M.C. Kids

M.C. Kids
Also known as: McDonaldland (EU) Developer: Virgin Games Publishers: Virgin Games (US), Ocean (EU) Platform: NES Released in US: February 1992 Released in EU: May 19, 1993 This game has unused objects. This game has unused graphics. This game has debugging material. This game has regional differences. This game has a notes page This game has a prototype article

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

M.C. Kids is a platformer reminiscent of Super Mario Bros. 3 that entails two little boys chucking blocks at animals. It has very little to do with McDonald's, really.

Unknown Debugging Function

Pressing Select on Controller 2 will freeze the game for one second. What purpose this may have originally served is unknown.

Unused Object

An unused beehive object, which originally appeared in the prototype. It has no behavior defined in either version of the game, and cannot be interacted with. Some tweaks to the final ROM can restore it to its original location, as shown in the image above (see the Notes page for details).

Unused Graphics

To do: Get the correct palettes and see if any code exists for these.

A bird enemy, which was also unused in the prototype.

Two fully animated enemies can be found in the sprite graphics for the Moon levels, along with some strange objects. These enemies are only present in the final game.

Hidden Infinite Lives Function

The game has a secret function that gives you infinite lives if you collect all the Arches in all three stages of Ronald's PuzzLeWoRlD. However, due to a bug, it doesn't trigger properly.

There is a bitfield at address 74B that keeps track of whether you've collected all the Arches in one of the three stages. A function is supposed to flip the first three bits if it detects you're in one of these three stages and have collected all the Arches. The problem is, the function is only called when you're in the end-of-stage cutscene, which technically takes place in a different stage, so the function clears your Arches count and does nothing else. The only way to get the function to work properly is to collect all the Arches and then die on purpose. The function will then run properly and flip the appropriate bit.

Once you've collected all Arches in all three stages, you can head to Ronald and he will give you "infinite lives" (which flips the fourth bit). It's not the true deal, though: while your lives count does get set at 99 and dying once will not decrement it, if you die again the counter will go down as usual. If you get down to 95 lives and then die once more, you'll get sent to Ronald who gives you infinite lives, for real this time. This flips the fifth bit and clears all others.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Regional Differences

With the publisher changing from Virgin Games to Ocean in Europe, the opening screen was changed accordingly.

M.C. Kids	McDonaldland