has followed that advice.

Nguyen has brought his aeronautically challenged avian back months after removing the game from the iOS and Google Play app markets. Flappy Bird Family is a sequel to the original that once again challenges players to guide the clumsy bird to dodge green pipes as well as ghosts. But wait! Don’t go and boot up your iPhone or Android device and start looking for Nguyen’s latest creation because it is only available on the Amazon Fire TV platform. You can’t get it in the App Store or Google Play. Hell, you can’t even get it for the Amazon Fire Phone or Kindle Fire.

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You might wonder why the game is only on Amazon’s Android-based microconsole, but let’s have Nguyen’s product description explain it.

“Flappy Birds now are on Amazon Fire TV with incredible new features: Person vs Person mode, more obstacles, more fun, and still very hard,” reads the Flappy Bird Family description on the Amazon Appstore. “Enjoy playing the game at home — not breaking your TV — with your family and friends.”

Yes. Flappy Bird now has a multiplayer mode. Players can play head-to-head to see who can go the farthest. This sounds like the start of a dangerous drinking game. This gametype has two players competing on the same screen side-by-side, which works best on a television.

In addition to the multiplayer, Flappy Bird Family also enables players to share their scores with friends.

Flappy Bird broke on the gaming scene earlier this year seemingly out of nowhere. Gamers quickly took to its simple mechanics and brutal difficulty. Reports claimed the game was making around $50,000 a day in advertising. In February, after an avalanche of media coverage and attention on social networks, Nguyen pulled the game. He first claimed he was pulling it because it “ruined” his “simple life.” A few days later, he claimed he was pulling the game because it is “too addictive.”

After saying it is “gone forever,” Nguyen is now bringing it back. Now, it’s up to the brave Fire TV owners to tell us if it’s just as addictive as original.