Happy Birthday, Grimace: McDonald’s Randomly Drops a Brand New Adventure for GameBoy Color
McDonald’s revives your childhood in a really unexpected way. Game Boy Color presents Grimmace’s Birthday!
The Game Boy is history’s first popular handheld gaming device and was released in 1989 in Japan and then in 1990 in the West. It was sold like crazy and eventually was followed up with multiple versions like the Game Boy Pocket in 1996 and then the Game Boy Color in 1998.
It was the first time the games could be in something other than black and white or basically green on the original Game Boy. It had tons of games and was discontinued in 2003 with the last official cartridge sold in the US being in 2002. Well, it looks like the Game Boy Color is still alive in interesting ways.
Sometimes when it’s quiet, you can still here the jingle.
The Purple Friend With a Shake
McDonald’s is celebrating one of the original mascot’s birthdays and officially released a brand new game that uses the Game Boy Color tech. Developed by a team called Krool Toys, Grimace’s Birthday is playable now here!
“Grimace, the McDonaldland tastebud (according to the McDonalds Twitter apparently) goes across town to round up his McDonaldland pals: the Hamburglar, Birdie the Early Bird, and the McNugget Buddies; in order to properly celebrate his birthday party at his favorite local McDonalds restaurant.”
via Grimace’s Birthday.com
What is crazy about it is that the game’s ROM was also officially released on Archive.org and is compatible with any GameBoy emulator. If you are brave enough, you could also load it onto a GameBoy cartridge to play on
it’s pretty good pic.twitter.com/Fd9kdZ70Xw
— zellypizzelle (@zellypizzelle) June 13, 2023
There are also plenty of emulation machines that mimic the Game Boy as well if you don’t want to go too overboard.
The Gameplay
The game is about Grimace needing to collect shakes and find his friends to celebrate his birthday. The player rides a skateboard and grinds on pipes to avoid obstacles and collects all the shakes to make sure he has enough to share with his friends.
via Archive.Org
I played a bit of it on a computer and it controls really well even on a keyboard. The player is timed and the best way to make sure you don’t run out of time is simply time jumping over stuff and do your best to get the shakes without having to turn around too much.
via McDonald’s
The celebration of Grimace’s Birthday also has a limited-time meal that started up on June 12 that has a shake called the Grimace Birthday Shake. The mascots have been missing for some time, so it’s actually very surprising to see them celebrated again. Especially with a brand-new video game.
Video games and fast food mascots are no strangers. Back in 2006, Microsoft teamed up with Burger King to make a couple of games you could buy and play on Xbox starring The Burger King mascot. This is only different in that you can’t actually buy a copy from McDonald’s.
Well, corporate marketing stunts tend to fail at capturing an internet audience usually but I have to commend McDonald’s for doing something genuinely special.
“Remember, guys real champs eat at McDonald’s. I’m lovin’ it. Can I get the check?” – Fake Donovan Mc
