The idea for Flicky came from Sega senior leadership, who wanted to exceed the success of Namco's Mappy (1983).

Taking inspiration from a popular song in a Japanese variety show, Kawasaki gave the game an urban theme and bird characters.

The character has made cameo appearances in other Sega games, most notably within the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

With only the ability to run side-to-side and jump, the player must collect all the small, yellow birds called "Chirps" and take them to the exit to clear each round.

Each stage takes place on a single wraparound screen that scrolls horizontally with Flicky always in the center.

[3] The spark to develop Flicky came from Sega's desire to exceed Namco's Mappy (1983) which had become very popular in Japanese arcades.

[4] Flicky was developed over the course of one year and was designed by Yoji Ishii in collaboration with artist Yoshiki Kawasaki.

He took inspiration from a popular song about sparrows on power lines from a 1970s Japanese variety show, Migoro!

However, he found the power line theme boring, and thus changed the background to an apartment building after taking inspiration from one outside his office window.

From this, the team wanted to imbue a message to "protect the children" with the game, and according to Kawasaki, "it's that emotion that drives Flicky".

Kawasaki changed this so the dots trailed the player, then increased their size to 8x8 pixels to make way for a more interesting design.

[2] Flicky was originally titled "Busty", but an American Sega branch asked the team to change it because of the term's slang usage in English.

[1] In July 1984, Game Machine listed Flicky as being the second most popular table arcade unit in Japan during that period.

[11] The Genesis port of Flicky was reviewed by multiple Western publications, most of which found the game to have highly addictive and enjoyable gameplay while criticizing it for having poor graphics and sound.

Reviewers noted poor initial impressions based on appearance and sound, finding the sprites to be simple, the colors garish, and the music repetitive.

[6][10][9][5] Computer and Video Games described Flicky as a guilty pleasure and discussed its cute appearance in positive light.

[17] Flicky has continued to have minor cameo appearances in other Sega titles, including Shenmue (1999), Gunstar Super Heroes (2005), and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (2007).