People Play Games #2: M.C. Kids

Welcome back to “People Play Games”, where we take a closer look at subgenres of old video games. In our first installment, we discussed John Elway’s Quarterback and awful sports games that signed superstar athletes to be their pitchmen. Today, we’ll talk about video games with ridiculous commercial sponsorship through the prism of M.C. Kids, a 1992 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) release.

You see, it wasn’t enough for McDonald’s that every child emerges from the womb crying for a Happy Meal. Though already unavoidable and ubiquitous, McDonald’s decided to enter into the video game market, trying to gain headway into that elusive “children who play video games but are ambivalent towards McDonald’s” demographic. To do this, they tapped Virgin Interactive, a company best known for its chain of record stores and its flamboyantly rich thrill seeking chairman.

The result was M.C. Kids, a McDonald’s-themed game where two children team up to save Ronald McDonald’s house, or something. I’ll let Wikipedia explain:

“The game is loosely based on the McDonald’s fast-food franchise and features two teenagers that venture into the McDonald’s fantasy world ‘McDonaldland’ in order to return Ronald McDonald’s magical bag, which has been stolen by the Hamburglar.”

“Loosely based” might be a tepid choice of words considering that the plot revolves around the misdeeds of the Hamburglar. Nonetheless, I was excited to jump right into M.C. Kids after reading that description, and I held out hope that the Grimace would also make an appearance.

Sadly, reading the Wikipedia plot description and watching the opening extrapolation were about as much fun as I had playing M.C. Kids. You control a wide-eyed, McDonald’s-loving full-blooded American through various forest levels, avoiding the attacks of rambunctious raccoons and spiders. Each level plays like a warmed-over Super Mario Bros. 3, if you subtract the ingenuity and charm of that game by 100%. There was an objective of some kind in each level (something having to do with Ronald’s “magical bag”), but I was successfully able to run as fast as I could through the entire stage without stopping every time. Fun!

Though I would have loved to have seen the Hamburglar, my patience quickly wore thin and I had to turn the fucking thing off. I’d imagine the majority of America’s children did much the same eighteen years ago. Unfortunately, the awfulness of the game and the shamelessness of its message didn’t stop other food and drink companies from releasing various games for the NES, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis in the early 90s. 7-Up (Cool Spot, that red dot with sunglasses that no one remembers), Domino’s (Yo! Noid) and Cheetos (Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest) all released video games hoping that kids would be so dumb that they’d play these games and then immediately purchase the products they hawked. Judging by the dearth of video games based on Papa John’s or Diet Coke these days, I’d like to think we were smart enough to think for ourselves. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m dying for a McFlurry.

John Lacey