In 1982’s Fast Food, players were a pair of chomping teeth that devoured burgers, hot dogs and ice cream while avoiding deadly purple pickles.

As video games grew in popularity through the late Seventies and Eighties, it was only a matter of time before fast food companies would take notice and want to get involved.

Here Comes the Noid

The first fast-food tie-in video game was 1989’s Avoid the Noid featuring the Domino’s mascot. In this computer game created by Blue Sky software, the player is a pizza delivery boy who runs, rolls and summersaults his way up a building infested with pizza-destroying Noids.

More well-known is 1990’s Yo! Noid which was actually a reskin of another title: Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru, a ninja-themed platform game developed by the Japanese publisher Capcom. When Capcom got the rights to make a Domino’s Pizza themed game, they merely changed the art of the game’s main character, enemies and background to sell it to American audiences. Ironically, pizza barely appears in Yo! Noid at all!

Food, Folks and Fun

The American fast food chain McDonald’s was already an institution by the time the video game industry started. In 1990, McDonald’s launched a Happy Meal campaign based on Nintendo’s smash-hit game Super Mario 3. A commercial from their “Food, Folks and Fun” campaign featured Ronald McDonald and friends playing a computer game. It was only a matter of time before McDonald’s would make a game of their own.

The first official McDonald’s Game was 1992’s MC Kids. In it, the eponymous kids – Mack and Mick – arrive in McDonaldland to help find Ronald McDonald’s magical bag which has been stolen by the Hamburglar. They collect “golden arches” and encounter several McDonaldland-themed characters. The game was developed in eight months by Virgin Games and was released on almost every platform of the day, including the Game Boy, NES, Amiga and Commodore 64.

The Genesis version of MC Kids, titled Global Gladiators, was designed by future industry super-stars David Perry and Bill Anderson, with music by Tommy Tallarico. The game has a strong pro-environmental theme that aligned with McDonald’s 1990 partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund. Despite its fast-food tie-in theme, Global Gladiators is considered one of the best platform games of the era.

1993’s McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure let players assume the role of McDonald’s mascot Ronald McDonald – who could shoot magic stars and a grappling hook out from his hands as he searched for a missing treasure.

The game is most notable for being developed by the insanely talented Japanese company Treasure; who would go on to create classics such as Gunstar Heroes, Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga. When developing the game, Treasure president Masato Maegawa maintained that Treasure Land Adventure had to remain faithful to the McDonald’s licence and that Ronald be treated with the same respect as they would treat a classic character like Mickey Mouse.

Yo Quiero Videogames

In the early 2000s, Taco Bell released a trio of computer games as a prize for their kid’s meals.

Taco Bell Tasty Temple Challenge was a first-person-shooter, where players were as intrepid Indiana Jones-esque adventurer named Baja Bill who squirts hot sauce into the faces of cobras and scorpions.

Elsewhere, Jumping Bean Jamboree was a Breakout-clone where you bounced a bean to break blocks while in Moon Eater, you were an astronaut who jumps craters and blasts UFOs as you collect bells on the surface of the moon. Hey, it was a kid’s video game, it didn’t need to make sense!

In more recent years, Taco Bell has catered to gamers and the gaming lifestyle through their various promotions featuring Halo Infinite and XBOX. Is it just a matter of time before Halo players can power-up with a cheesy gordita crunch or squirt a packet of fire sauce at a Covenant Trooper?

Games Your Way

In 2006, a trio of tasty Burger King branded games came out for Microsoft XBOX and the XBOX Live Arcade. Developed by Blitz Arcade, these games were considered to be of such high quality that they were also given a physical release.

Pocketbike Racer was a racing game where players rode miniature motorcycles. The game stars E! personality Brooke Burke who also portrayed the “top bun” of the Whopperettes for Burger King’s 2006 Super Bowl commercial.

Big Bumpin’ contained a variety of bumper car games like Last Man Standing, Bumpin’ Hockey, Shock Ball and Power Surge! You competed as and against zany mascots including the King, a chicken, an anthropomorphic hamburger and, again, Brooke Burke.

While Big Bumpin’ was the highest rated of the Burger King games, in my humble opinion, Sneak King was the best. It was a bizarre stealth game where you played as the King who creepily approached NPCs to present them with… a delicious Whopper. It is a truly bizarre game that has become a cult classic.

Game developer Blitz worked intensely with Burger King’s marketing team to make sure that their characters and products were portrayed in a positive light. The team managed to make three playable games in just seven months!

Two million copies of the games were created and thanks to the promotion, Burger King saw a 40% increase in sales during that quarter. The game sold at Burger Kings for just $3.99 a piece. Considering an average video game cost $49.99 back then, it was a great deal for some pretty good games.

Finger Lickin’ Fun

I’d be remiss not to mention the surprise game of 2019, I Love You, Colonel Sanders; a dating sim developed by Psyop and available for free on the Steam platform. In it, a student at a culinary school attempts to win the heart of the hunky Colonel through a combination of romance and recipes. While not particularly well-rated, it did what it needed to do – get gamers to pay attention to KFC’s brand.

Browser-based “advergames” show up from time to time but most recently, fast food marketeers have found a new audience in tabletop gamers.

Arby’s twitter account often references popular board games and Ravensburger’s Taco Bell Party Pack Card Game and Wendy’s Feast of Legends role-playing game bring brands to tabletop gamers in a brand new and clever way.

As long as gamers hunger for fun as well as fast-food, there will be an opportunity for brands to promote themselves!

The post A tasty history of fast food video game tie-ins appeared first on Brands Untapped.

Designed by Scott Rogers, Alien: Fate of the Nostromo is a co-op game that sees players creep around the Nostromo, carrying out tasks while trying to avoid a deadly encounter with the Alien.

We caught up with Scott and Ravenburger North America’s International Marketing Manager, Cassidy Werner to find out more how they approached bringing the iconic movie into board games.

Scott, Cassidy, a huge thanks for making time. Scott, let’s kick off with you. How did you get involved in gaming, because your background is in video games, right?
Scott Rogers, Designer, Alien: Fate of the Nostromo: Yes, but the first games I ever played were board games – I’ve always loved board games. My earliest gaming memories are playing board games like Green Ghost, Barnabus Collins or Voice of the Mummy… Games from the Seventies – I’m old! They were very toyetic games. In Barnabus Collins, you’re assembling a skeleton in a coffin, while in Voice of the Mummy, you’re on a ziggurat and collecting gems while a mummy is throwing curses at you.

That said, I never considered board gaming or video gaming as a career path. I went to college for art and also got a degree in filmmaking, so I thought I’d end up doing special effects or screenwriting. Eventually, I ended up in working in animation and there’s a tradition in animation that every Christmas, they fire everyone. So I was unemployed, but a friend came up to me in a coffee shop – like Lana Turner – and asked if I knew how to draw on a computer because the company he worked at was looking for artists. One thing led to another that’s how I ended up working as an artist in video games.

This was during the 16-bit era, so it was pixel-by-pixel. It was less like drawing and more like laying bathroom tiles. I didn’t have much fun doing that, but the fellas next to me were having a great time designing the game. I marched over and asked if they could teach me how to design games. One of them was kind enough to take me under his wing and a year later I was designing video games. I’ve been doing that ever since – although I had a slight detour where I was working for Walt Disney Imagineering creating games for the theme parks.

I’ve also published a few books on game design, including Level Up: The Guide to Great Video Game Design, and I also teach classes at the New York Film Academy and the University of Southern California.

Before we dive into board games, what were some of the video games that have your fingerprints on?
SR: The original God of War, Pac-Man World, the Maximo series for Capcom. I did some work on the original Soul Blade for Namco and helped create stuff for Darksiders. I did a lot of SpongeBob SquarePants stuff and even games like Bratz: Rock Angelz.

Quite an eclectic mix!
SR: Yes, the full spectrum from macho sword-wielding Greeks to Bratz!

How did board game design enter the picture?
SR: I had an idea for a sci-fi game where you started in a spaceship and then jetted out into space. You’d encounter other creatures and eventually you’d cut your way into an opponent’s ship and fight them. I pitched it as a big grand experience, but people kept saying the tech wasn’t quite there yet for that kind of video game. It costs a lot of money to make a video game and you need a lot of people to make a video game.

I thought about making it a reality and I thought about doing it as a board game, because that meant I could do everything myself. So I spend a few years making it and eventually I went to Gen Con and pitched it to some publishers. One said yes and then the game – Rayguns and Rocketships – was published.

Sticking with space, let’s find out more about your new game, Alien: Fate of the Nostromo. Did you have the game sorted and then realised it could work with the Alien brand, or was the movie the starting point?
SR: Ravensburger actually approached me with the brand.

In that case, let’s bring Cassidy in! Why Alien and why Scott?
Cassidy Werner, International Marketing Manager, Ravensburger North America: Well, we have a history with doing really immersive IP games and there’s a group of us that sits in a room on a Tuesday afternoon and think about what games we want to make. Alien came up, so we spoke about the core elements that we’d like to see in an Alien game. We then contacted some designers, like Scott, and asked them to pitch us concepts – and Scott’s won!

Scott, what appealed about the brief? Were you a fan of the movie?
SR: As somebody who has worked on a lot of licences in the past on video games, my angle is always to design to the IP. There’s a reason people love Alien, and I’m a big Alien fan too. I’ve been a fan ever since my mother barred me from seeing the movie as a child. I bought the Topps bubble gum cards so I could find out more about the story! When I finally saw it, I thought it was one of the greatest films ever made.

What did your first steps look like in creating the game?
SR: When Ravensburger asked me to pitch an Alien game, I immediately asked myself what I – as a fan – would want to see in the game. I thought about what people love about Alien and what would make sense to include.

The whole game takes place within a certain point in the movie. The chest-bursting scene has already happened, and the Alien has grown into its adult form. The tension of these guys being picked off one by one is what everyone associates with Alien, so that’s what I wanted to capture in the game.

What’s fun about board games is that you’re allowed to play a little bit of ‘what if…’. The goal of the game is for the crew to survive, and as we all know, not everybody survives. I wanted everyone to be engaged while playing so, if anything is a slight deviation from the film, it’s that here you either all win or you’re all killed by the Alien.

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To read the full interview on our sister site Mojo Nation click here

The post Designer Scott Rogers and Ravensburger’s Cassidy Werner on bringing Alien to the tabletop with Fate of the Nostromo appeared first on Brands Untapped.