You probably wouldn’t think of McDonald’s if you’re asked to guess which company would release a retro game this year. But yes, the fast food giant did indeed launch a 2D retro game seemingly in the style of Game Boy Color, and it’s all in celebration of Grimace’s 52nd birthday. The company teamed up with Krool Toys to develop the platformer that you can play on a modern PC or a mobile device. In it, you control Grimace on a skateboard as he searches for his missing friends — and collect enough milkshake for all his guests — before his birthday party begins.
While I fumbled a bit trying to control the purple mascot as he jumped over obstacles and slid across hand rails, I could only blame my own clumsy handling of the game’s controls. The game worked smoothly on a computer, and you can even expand the screen if you don’t mind getting blurry graphics, which truly do look like they were created for Nintendo’s old handheld. The game was most likely created using a drag-and-drop tool for Nintendo handheld games called GB Studio. Indie developers like Krool have been using the program to create retro games, because doing so from scratch is typically very time- and resource-consuming. As a nice nostalgia-inducing bonus, even the website for the game is a throwback to the era marked by colorful and busy Angelfire, Lycos and Geocities web pages.
McDonald’s only officially released Grimace’s Birthday as a fun little game you can play on PC and mobile, but people were quickly able to find and share a copy you can download. While it’s not an official release, it will allow you to play the game on a Game Boy emulator in case have one.
