Licensed video games live in particular infamy. Usually these are pushed off on to the worst developers who put forth even less effort than they typically do. While there are instances that defy this standard hardcore gamers have long been trained to avoid these titles. Usually licenses cover television shows and movies, but what happens when one focuses on the most famous fast food chain restaurant of all time? Well, let’s just say that I didn’t have much hope. This is another one of those games that my little brother rented and later purchased on a whim. What surprised me is that title, M.C. Kids, turned out to be one of my favorite platformers on the Nintendo Entertainment System. You might think I’m joking, but I assure you that the developers were forward thinking and this release was actually ahead of its time. The license bogs it down, and the late release date (the Super Nintendo was already in full swing) certainly didn’t help either.
Surprisingly Ronald McDonald isn’t the star of this adventure. You instead play as one of two children; either Mick or Mack. Their adventure begins one evening while reading a book about the franchise star clown. Ronald is depicted showing off his shiny new magical bag at a picnic when all of a sudden it’s stolen by the Hamburglar. I thought he only stole hamburgers? Well, no matter. The two children (or M.C. Kids) are personally asked by Ronald to retrieve his stolen property, but first for some unexplained reason they must gather four puzzle cards in order to move on to Birdie’s territory which brings them one step closer to the culprit. The whole process repeats itself with you meeting a new character who requests puzzle cards before allowing you to move on to the next area. At the end you face off against the magic bag itself. The story is laughable, but to its credit there is dialogue to carry it along. M.C. Kids is for the most part a traditional side scrolling game. In typical fashion you move left, right and can jump. Rather than hopping on enemies heads to defeat them you instead picks up blocks and other objects and can throw them at foes.
One thing that’s a little disappointing is that there are no real power-ups. You collect arches and for every one hundred you gain an extra life. Your health is measured by four hearts at the top of the screen that deplete with all damage you take, and unlike in other similar games you cannot swim and so falling into water is the same as dropping down a bottomless pit; you lose a life. Each world has its own map that you use to navigate to the various stages. What’s cool is the fact that you can bypass many of them should you choose to, and you don’t simply move on to the next world by completing all of the levels. Your goal is instead to gather the magical cards and return them to the franchise based character. This is a unique style of progression for the time, and it really reminds me of later hits like Super Mario 64. The cards are well hidden in every level. In the beginning these are mostly just off-screen and can be found by simply jumping to higher platforms. As the adventure progresses these become downright tricky to find. The developers were very creative with their locations, and I absolutely love the amount of care that went into this aspect.
What makes up for the limited number of power-ups are all of the creative gameplay mechanics in place here. One in particular allows you to reverse gravity for your character. Usually something like this is disorienting, but in this situation the developers took this opportunity to make some truly multi-tiered stage designs. There’s an abundance of bounce platforms here, and in many cases you can use these to jump even higher when you can weigh it down further by holding a block. You’ll even have to use this mechanic while gravity is reversed, and it allows for some trickier platforming especially while upside down. Some stages feature outlines of blocks that move in specific patterns, and you need to find a particular block to place within them in order to activate it as a platform. Furthermore you also have rafts that get you across stretches of water (complete with fish coming after you requiring you to jump to dodge them), and other modes of transportation that are pretty interesting. It may sound like there’s a lot going on here, and there really is, but in other games you’ll find that too many mechanics can be muddle the experience. That’s definitely not the case here because they instead work together to keep the experience fresh. While the game starts off leisurely the last leg of it is a true test of skill, reflexes and accuracy. It’s almost too hard.
M.C. Kids doesn’t push the hardware in any particular way, but it’s a decent enough looking game. The characters are fairly detailed but their animations aren’t particularly impressive. They’re serviceable, but by no means impressive. In addition the backgrounds tend to be a little on the plain side. They’re usually a single color populated with small designs. The foreground is far more impressive with nice looking terrain and objects. One thing that’s surprising is the fact that the title doesn’t harp on the McDonalds license. The characters are recognizable, but during gameplay the only real indications are the golden arches and McDonalds cards. This leads me to think that the developers should have gone with an original concept because this is barely recognizable as something from the house of Ronald. The most impressive part of this engine is that there’s very little slowdown and flickering compared to the vast majority of NES titles. The soundtrack is really well done, but once again, contains little to no McDonalds references. It’s all light hearted and bouncy. The music fits the game well, but it’s not particularly amazing or memorable.
This is one of my favorite platforming games on the NES. It probably would have gotten more attention but the license really holds it back. I mean, how many people (even in their youth) would have picked this one up based on the cover alone? Yeah, I thought so. M.C. Kids was ahead of its time and introduced a lot of unique elements without bogging the experience down with gimmickry. Given the fact that this is a licensed release it’s unlikely to be released digitally, and you’ll need to seek out an original cartridge to experience it.
