The concept of using a video game to promote the Johnnie Walker brand was originally thought up by another advertising agency, Hamburg-based Vorwerk & Buchholz, in 1997.

[3] A prototype of the game that would later be turned into The Original Crazy Chicken Hunt was shown off by Witan Studios at the Bizarre 98 demo party in summer of 1998 as KippenSchieten.

[3] The publisher's initial irritation at this subsided after the game received favorable mentions in popular media and demand for it grew.

[3] It became wildly popular in German-speaking Europe, to the point of being described by various media outlets as a threat to the bottom line of businesses, on account of the number of hours wasted by employees playing the game due its ease of accessibility and shareability (the original game only had a file size of approximately 2 MB, meaning it could be sent via email).

[4] The development studio and IP owner of the franchise went public in late 1999 at the height of the dot-com bubble and attained a market value of up to one billion Euro.

[5] Scheer would subsequently leave the video game industry and turn to politics instead, allegedly becoming a puppet master of the far-right AfD party in North Rhine-Westphalia, until founding Bündnis Deutschland in 2022.

[citation needed] In 2001, a total of 26 one-minute animated shorts were produced, which were shown in commercial breaks of German TV stations.

For example, while the official PC release of Crazy Chicken 2 (retailing at a MSRP of 20 Mark) has sold over 300,000 copies,[96] on launch day, a free version was reportedly downloaded 180,000 times per hour; a rate high enough to completely crash some of Germany's main IXPs in Frankfurt and Hamburg.

[98] Shortly after its inception, critics have generally regarded the franchise's mainline games as positive experiences, with later entries slowly faring progressively worse.

Several media outlets have complimented Crazy Chicken's accessibility, both in gameplay and hardware requirements, while retaining its graphical appeal.

However, the quantity of games, especially during the 2000s, has led to some review outlets expressing concerns regarding the franchise's "monotony",[99] citing even minor changes such as the introduction of motion controls as making certain entries "a lot more fun than [their] predecessors".

[1][111] By the early 2000s, Crazy Chicken was found to be the most popular video game franchise with children in Germany; ahead of Pokémon, Tomb Raider and The Settlers.

[113] Examples of this include the purchase and continuation of the Moorhuhn World forums in 2001 by Phenomedia, as well using the franchise's official website for the collection and publication of high scores[114] and fan art[115] (for which there would also be contests with giveaways).

[118] In 2000, employees playing Crazy Chicken 2 in the workplace alone was estimated to cost German companies about 135 million Mark per year.

[120][121][122] Several developers attempted to leech off the franchise's success by creating video games adopting either part of the Moorhuhn naming conventions (such as Die Rache der Moorhühner, Die Rache der Sumpfhühner or Digitale Hühnerjagd)[123] or recreating its chicken-based shooting gallery gameplay (such as Chicken Shoot,[124] Rauchende Colts,[125] or Chicken Blaster[126]).