Riding on the Rim with Grim

As a promotion for the birthday of its purple mascot Grimace, who vanished from the restaurant after the release of the film Super Size Me, McDonald's introduced a berry shake bearing his trademark plum color, along with... a video game? And it's a skateboarding game. Because when you think of totally bodacious, gravity-defying stunts on the half-pipe, braw, you definitely think of a bell-shaped buffoon from a fast food joint.

That helmet somehow makes
Grimace look like a member of Run DMC.

And here's Grimace, in all his inexplicable, cross-promotional glory. Look out, Kool-Aid Man and Cool Spot! There's a new frosty mug in town, and all the boys in the yard are going to want his milkshake! No, really, he has to deliver his purple milkshakes to everybody he knows... on a skateboard. It makes no sense, but after Sneak King, why does anything need to make sense?

This screen is endlessly confusing
for anyone who's actually playing
this on a Game Boy Color.

One fascinating fact about Grimace's Birthday is that although it can be played on a web browser, the code is designed specifically for the Game Boy Color, making it compatible with that system and, through the magic of emulation, practically everything else. Even my Data Frog can play this game, albeit with glitchy text. You've got to wonder why the developers at Krool Toys didn't step up to the big leagues of the Game Boy Advance, but creating Grimace's Birthday for the lower spec Game Boy Color means the game will play on more systems, and the marketing will find more eyeballs.

Beyond that, making Grimace's Birthday for this specific system makes a lot of sense. The Game Boy Color's humble 8-bit graphics make the game seem like it was released at the turn of the century, when handheld technology wasn't quite up to snuff and the towers hadn't fallen yet and Twitter was just a noise birds made and Morgan Spurlock hadn't demolished McDonaldland. 

(Snif. Sorry, I'm getting a little misty eyed over here. I really miss those damn shortbread cookies. You know, the ones with a light citrus flavor, molded into the shape of the McDonaldland characters. Okay, FINE, I'll get back to the game.) 

Like 90% of third party titles for the Game Boy Color, Grimace's Birthday isn't fantastic. However, it's a fun injection of nostalgia, and it's free, so why not indulge? It's certainly healthier than the purple shake, if nothing else.

Oh, by the way! This is important from a historical perspective. Microsoft just pulled the plug on the Xbox One, a machine stabbed in the heart by Don Mattrick and left in a (sales) coma for ten years. Do I regret buying an Xbox One in hindsight? Not really... I'm certainly not as embarrassed by that purchase as the Wii U, Nintendo's most cumbersome game console since the Virtual Boy. Nevertheless, the Xbox One never quite met expectations, limping through the last generation with an unsavory reputation, underwhelming exclusives, and some utterly agonizing load times. I won't miss it, especially since the Xbox Series S is almost 100% compatible, and is much better at being an Xbox One than an actual Xbox One.

The Sega Genesis is also dead... in Brazil. That's after thirty three years of support, and mostly because TecToy ran out of the parts to build them. Luckily, this has absolutely no bearing on the development of Brazilian Mega Drive games like Sunset Riders and Final Fight MD. (Whew.)