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McDonald's just dropped a brand new Game Boy game
- whos564 3y ago[dead]
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- OceusMMXII 3y agoWhen can we expect a sequel to Pepsi Man?
- WhiteRice 3y agoI adore this, handheld gaming and fast food company marketing check so many nostalgia boxes for me. The accompanying website is a blast from the past too, https://grimacesbirthday.com/ https://grimacesbirthday.com/
- 634636346 3y agoHow many Funkos do you own?
- schlauerfox 3y agoThey immediately broke the nostalgia spell when they used 'smh' in the opening game, that was like hitting a brick wall of anachronism. Neat effort though. Glad someone got paid to make it.
- bovermyer 3y agoThat's delightful. I needed a bit of levity in the wake of the latest AWS meltdown.
- tomcam 3y agoA proton and a neutron walk into a bar and order beers. Bartender says to the proton, "That be $10." He turns to the neutron and says "For you, no charge."
- xxpor 3y agoI'm kind of shocked the physical tooling exists to make a Game Boy cartridge and chips more than anything else.
- hbn 3y agoThey didn't actually do that, it seems to just be a ROM release. Though they could have. Limited Run Games does Gameboy cartridges. I'm not sure what kind of tooling they use for it though.
- chrisco255 3y agoYou can buy flashable game boy cartridges on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gameboy-flash-cartridge/s?k=gameboy+flash+cartridge https://www.amazon.com/gameboy-flash-cartridge/s?k=gameboy+f...
- reaperducer 3y agoI'm kind of shocked the physical tooling exists to make a Game Boy cartridge and chips more than anything else. You can get brand new Atari 2600 cartridges in boxes and everything. Though, I think the shells are actually scavenged from old games.
- ryanmercer 3y ago>You can get brand new Atari 2600 cartridges in boxes and everything. Yup, new titles still being made. There's even Halo for the 2600. Tons of titles currently being manufactured for a lot of vintage consoles/computers: https://atariage.com/store/ https://atariage.com/store/
- RobotToaster 3y agoThe cartridges were mostly just a rom chip on a PCB. Some had RAM and/or a simple bank controller.
- retrac 3y agoFor the Atari 2600, Game Boy, etc., the first cartridges were nothing more than a ROM chip on a printed circuit board. Later games sometimes included a lot more functionality on the cartridge (battery-backed save RAM, bank switching hardware, etc.) which does make things complicated very quickly. Today, programmable logic is sometimes used to replace old custom IC designs used in cartridges, or to design something new. For games more complicated than a simple ROM chip, the Game Boy presents an interesting challenge: the cartridge is both very small and it needs to be able to run off battery power. That excludes using both a high-power-consumption modern SoC or FPGA, or using lots of discrete logic. But if it'll fit in 32 KB, it's 3D print a case, order a PCB, and program a standard Flash chip.
- hbn 3y agoThat would have been cool if they did a run of physical cartridges, with the box and everything. Limited Run Games does runs of physical Gameboy cartridges still. They have to restyle things to not have Nintendo branding, but it can be done.
- mattl 3y agoCurious which technique they use to bypass the Nintendo logo on boot
- mortenjorck 3y agoEither it's in the console ROM, in which case it's not a problem, or it's in the cartridge ROM, in which case I'd imagine it's just a matter of replacing the raster data with something else.
- mattl 3y agoYeah demoscene has a few hacks to get around the checks.
- londons_explore 3y agoIt's in the game, but the console famously checks that the code for the logo is present, and refuses to run any game which doesn't have the code in place. It was used as a way to prevent anyone unauthorized making games. If you copy the logo, you have violated trademark and copyright law, and if you don't copy the logo, your game won't run. Detail here: https://catskull.net/gameboy-boot-screen-logo.html https://catskull.net/gameboy-boot-screen-logo.html
- ant6n 3y agoIf I remember correctly, the ROM gets read once to check, and then again to display. One could use some circuitry to deliver another logo on the second read.
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- hospitalJail 3y ago>Just be sure to order some McDonald’s to support them. Who knows… if we keep eating McDonald’s, they might keep producing these oddball retro gaming related projects. >I, for one, will NEVER stop eating McDonald’s. You have my word. Uh... hail marketing! Nothing quite like getting nostalgia exploited for corporate profits. But hey, its important to support... uh... 'retro gaming?'
- hbn 3y agoThe article feels very "teacher set a minimum word requirement on the essay"
- packetlost 3y agoGet used to it, it's probably at least partially generated by ChatGPT which really likes fluffing up the prose.
- bigyikes 3y agoMaybe the author likes retro games and fast food? The anti-corporatism shtick is so lame. Just because something is done by a massive corporation doesn’t make the thing bad. Just because something is an advertisement doesn’t make it bad. I think this is pretty cool. Maybe I’ll buy some McDonalds today too.
- poisonarena 3y ago
- krapp 3y agoRelated: The 10 Year Hunt for the Lost McDonald's DS Game[0] [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e6xOBCAVvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e6xOBCAVvA
- urbandw311er 3y agoTitle is a bit misleading - it’s a ROM for an emulator, it isn’t a game that you could play on an actual Gameboy, were you still to own one.
- circuit10 3y agoYou can if you have a flashcart
- jonny_eh 3y agoYou can burn it to a ROM.
- DanTheManPR 3y agoI just tried the rom out on my flashcart, and it boots and plays on a real gameboy.
- circuit10 3y agoIf it’s only officially playable through an emulator I wonder why didn’t just use a modern game engine to make something in a pixel art style? This is definitely more interesting though
- bityard 3y agoThe article implies it runs on GBC hardware and a few comments on HN here confirm it.
- foldor 3y agoIt gives it enough authenticity to make headlines. A generic html game wouldn't have made any where near the same buzz.
- circuit10 3y agoDo they advertise it as a Game Boy Color game anywhere? I wouldn’t be surprised if they can’t (or rather don’t want to risk it) for trademark reasons Edit: The game page itself doesn’t mention it but the article has information on how it was made and by who so they must have got the information somehow, maybe the developer talked about it
- LukeShu 3y agoThere's an in-game credits screen.
- bongobingo1 3y agoI can't quite tell if this is written by an LLM (and aided by a person, re: the developer is known) or the writing style is just so prolific that LLMs cant help but ape it. I think it's because every sentence is pretty short. These sentences end up being related, and should probably be just one paragraph. The writing style seems to separate everything out, I can say this might be what gives the impression of a LLM gluing parts together! I wonder if they received a McDonalds presser, and I wonder how much of those are still human-in-the-loop.
- jonny_eh 3y agoI can't quite tell if this comment is written by an LLM (and aided by a person) or the writing style is just so prolific that LLMs cant help but ape it. I think it's because every sentence is pretty short. These sentences end up being related, and should probably be just one paragraph. The writing style seems to separate everything out, I can say this might be what gives the impression of a LLM gluing parts together!
- bongobingo1 3y agoYes very funny. The sentence triplet is an intentional play at the articles style, including LLMs over-bright disposition. Thanks for playing though!
- qingcharles 3y agoThis is exactly what an LLM would say. Nice try, Open AI.
- throitallaway 3y agoI call this the Twitter effect. Artificial limitations encourage the use of short and snappy communications. Also, who can be bothered to read through a paragraph today? I live my life one sentence at a time.
- HKH2 3y ago
- jhatemyjob 3y agoI was about to hop in my car and order a happy meal, too bad
- asylteltine 3y agoIt’s clearly a marketing play. They want press and what better way to appeal to gen z and millennials who like vintage hardware or ironic humor
- kibwen 3y agoThe era where "retro" meant "NES" is behind us, now retro means Game Boy Color, PS1, and Quake-era PC aesthetics. To wit, the developers of Shovel Knight (the premier NES platformer homage) are developing a GBC-styled Bloodborne-like called Mina the Hollower: https://www.yachtclubgames.com/games/mina-the-hollower/ https://www.yachtclubgames.com/games/mina-the-hollower/ (though sadly it's not designed to run on original hardware).
- RobotToaster 3y agoI'm pretty sure the PS2 is considered retro now too.
- jonny_eh 3y agoMany in the community, such as the long-running Retronauts podcast, use 10 years as the line when something becomes "retro". By that definition, the PS4 becomes retro later this year.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoI'd even argue that any console that is no longer in production can be considered retro; after all, you're then dependent on secondhand consoles and repairs to be able to play things on them; they have become a finite product.
- bogwog 3y agoThere are Gen Z that played PS3/Xbox 360 when they were children, and are now adults out of college with their own children. I think that's a good measure of "retro", and it would mean PS4 will enter retro status in ~2031.
- a_cardboard_box 3y agoMost modern games could be ported to the PS3 and Xbox 360, keeping gameplay the same but lowering graphical fidelity. The same cannot be said of porting N64 games to the NES. I think a better measure of retro-ness would include the degree to which gameplay experience is influenced by the game's age.
- superdisk 3y agoI wrote the music engine they used in this game... never thought I'd see the day haha :)
- iAmAPencilYo 3y agoThat's pretty cool! Is this a new development or something that was reused from decades ago?
- superdisk 3y agoI built the initial version in late 2019 and have been maintaining it since. It's used by GB Studio which is what this game was made with. https://nickfa.ro/index.php/HUGETracker https://nickfa.ro/index.php/HUGETracker
- esotericsean 3y agoI've been using GPTPlayer with my GBDK project. Is there any benefit to me switching to HUGE?
- superdisk 3y agoThere's a mismatch between GBT Player and the GB hardware due to what can be expressed in the .mod format, meaning GBT is only capable of really beepy sounds (unless you're super good). hUGE gives more control over the hardware since it was made for it (and you can losslessly import GBT .mods). Ultimately though you can use whatever works for you, there are other drivers out there as well.
- jpadif 3y agoThe music sounds particularly awesome, first thing I noticed is how deep the bass sounds given the limitations of the medium. Looks like it is using a separate tone for the initial kick, and then a sweep an octave lower, it really sounds huge. This is the first time hearing a Game Boy game through nice headphones though, so I'm not sure if this is also present in older games.
- bogwog 3y agoThis is definitely the coolest marketing gimmick I've seen in a long time. It kind of makes me want to celebrate MY birthday at a McDonalds lol
- teej 3y agoThe agency who developed the game has a website that nails the Geocities-era aesthetic – https://krooltoys.com/ https://krooltoys.com/
- isiahl 3y agoLove that their logo is an homage to Yahooligans, Yahoo’s old kids web portal. https://web.archive.org/web/20010708042828/http://www.yahooligans.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20010708042828/http://www.yahool...
- ryanmercer 3y agoI love it!
- somat 3y agoThe questions it raises are almost more interesting then the game. Why GBC? Did someone have a canceled but mostly finished mcdonalds game laying around since the late 90's and finally the right person at mcdonalds heard about it and got corporate to let them publish it as a marketing tie in?
- sosodev 3y agoThe article states that the game was made by a member of the gbc homebrew community.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoWhy did they decide to make a retro game and then hire a member of the gbc homebrew community? The choices behind this are interesting. Even after somebody successfully convinced corporate to fund this game it's surprising someone else didn't say "we could do this in Unity for half the price." It really only makes sense to me if someone on the corporate ladder was already a fan of the gbc homebrew community, or close to someone that was.
- pawelmurias 3y agoIf you want something retro is seems a lot easier to just get someone who made a quality homebrew game to make you one rather than search for some generic Unity shop and have them make something good that looks sufficently retro.
- sosodev 3y agoThat's a really interesting point. It's probably much easier for a skilled developer to make a cool, natively retro game with modern tooling. I wonder if there's a future for freelancers in this space?
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- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y agoI was wondering how a newly made Game Boy Color game would be distributed today: > But today, twenty five years after the Game Boy Color was released, we can play Grimace’s Birthday for free on our web browser. > It is unclear if McDonald’s hoped to keep the game locked on their website or if there’s any particular reason they wouldn’t want us to have a ROM. (I would assume something something emulator, something something copyright infringement.) > But needless to say, the internet was very quick to rip the file and share it online. Now I want to track it down so I can tell what's different when I play the inevitable rom hacks.
- facecheekwall 3y agoThat purple shake is so mysterious, it doesn't even have a database entry. "Big Mac®, World Famous Fries® (Medium), undefined"
- i_c_b 3y agoThis isn't even the first legitimately interesting video game connection to McDonalds, weirdly. Treasure is an influential game development studio that did a lot of really interesting work in the mid to late 90s, responsible for games like Gunstar Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, Bangai-o, Silhouette Mirage, Dynamite Headdy, Mischief Makers, Alien Soldier, and others. They were a bunch of ex-Konami developers (who had worked on games like Contra 3, Axelay, Super Castlevania 4, the arcade Simpsons) who were tired of making license games and wanted to make their own original games. A few of their games did well in the market, but they and their particular approach to innovation in action game rule systems has had a much, much bigger impact on other action game developers since. And their very first game when they left Konami and started their own studio, the game they had to make to stay afloat to make Gunstar Heroes, was... a Sega Genesis McDonalds game, the 1993 "McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure". Longplay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNbmJyL872c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNbmJyL872c I've never played it, but it looks really solid and vastly better than it has any right to be.
- GauntletWizard 3y agoDon't forget the legend of the lost Mcdonand's Training DS Game: https://kotaku.com/we-can-all-finally-learn-how-to-make-big-macs-on-ninten-1848347540 https://kotaku.com/we-can-all-finally-learn-how-to-make-big-...
- askiiart 3y agoAnd don't forget Nick Robinson's fantastic mini(?) documentary on it: https://youtu.be/-e6xOBCAVvA https://youtu.be/-e6xOBCAVvA
- shon 3y agoYep, thanks for posting. I have it on my Batocera rig right now. Also let’s not forget about the long tradition of Pepsi video games including the interesting Japanese Pepsiman and the PlayStation release! https://youtu.be/lNF3dBiSH4M https://youtu.be/lNF3dBiSH4M
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- wturner 3y agoIn beginning of the game, the McDonalds logo only appears on a garbage can and if you run into it - you die. It's a positive message for health conscious parents.
- CSMastermind 3y agoBack in college (now 15 years ago) I did an analysis of fast food menus for a nutrition class. McDonalds turned out to be the easiest to get a healthy meal from at the time. They had things like salads, apple slices, and a much wider variety of items than other fast food restaurants meaning that if you were to eat there every day it was much easier to make different healthy meals than it was at the others but like an order of magnitude. Basically just skip the soft drink and only occasionally order the fries and you'll be fine.
- autoexec 3y agoThe last time I tried McDonalds apple slices they somehow tasted like chemicals. I wonder how much of their "healthy" food is actually healthy. You could recreate a lot of their menu at home using fresh/real ingredients and it'd probably be a lot healthier than the stuff they ship all over the country in plastic, pumped full of salt and preservatives, then wrapped in PFAS.
- TMWNN 3y ago>Back in college (now 15 years ago) I did an analysis of fast food menus for a nutrition class. >McDonalds turned out to be the easiest to get a healthy meal from at the time. The McDouble is "The greatest food in human history" <https://nypost.com/2013/07/28/the-greatest-food-in-human-history/ https://nypost.com/2013/07/28/the-greatest-food-in-human-his...)
- thorin 3y agoMcDonalds used to be dirt cheap (in the UK), so you could eat there if you didn't have much money. Now it's pretty expensive if I eat there with my kids I could easily spend £20+. It would be way cheaper for me to buy real food and prepare it at home and their price is getting comparable with REAL pub and restaurant food. Given most of their stuff still tastes like cardboard I only go there when my kids need a fix, despite it being walking distance from my home.
- zemo 3y ago> it was developed using GB Studio yeah a lot of people in this thread seem to be completely unaware of GB Studio's existence, which is funny because a lot of people learn to make games in GB Studio nowadays. The GB Studio scene is pretty active.
- _def 3y agoYeah, I recently got a GB flash cart and it's rally something to download and play an indie game that was just released on your DMG lol.
- schappim 3y agoWhilst there has been mention of the 1993 "McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure", I'm surprised nobody has called out their previously lost DS Game[1]. The game was distributed to McDonald’s locations throughout Japan in 2010 for the training of existing employees[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e6xOBCAVvA&ab_channel=NickRobinson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e6xOBCAVvA&ab_channel=NickR... [2] https://kotaku.com/we-can-all-finally-learn-how-to-make-big-macs-on-ninten-1848347540 https://kotaku.com/we-can-all-finally-learn-how-to-make-big-...
- willis936 3y agoDoes anyone know if I can check which Mcdonald's have these? I have a bit of a retro collection and this would be a cute artifact to add. Oh it isn't a physical cart run. I was curious about the logistics of such a thing. If it were a physical cart I'd like to take a peek inside and see the board.
- geepytee 3y agoThis is some MSCHF level marketing, love it!
- kristopolous 3y agoThe entire project probably cost about as much as a couple months on an urban billboard (around $100,000 or so) and the ROI is probably higher. So this was likely a reasonable investment. You're going to get YouTubers covering it, people doing speed runs, blogs and news aggregators. Good return.
- binji 3y agoThis is using my gameboy emulator, binjgb[0], on the website! (well one of my gameboy emulators, heh [1][2]) It's been used as the emulator for GB Studio for a little while now, but I don't know how often people embed it in their websites, so it's really cool to see. [0] https://github.com/binji/binjgb https://github.com/binji/binjgb [1] https://github.com/binji/pokegb https://github.com/binji/pokegb [2] https://binji.github.io/raw-wasm/badgb/ https://binji.github.io/raw-wasm/badgb/
- nacs 3y agoOnline version using the emulator is here: https://grimacesbirthday.com/ https://grimacesbirthday.com/
- polygot 3y agoThe animation when grimace wipes out is mildly amusing
- hackernewds 3y agodo you get compensated for use?
- binji 3y agonah, people can do whatever they want with it :)
- j-kent 3y agoPoor Ronald, not even invited to Grimace’s party. IT really did a number on Mcdonald’s branding.
- tjohns 3y agoLooking at the grimacesbirthday.com, I'm trying to figure out someone extracted a GameBoy ROM from that page. It looks like everything is implemented inside a WASM blob, containing what looks like binjgb (based on the strings). I'm assuming the game itself is also included in the data section at the end of the WASM blob. Are there any good tools for reverse engineering that? (Or am I missing a more obvious way of extracting the ROM?)
- ryandrake 3y agoInteresting. Title: McDonald's dropped a game. Article: McDonald's released a game. Weird that they are saying the opposite. I was initially very confused.
- mcmoor 3y agoThe wonders of English
- danparsonson 3y agoYes, ambiguous - 'dropped' as in 'content drop' (release), not as in 'dropped from the list'.
- TapamN 3y agoDoes this have the Nintendo logo in the ROM header? Real GameBoys check the ROM for an image containing Nintendo's logo during boot up as a way to prevent unlicensed games. The idea is, to make a GMB/GBC boot, you must at least commit trademark infringement, which gives Nintendo more legal leverage to block/punish any attempts to sell anything that Nintendo didn't get a cut of. If the logo is missing, it would still boot on an emulator that doesn't emulate the boot ROM (which is most of them) and probably most flashcarts, so there's no need for it to be in their release. But it's still possible that whatever build system they used automatically inserted the logo. There's no way Nintendo would bother McDonalds legally over something like this if the logo's in there, but I'm still curious if it is.
- philistine 3y agoThere are bugs in the code, which allows you to load on Game Boy without committing trademark infringement. https://tcrf.net/Bugs:Game_Boy_Bootstrap_ROM https://tcrf.net/Bugs:Game_Boy_Bootstrap_ROM
- qingcharles 3y agoNo, they avoided the issue. I was hoping for it. Surely Nintendo would have worked with them to license this; I feel it would be in their interests too.
- toast0 3y agoYour jurisdiction may vary, but under Sega v Accolade [1], I'd expect including the logo to be fair use, as including the trademarked data for Sega's TMSS was. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade
- dools 3y agoPretty rare to see advertorial content/paid placements rank so highly on HN! Someone is popping a celebratory thickshake right now.
- rsiqueira 3y agoThere's an even cooler thing in the page: the McDonald's TETRIS portable game console shaped like Chicken McNuggets. https://retrododo.com/mcdonalds-tetris-handheld/ https://retrododo.com/mcdonalds-tetris-handheld/
- Andrex 3y agoIs legitimate GB publishing making a comeback like I've always dreamed?! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36009454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36009454
- mysterydip 3y agoI know there's articles and comments saying "why", so here's a couple opinions off the top of my head: - retro games cater to the demographic who would know who Grimace is. - it makes news for novelty, if it was just another webgame there probably wouldn't be articles about it - the target platform has virtual machines for every modern OS and the web, so maximum reach. - the target platform has had decades of enthusiast development support, making IDEs and libraries. - the target platform is fixed. No fear of some instruction or device being deprecated during development or in the future. - the devs you could contract this out to would most likely have a depth of knowledge on the system. And any of their portfolio could be evaluated against others in a 1:1 fashion. - It has "just enough" capability to make a game that can entertain a broad audience for the time it needs to. - why not? just some fun.
- ryanmercer 3y agoNeat!
- Evidlo 3y agoDid they release a cartridge, or is the Gamebiy in the article just running on a flash cart?
- 0xGod 3y agoThis may be one of the most amazing marketing moves I’ve ever seen in my life. The day I see this headline is the day I see Grimace’s Birthday on these delicious McNuggets w/ bbq sauce. And these fries, so good. Def in moderation tho.
- whatscooking 3y agoGreat, fast food marketing targeting kids
- buildsjets 3y agoWith vinyl records making a comeback, I expect to receive a flexi-disc copy of “The McDonald’s Song” in my Sunday paper any day now. https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/mcdonalds-million-dollars-vinyl-record/amp/ https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/mcdonalds-million-dollars-vinyl...
- lawrenceyan 3y agoMcDonald's plans to overtake Microsoft and Sony in their ploy to become the future gaming console of choice has been revealed.
- wodenokoto 3y agoI didn't understand from the article how McDonalds is distributing the game. I'm assuming you are not getting a cartridge with your happy meal
- cubefox 3y agoYeah, it's just the ROM file. Actually releasing a physical cartridge as some bonus to a meal would have been cool. I assume the cartridge costs are still too high for that.
- klik99 3y agoI found it funny that the same developer made a game based on the "My Dinner With Andre" joke from Simpsons that complains that you can't make quirky indie games with 1-2 people funded by corporations who just want to drop their IP in: https://gumpyfunction.itch.io/my-dinner-with-andre https://gumpyfunction.itch.io/my-dinner-with-andre Strikingly prescient
- wageslave99 3y agoI'm amazed of this release because, does Nintendo even sell gameboy consoles right now? So are they targeting retro-clone handheld owners or what? What would you say is the best retro-clone handheld console to play Gameboy games?
- somedude895 3y agoThe article is so awful I also had to scour the comments for that question: This is only a gameboy rom they made that's playable through the browser. They're not making any physical cartridges.
- adultSwim 3y agoGreat job! People are clearly enjoying this work.
- tclancy 3y agoFeels like a trend: https://www.techradar.com/news/atari-just-announced-the-first-new-atari-2600-game-in-more-than-30-years https://www.techradar.com/news/atari-just-announced-the-firs...
- egberts1 3y agoWut? No Hamburglar?!