McDonald’s has released a Game Boy Color game in honor of Grimace’s 52nd birthday called… well, Grimace’s Birthday.
This isn’t an acid dream, we promise. Krool Toys, who developed Grimace’s Birthday, launched the game on its own website, and you can play it right now on your browser or on your phone. If you still have a Game Boy Color lying around somewhere in your house, you can also download the ROM file for it since it was designed to run on the 25-year-old hardware.
In Grimace’s Birthday, Grimace throws a birthday party at a McDonald’s restaurant, but none of his McDonaldland friends — Birdie the Early Bird, the Hamburglar, and the McNugget Buddies — have shown up. With 30 minutes to midnight, he has to round them up before it’s time to blow out the candles.
You have to help Grimace collect 40 milkshakes through four levels of the game, and reach the goal before time runs out. The first two levels see the purple mascot skateboarding, while he’s running around barefoot in the last two levels. In the skateboarding levels, the Darkside Grind and 50-50 Grinds are performed automatically while grinding on rails if you play on Normal difficulty, but you have to manually grind using the Up or Down buttons lest you fall off in Hard mode.
Grimace’s Birthday was made to commemorate the debut of the Grimace Birthday milkshake, a purple drink that is sold exclusively with the limited-edition Grimace Birthday Meal at McDonald’s. The meal that the beverage comes in is served with your choice of Big Mac or 10-piece McNuggets and fries.
This new game obviously reminds us of Burger King’s Sneak King, a promotional game created by both Burger King and Microsoft back in 2006. In our review of Sneak King, we said it is “something that should be experienced and if you love achievement points you need these on your gamer card. It will certainly make you laugh and is a great little item for showing your friends just how crazy games have become. Just don’t expect the fun to last.
Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.