M.C. Kids
- Brand
- McDonald's
- Year
- 1992
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- In-Game
- Agency
- Virgin Games
- Added
- October 2026
- 1
At the title screen, moving the character off the left or right edge selects one-player or two-player mode; single-player starts by choosing Mick or Mack, two near-identical kids who differ only in skin tone and hair. A storybook intro shows Ronald McDonald's magic bag stolen by the Hamburglar at a picnic, setting up the quest.
- 2
Progress is tracked on a map of the current land, showing levels and how many puzzle-piece cards are needed to advance; a large jigsaw fills in at the top of the screen as pieces are found, and cleared levels can be replayed to hunt for cards missed the first time.
- 3
Levels are side-scrolling platforming stages: the player runs, crouches, and jumps, with a crouch beforehand or a running start adding height and distance to jumps. Enemies are never stomped; instead the player picks up and throws blocks at them, with the direction of pickup and throw changing arc and distance.
- 4
Health is four characters in reserve, each with three hearts; touching an enemy costs a heart and grants brief flashing invincibility. Hearts are restored by landing a multi-enemy block throw, chaining ten enemy defeats, or finding 1-UP items, capped at four hearts.
- 5
The core objective per level is collecting golden arches and searching for hidden puzzle cards in plain sight, off-screen, on upper platforms, and in secret spots; cards can carry over between lands, and a complete set unlocks bonuses. Collecting 100 arches sends the player into a lift-climbing bonus stage that awards a 1-UP for reaching the top.
- 6
Levels are laced with gimmick obstacles: teleporting zippers paired with level-resetting reversers, speed-triggered spinners that flip gravity onto the ceiling, a character-swapping 'Mick Mack'er' (also toggled via pause menu), weight-sensitive trampolines, block-filled platform outlines, and terrain hazards like lava-floating porous blocks, diggable sand, snowball-loading snowdrifts, and crumbling bone platforms.
- 7
Water is instantly fatal to touch directly, so players throw down a boat to ride across it (carryable on land) while dodging the enemy Gnash; bridges and lifts form their own hazards, including breakable ice and fire bridges, crumbling floor bridges, lifts that only run while occupied or loop continuously, reversed-control conveyor lifts, and cloud platforms that rise toward bonuses.
- 8
Each level ends on a rope swing toward a spinning golden arch, with the bonus scored by how far right the landing is, and the furthest arch rewarding a 'magic brick' needed for the final stage. When cards fall short, players consult the land's mascot (Ronald, Birdie, Grimace, the Professor, or Mayor McCheese), who gates progress behind a required card count and advances the story through five increasingly exotic lands culminating in a volcano showdown.
- 9
The volcano stage leads to a boss fight against the living magic bag, which attacks with a flag, a wand, and a rabbit pulled from a hat; defeating it returns the bag to Ronald for the ending, and running out of characters lets the player resume from their last save point via START. Two-player mode has participants alternate turns, and a post-ending second campaign challenges players to find every remaining hidden card across completed levels for 100% completion.
Objective
In the early 1990s, the Children's Television Act curbed direct marketing to kids on American TV, pushing snack and fast-food brands toward video games as a far less regulated channel. McDonald's used the move to extend McDonaldland from advertising into a world kids could inhabit for hours rather than seconds, putting Ronald, Hamburglar, Birdie, Grimace and the Professor into a retail cartridge that landed on game-magazine covers — attention no ad buy could match. The restaurant itself was deliberately left out, so the game read as entertainment rather than a commercial.
Solution
Players guide Mick and Mack across a map of McDonaldland rendered as proper platformer terrain: grassy fields around Ronald's clubhouse, clouds and mountains at Birdie's place, cliffs and a waterfall at Grimace's, the Professor's workshop, CosMc's moon caves, and Hamburglar's volcano. Along the way they pick up and throw blocks at enemies, flip gravity with a spinner pad, warp through zipper teleports, and either ride or carry a boat depending on the obstacle. Collecting Golden Arches builds toward bonus stages at 100 coins, while puzzle-piece cards unlock progress and a mascot grants passage to the next land. A level ends when the kids clear its final area and move on to the next themed world, working toward recovering Ronald's stolen magic bag from Hamburglar.
Can you still play it?
There's no official way to play M.C. Kids today: it has never been re-released on modern stores or consoles. It survives through the Internet Archive, which runs the NES version in your browser and also preserves the DOS release. Original cartridges still circulate on the secondhand market.
