Unlike the profound thought process I had for DKC3, this Returning the Rentals is going to be short and sweet because both of these games are just ports of Arcade games from the 80s. Fun fact: Flicky first came out in NA and EU on the 91 Genesis port when the original arcade game was 84.
Road Runner has a lot of th Atari 80s arcade game DNA going for it: simple gameplay loop, goes on forever, very small amount of unique stages and relies on new items and increased difficulty on every loop for some illusion of uniqueness. Like many arcade games of the era you learn it in 30 seconds: run to the left, collect bird seed so your seed meter doesn't drop, and avoid Wile. Despite the fact that this cartoon bird is known for their super speed and constantly foiling Wile's plans for bird dinner, if you scroll Wile off the screen (very easy to do), he comes back on rocket skates and you gotta dance around him to not get hauled off screen by the throat. So despite having speed you have to manage it so your life doesn't get difficult, and this still applies when Wile goes splat from a stage hazard, which you can bait him into and honestly it's hilarious. The game only has four unique stages and when you reach stage 5 it adds in land mines and increased stage hazards to deal with; this meant by the criteria of my project I was done with it in about 25 minutes. Overall this game is indeed a NES port of a middle of the road (runner) Arcade game, so take that as you will.
Filckys gameplay loop you learn faster than Road Runners: collect the chicks, bring them to the exit while avoiding the Tigers and soon Iggys, beat the stage. Close to ten seconds for this one, literally; you get bonus points based on your speed and if you take over a minute to beat the stage you get no bonus points. If you deliver all the Chicks at once then you get a bigger bonus but if an enemy touches your Chick conga line then you gotta go pick them back up. Anyone who has played Sonic 3D Blast is now calculating 1+1 in their heads and now know the origin of 3D Blasts gameplay loop. Flicky can pick up object that can be thrown into enemies to take them out of play for a small bit, but you cannot jump with the object since launching it is tied to your jump button, which is every button. There are 48 unique stages here so you get some variety but I feel most are gonna bounce off Flicky since the gameplay loop has no real variety and the thirty second music loop will drive you mad. If you're looking for a new arcade game to master and the above issues mean nothing to you then I can reccomend Flicky for your next challenge!
Both of these games very much are arcade game ports, for all good and ill that comes with that. Can I reccomend these? Hard to say really since I feel like taste is far more subjective when it comes to arcade games, but I can at least reccomend playing both for five minutes and seeing if they stick.