M.C. Kids

"Quite a challenging game, hidden by a McDonald's theme"

Back in 1991, I went to the video store to rent a NES game. They were out of most of the games I wanted and had a ton of games I already owned, so I picked this one up just to have a look at it. Even back then I knew not to expect much from little kiddie games. I stick it in my NES, and end up playing for a good three hours. This was the first video game I can remember that I was surprised at how good it was.

Sound: 5/10
The sound effects on the NES are never great. They can usually range from gut-wrenchingly annoying to tolerable. In M.C. Kids, the sound effects are tolerable. Mostly they are just beeps and blips, with the jumping noise being the only unique sound effect in the game.

Music: 3/10
Most of the music sounds like the same song over and over. In every level, they take the same song and tweak it just a little bit. If they used different beep tones rather then just the one, definite beep, the music certainly could have had more variety to it. As it is, though, you wouldn't want to buy the sound track of this one.

Graphics: 7/10
The graphics for this one are not bad at all. I've complained in other reviews that the graphics are to bright and colorful. But in M.C. Kids, bright and colorful graphics work because they suit the game's tone. This is in essence a game meant for kids. The character sprites and levels all look very smooth, and it doesn't glitch up when they move to fast. The only place the animation was lacking was during the cut-scenes where your character is facing a McDonalds character. The McDonald's characters look very smudged for whatever reason. Since there is no motion during these sequences, I guess the animators got lazy.

Gameplay: 10/10
If Virgin had put this under a theme of a unique game, rather then a tool to promote McDonald's, then it no doubt would have had a better success. This is the kind of pure gaming fun that makes me love the NES to this day. The game starts out seeming really easy, with the cards you must find in put very obvious places. But as you progress, you soon realize that it doesn't remain that way. The levels get more mazes and puzzles, the cards get harder to find, and fake cards are placed through out. This means that you must go and find every card, because there is no way of knowing which card is real or fake. The bonus levels get very hard to reach as well.

Rent/buy/download?
Buy it or download it. Don't be turned off by the kiddie graphics or the McDonald's theme. Place it for a good while, and if you truly enjoy a fun game, you'll grow to love this one as well.

Overall: 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/19/03, Updated 06/30/03