Sneak King / PocketBike Racer / Big Bumpin'
Read the story- Brand
- Burger King
- Year
- 2006
- Objective
- Sales
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- In-Game
- Agency
- Blitz Games
- With
- Microsoft
Objective
Burger King wanted people back inside its restaurants, not just downloading something for free, so the games were sold in stores only, tied to a value meal purchase. It was also a bid to put The King in front of a gaming audience fast food had never reached, using the chain's 7,200 stores as a distribution network Microsoft found hard to pass up. The brief ruled out a cheap advergame with logos everywhere and asked for something players would actually want to play.
Solution
Buy a value meal, add $3.99, and pick a disc — or take all three home at once. Drop it into an Xbox or Xbox 360 and it boots straight up on either console, no setup required. Sneak King has the player creeping through yards and offices, timing their approach to hand a stranger a burger without being seen. PocketBike Racer puts them on a miniature customized bike, racing rivals through tracks built out of Burger King's world. Big Bumpin' drops them into a bumper car, ramming opponents off a platform arena in matches of up to four players on a split screen or eight over Xbox Live. Every location, character, and menu item comes straight from the brand's TV ads, and each session ends the way an arcade round does — level cleared, race won, or knocked out of the ring.
Results
2.5 million copies sold in the first five weeks on sale; more than 2 million units moved in the first four weeks of the promotion by Burger King's own count; over 2.7 million games sold across the full promotion per Crispin Porter + Bogusky; a final tally north of 3.2 million copies sold; time spent playing equated to more than 1.4 billion 30-second commercials by Xbox's usage data; the three titles collectively ranked among the top 10 best-selling games of 2006; and Burger King credited the program with the majority of a 40% jump in quarterly sales.
- 1
The player buys any value meal at a Burger King restaurant between November 19 and December 24, 2006, and is offered one of three console game discs for $3.99 on top of the meal; the disc cannot be bought without food or in a retail store, and a player may take home more than one of the three titles from the same order.
- 2
At home, the player inserts the disc into either an original Xbox or an Xbox 360; both console masters and asset sets sit on the same disc, and the console launches the matching executable automatically, with no version choice made by the player.
- 3
In Sneak King, the player controls The King, Burger King's masked mascot, and picks one of four locations — Saw Mill, Cul-De-Sac, Construction Zone, or Downtown — which opens in a free-play sandbox where the King roams freely while the minimap marks open challenges and all NPCs.
- 4
Each location holds 20 delivery challenges with their own rules; the player finds a hungry NPC, marked by a thought-bubble burger icon and walking a fixed route, then closes in unseen, reading each NPC's narrow vision cone and the King's own noise meter. The player can duck into cover — a trash can, barrel, toilet stall, or bench — and wait for the NPC to pass, since ambushing from cover scores far more than a rear approach, and a delivery counts only if the King strikes from behind or from hiding, since a NPC that spots the King first loses its appetite and can no longer be fed.
- 5
Handing over the food triggers a Flourish meter that fills and drains rapidly; pressing the button near its peak yields a flashier serving animation and more style points. The challenge score combines the NPC's hunger, how stealthily and closely the player approached, the style points, and a chain multiplier for consecutive undetected deliveries, resolving into a letter grade of C, B, or A.
- 6
Clearing half of a location's challenges — 10 of 20 — unlocks the next location, and completed challenges stay replayable in free-play; finishing all 80 challenges across the four maps unlocks an alternate costume for the King, and on Xbox 360 individual achievements and stylish deliveries also award Gamerscore.
- 7
PocketBike Racer puts the player on a miniature motorbike, choosing a racer from Burger King's ad campaign — including Brooke Burke and a giant hamburger — with customizable bikes and riders, then one of five tracks such as a restaurant parking lot, a construction site, a residential block, the King's garden, and the ads' Fantasy Ranch, one of which runs through a drive-thru window. Racing follows a Mario Kart-style loop of collecting and firing weapons at rivals, playable solo, four-player split-screen, or eight-player online over Xbox Live.
- 8
Big Bumpin' puts the player in a bumper car, choosing a character such as The King or the Subservient Chicken, then one of five modes — Own the Puck, Last Man Standing, Power Surge, Shockball, and a 2-on-2 hockey mode with power-ups and weapons — each set on two of five themed arenas for ten arena-and-mode combinations in all. On the arena floor players dodge pits and saw hazards, collect power-ups that deal specific damage types, and ram opponents, with support for up to four local players or eight online over Xbox Live.
- 9
The discs were pulled from Burger King menus when the promotion ended on December 24, 2006, and remaining stock was marked down to $0.99 in February 2007; the three games survive only as physical discs, with no online version to play today.
