McDonald’s Releases Game Boy Color Game For Grimace’s Birthday

McDonald's

Don’t know where the skateboard comes in, but whatever.

Those familiar with McDonaldland know about Grimace. Starting off as a villain, Grimace lost his two extra arms which apparently held all of his evil (he presumably lost them in a freak chainsaw juggling accident) and has spent the rest of his 52 years of existence as one of Ronald’s friends. And in celebration of that, McDonalds is throwing a big birthday bash for the big purple… you know, I have no idea what the hell Grimace is, but he’s fuzzy and purple.

And as part of that celebration, McDonald’s has put out a few limited items, like the “Grimace’s Birthday Meal” which comes with a Big Mac, fries, and a purple milkshake. But they’ve also put out a whole Game Boy Color game, titled Grimace’s Birthday.

in Grimace’s Birthday, you have to get to the end of the level within the time limit, performing as many sick kickflips as you can, as well as collecting all of the purple milkshakes you can get your purple mitts on. The game was made in GB Studio by Krool Toys and Gumpy Function (Tom Lockwood). Also, I just have to say, the site for the game is a masterpiece.

McDonalds
McDonald’s, Krool Toys
McDonalds
McDonald’s, Krool Toys

Right now, you can play Grimace’s Birthday via its site on both desktop and mobile. That said, the internet is the internet, and somehow someone got a hold of the ROM, uploading it to the Internet Archive. Since it was made in GB Studio, not only will it run on most emulators and things like MiSTer FPGA devices, it will also run on original hardware. If you stick it on a flash device or load it onto repro cart, it will run on genuine Game Boy Color hardware.

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Specifically on Game Boy color; it actually won’t run on non-color devices like the DMG or Pocket Game Boys, and it has a screen to tell you so. More importantly, if you want to play it via emulators or the like, you’ll have to alter the extension; it comes as a .gb file, which most things will try to run as a standard Game Boy game. You need to rename the extension to .gbc for most of these devices.

It’s genuinely a surprise to see the McDonaldland characters in such a large marketing thing again, as they’ve been absent from McDonald’s commercials for quite some time. Well, aside from some Happy Meal items. Regardless, as far as Game Boy Games go, Grimace’s Birthday goes pretty hard, so definitely give it a shot.

Source: Gizmodo

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B. Simmons

Based out of Glendale California, Bryan is a GAMbIT's resident gaming contributor. Specializing in PC and portable gaming, you can find Bryan on his 3DS playing Monster Hunter or at one of the various conventions throughout the state.

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