It has the graphics of Super Mario Bros. ™ for the NES. It has the lag time and bugs of Doom.™ And, oh yeah, it’s extremely difficult.

So then, why is this app so popular? What is it about Flappy Bird that people love so much?

The answer: No one knows…

The game is quite simple. Tap the screen or click the mouse to flap the bird’s wings. Go as far as you can without making contact with either the pipes or the ground.

You get a point for each set of pipes you pass. As far as achievements are concerned, there are four possible medals that can be earned.

The bronze medal is earned after 10 points and is the easiest to accomplish.

The silver medal is earned after 20 points and is a lot harder to achieve.

The gold medal is earned after 30 points and really is difficult to get for most people.

The platinum medal is awarded to the few souls who actually reach 40 points or more.

To be frank, the game is hard. The glitches and bugs that are everywhere can get extremely frustrating. The average person, who plays the game regularly, can expect a high score of somewhere between 25-40.

A good strategy to conquering the madness that is Flappy Bird is to remain calm and get into a rhythm. Always get as close to the bottom pipe and/or ground as possible. But, with the lag time from the ads and buggy graphics, most of it is luck.

Looking at the all-time leader board, scores in the billions are common. Now, these scores must be taken with a grain of salt, as there are numerous glitches and cheats to physically change the high score.

One cheat even removes the pipes, as long as the bird remains high in the air. There is also a way to actually enter whatever score the person wants into the source code, which explains some of the more outrageously high scores.

At least for most addicted users, the thrill of competition to beat your high score is addicting in itself. Usually, those who are good at it love the game, and those who are bad at it hate the game.

Also worth mentioning, there is a severely sharp learning curve to Flappy Bird. It takes at least 5-10 times playing before getting a high score past 10.

The creator of the game made headlines on Sunday when he took the game down from both the App Store and the Google Play Store, but users could still play it on their devices if it was already downloaded.

So, with only those who got Flappy Bird while they could, the addiction grows even still with crazed users wasting hours upon hours trying to one-up their best score.

Either you love it or you hate it, and, well, the haters play it just as much as the lovers. Whether it is by spite or envy, they all play this awkward mess of a game called Flappy Bird.