[HN Gopher] McDonald's just dropped a brand new Game Boy game
___________________________________________________________________
McDonald's just dropped a brand new Game Boy game
Author : outime
Score : 844 points
Date : 2023-06-13 20:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (retrododo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (retrododo.com)
| Evidlo wrote:
| Did they release a cartridge, or is the Gamebiy in the article
| just running on a flash cart?
| tclancy wrote:
| Feels like a trend: https://www.techradar.com/news/atari-just-
| announced-the-firs...
| tjohns wrote:
| Looking at the grimacesbirthday.com, I'm trying to figure out
| someone extracted a GameBoy ROM from that page.
|
| It looks like everything is implemented inside a WASM blob,
| containing what looks like binjgb (based on the strings).
|
| I'm assuming the game itself is also included in the data section
| at the end of the WASM blob. Are there any good tools for reverse
| engineering that? (Or am I missing a more obvious way of
| extracting the ROM?)
| cubefox wrote:
| But the blog post says the ROM was already extracted?
| tjohns wrote:
| Yes, it was. I'm trying to figure out how to do it myself. :)
| tjohns wrote:
| Apparently the wasm code fetches it directly, and I just
| needed to look at the network traffic. I figured I was
| missing something obvious!
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| I can't quite tell if this is written by an LLM (and aided by a
| person, re: the developer is known) or the writing style is just
| so prolific that LLMs cant help but ape it.
|
| I think it's because every sentence is pretty short.
|
| These sentences end up being related, and should probably be just
| one paragraph.
|
| The writing style seems to separate everything out, I can say
| this might be what gives the impression of a LLM gluing parts
| together!
|
| I wonder if they received a McDonalds presser, and I wonder how
| much of those are still human-in-the-loop.
| tredre3 wrote:
| Well the author, Anthony, is a digital nomad who's known for
| minimal effort fluff pieces so it would seem like a natural
| progression to use LLMs. At some point retro dodo might skip
| the middle name and render him unemployed.
|
| I know I sound bitter but it's because retro dodo used to be a
| high quality production shop (still mostly is, to be fair).
| Though I understand that it wasn't sustainable for the original
| two guys to do everything alone (they've branched from blogging
| to youtubing to even book publishing after all)
| Clent wrote:
| The article is suggesting a ROM, I don't think McDonalds would
| risk Nintendo's ire.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| I can't quite tell if this comment is written by an LLM (and
| aided by a person) or the writing style is just so prolific
| that LLMs cant help but ape it. I think it's because every
| sentence is pretty short.
|
| These sentences end up being related, and should probably be
| just one paragraph.
|
| The writing style seems to separate everything out, I can say
| this might be what gives the impression of a LLM gluing parts
| together!
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| Yes very funny. The sentence triplet is an intentional play
| at the articles style, including LLMs over-bright
| disposition. Thanks for playing though!
| qingcharles wrote:
| This is exactly what an LLM would say. Nice try, Open AI.
| jedberg wrote:
| FWIW I use a lot of line breaks when commenting on HN. Mainly
| because the text goes to a large width, and lot of folks on
| here use very wide screens.
|
| I like to make sure my main points are easily readable.
| HaZeust wrote:
| I see what you did there.
| mawadev wrote:
| The entire page on mobile is a wall of ads with text padded
| around it.
| throitallaway wrote:
| I call this the Twitter effect.
|
| Artificial limitations encourage the use of short and snappy
| communications.
|
| Also, who can be bothered to read through a paragraph today?
|
| I live my life one sentence at a time.
| HKH2 wrote:
| Writers write books and articles when they haven't got
| anything to write about.
|
| Songwriters write songs when they haven't got anything to
| sing about.
|
| Directors make movies when they haven't got anything to make
| a movie about.
|
| Copies of copies of copies... It's no wonder people are
| tired. Where is the substance? Where is the risk?
| buildsjets wrote:
| With vinyl records making a comeback, I expect to receive a
| flexi-disc copy of "The McDonald's Song" in my Sunday paper any
| day now.
|
| https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/mcdonalds-million-dollars-vinyl...
| dools wrote:
| Pretty rare to see advertorial content/paid placements rank so
| highly on HN! Someone is popping a celebratory thickshake right
| now.
| geepytee wrote:
| This is some MSCHF level marketing, love it!
| zemo wrote:
| > it was developed using GB Studio
|
| yeah a lot of people in this thread seem to be completely unaware
| of GB Studio's existence, which is funny because a lot of people
| learn to make games in GB Studio nowadays. The GB Studio scene is
| pretty active.
| _def wrote:
| Yeah, I recently got a GB flash cart and it's rally something
| to download and play an indie game that was just released on
| your DMG lol.
| bogwog wrote:
| This is definitely the coolest marketing gimmick I've seen in a
| long time. It kind of makes me want to celebrate MY birthday at a
| McDonalds lol
| mysterydip wrote:
| I know there's articles and comments saying "why", so here's a
| couple opinions off the top of my head:
|
| - retro games cater to the demographic who would know who Grimace
| is.
|
| - it makes news for novelty, if it was just another webgame there
| probably wouldn't be articles about it
|
| - the target platform has virtual machines for every modern OS
| and the web, so maximum reach.
|
| - the target platform has had decades of enthusiast development
| support, making IDEs and libraries.
|
| - the target platform is fixed. No fear of some instruction or
| device being deprecated during development or in the future.
|
| - the devs you could contract this out to would most likely have
| a depth of knowledge on the system. And any of their portfolio
| could be evaluated against others in a 1:1 fashion.
|
| - It has "just enough" capability to make a game that can
| entertain a broad audience for the time it needs to.
|
| - why not? just some fun.
| teej wrote:
| The agency who developed the game has a website that nails the
| Geocities-era aesthetic - https://krooltoys.com/
| ryanmercer wrote:
| I love it!
| isiahl wrote:
| Love that their logo is an homage to Yahooligans, Yahoo's old
| kids web portal.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20010708042828/http://www.yahool...
| ryanmercer wrote:
| Neat!
| TapamN wrote:
| Does this have the Nintendo logo in the ROM header? Real GameBoys
| check the ROM for an image containing Nintendo's logo during boot
| up as a way to prevent unlicensed games. The idea is, to make a
| GMB/GBC boot, you must at least commit trademark infringement,
| which gives Nintendo more legal leverage to block/punish any
| attempts to sell anything that Nintendo didn't get a cut of.
|
| If the logo is missing, it would still boot on an emulator that
| doesn't emulate the boot ROM (which is most of them) and probably
| most flashcarts, so there's no need for it to be in their
| release. But it's still possible that whatever build system they
| used automatically inserted the logo.
|
| There's no way Nintendo would bother McDonalds legally over
| something like this if the logo's in there, but I'm still curious
| if it is.
| qingcharles wrote:
| No, they avoided the issue. I was hoping for it. Surely
| Nintendo would have worked with them to license this; I feel it
| would be in their interests too.
| toast0 wrote:
| Your jurisdiction may vary, but under Sega v Accolade [1], I'd
| expect including the logo to be fair use, as including the
| trademarked data for Sega's TMSS was.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade
| philistine wrote:
| There are bugs in the code, which allows you to load on Game
| Boy without committing trademark infringement.
|
| https://tcrf.net/Bugs:Game_Boy_Bootstrap_ROM
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I didn't understand from the article how McDonalds is
| distributing the game. I'm assuming you are not getting a
| cartridge with your happy meal
| cubefox wrote:
| Yeah, it's just the ROM file. Actually releasing a physical
| cartridge as some bonus to a meal would have been cool. I
| assume the cartridge costs are still too high for that.
| klik99 wrote:
| I found it funny that the same developer made a game based on the
| "My Dinner With Andre" joke from Simpsons that complains that you
| can't make quirky indie games with 1-2 people funded by
| corporations who just want to drop their IP in:
| https://gumpyfunction.itch.io/my-dinner-with-andre
|
| Strikingly prescient
| [deleted]
| wageslave99 wrote:
| I'm amazed of this release because, does Nintendo even sell
| gameboy consoles right now?
|
| So are they targeting retro-clone handheld owners or what?
|
| What would you say is the best retro-clone handheld console to
| play Gameboy games?
| somedude895 wrote:
| The article is so awful I also had to scour the comments for
| that question: This is only a gameboy rom they made that's
| playable through the browser. They're not making any physical
| cartridges.
| asylteltine wrote:
| [dead]
| WhiteRice wrote:
| I adore this, handheld gaming and fast food company marketing
| check so many nostalgia boxes for me.
|
| The accompanying website is a blast from the past too,
|
| https://grimacesbirthday.com/
| schlauerfox wrote:
| They immediately broke the nostalgia spell when they used 'smh'
| in the opening game, that was like hitting a brick wall of
| anachronism. Neat effort though. Glad someone got paid to make
| it.
| 634636346 wrote:
| How many Funkos do you own?
| bovermyer wrote:
| That's delightful. I needed a bit of levity in the wake of the
| latest AWS meltdown.
| tomcam wrote:
| A proton and a neutron walk into a bar and order beers.
| Bartender says to the proton, "That be $10." He turns to the
| neutron and says "For you, no charge."
| egberts1 wrote:
| Wut? No Hamburglar?!
| xxpor wrote:
| I'm kind of shocked the physical tooling exists to make a Game
| Boy cartridge and chips more than anything else.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| You can buy flashable game boy cartridges on Amazon:
| https://www.amazon.com/gameboy-flash-cartridge/s?k=gameboy+f...
| RobotToaster wrote:
| The cartridges were mostly just a rom chip on a PCB. Some had
| RAM and/or a simple bank controller.
| hbn wrote:
| They didn't actually do that, it seems to just be a ROM
| release.
|
| Though they could have. Limited Run Games does Gameboy
| cartridges. I'm not sure what kind of tooling they use for it
| though.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'm kind of shocked the physical tooling exists to make a
| Game Boy cartridge and chips more than anything else._
|
| You can get brand new Atari 2600 cartridges in boxes and
| everything.
|
| Though, I think the shells are actually scavenged from old
| games.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >You can get brand new Atari 2600 cartridges in boxes and
| everything.
|
| Yup, new titles still being made. There's even Halo for the
| 2600.
|
| Tons of titles currently being manufactured for a lot of
| vintage consoles/computers: https://atariage.com/store/
| bityard wrote:
| It's pretty trivial for a company to make a mold for a plastic
| cartridge. The chips are nothing special, they are just ROMs.
| Cheap and widely available.
|
| In fact, I'm pretty confident that a competent DIYer could 3D
| print a cartridge shell, flash a ROM, and etch a PCB in an
| afternoon or two.
| xoxxala wrote:
| The easiest part would be the 3d printed cartridge. There's a
| file on Thingiverse.
|
| https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:13605
| bpye wrote:
| For something at McDonalds' scale I'm sure they could do an
| injection moulded run anyway.
| retrac wrote:
| For the Atari 2600, Game Boy, etc., the first cartridges were
| nothing more than a ROM chip on a printed circuit board. Later
| games sometimes included a lot more functionality on the
| cartridge (battery-backed save RAM, bank switching hardware,
| etc.) which does make things complicated very quickly. Today,
| programmable logic is sometimes used to replace old custom IC
| designs used in cartridges, or to design something new.
|
| For games more complicated than a simple ROM chip, the Game Boy
| presents an interesting challenge: the cartridge is both very
| small and it needs to be able to run off battery power. That
| excludes using both a high-power-consumption modern SoC or
| FPGA, or using lots of discrete logic.
|
| But if it'll fit in 32 KB, it's 3D print a case, order a PCB,
| and program a standard Flash chip.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > For the Atari 2600, Game Boy, etc., the first cartridges
| were nothing more than a ROM chip on a printed circuit board.
|
| We've actually come full circle on this one. If you ever
| disassemble a Nintendo Switch Game Card that has a black area
| above the metal contacts, it doesn't even have a PCB. It's
| just a ROM chip, with metal contacts on the bottom shaped
| differently than your standard BGA pattern, contained in
| plastic. If it has a green area above the metal contacts,
| it's a PCB with the chip on the other side.
| cubefox wrote:
| What functionality does the PCB add?
| hbn wrote:
| That would have been cool if they did a run of physical
| cartridges, with the box and everything.
|
| Limited Run Games does runs of physical Gameboy cartridges still.
| They have to restyle things to not have Nintendo branding, but it
| can be done.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Yeah, I got a limited run copy of Shantae, cause the real ones
| are way too pricey.
| mattl wrote:
| Curious which technique they use to bypass the Nintendo logo on
| boot
| brirec wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that Sega lost a major
| court case in regards to this nearly 30 years ago.
|
| Edit:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade?wprov=sfti1
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Either it's in the console ROM, in which case it's not a
| problem, or it's in the cartridge ROM, in which case I'd
| imagine it's just a matter of replacing the raster data with
| something else.
| mattl wrote:
| Yeah demoscene has a few hacks to get around the checks.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's in the game, but the console famously checks that the
| code for the logo is present, and refuses to run any game
| which doesn't have the code in place.
|
| It was used as a way to prevent anyone unauthorized making
| games. If you copy the logo, you have violated trademark
| and copyright law, and if you don't copy the logo, your
| game won't run.
|
| Detail here: https://catskull.net/gameboy-boot-screen-
| logo.html
| ant6n wrote:
| If I remember correctly, the ROM gets read once to check,
| and then again to display. One could use some circuitry
| to deliver another logo on the second read.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Also, a court struck down this approach to locking a
| console from playing third party games anyway.
|
| That's why all modern consoles use digital signatures.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Why is it not a problem if it's in the console ROM? How do
| they get around it?
| einr wrote:
| The idea is that by forcing games to include the
| trademarked Nintendo logo in the game ROM, an unlicensed
| dev would be guilty of trademark infringement if they
| used the logo.
| lostgame wrote:
| There is a way you can hack it by changing the logo somewhere
| through the second check.
|
| But couldn't you also write an exception in the emulator
| itself? (I'm actually not sure - just genuinely curious!)
| mattl wrote:
| I believe the game also runs on a real Game Boy
| kristopolous wrote:
| The entire project probably cost about as much as a couple months
| on an urban billboard (around $100,000 or so) and the ROI is
| probably higher.
|
| So this was likely a reasonable investment. You're going to get
| YouTubers covering it, people doing speed runs, blogs and news
| aggregators. Good return.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I was wondering how a newly made Game Boy Color game would be
| distributed today:
|
| > But today, twenty five years after the Game Boy Color was
| released, we can play Grimace's Birthday for free on our web
| browser.
|
| > It is unclear if McDonald's hoped to keep the game locked on
| their website or if there's any particular reason they wouldn't
| want us to have a ROM. (I would assume something something
| emulator, something something copyright infringement.)
|
| > But needless to say, the internet was very quick to rip the
| file and share it online.
|
| Now I want to track it down so I can tell what's different when I
| play the inevitable rom hacks.
| schappim wrote:
| Whilst there has been mention of the 1993 "McDonald's Treasure
| Land Adventure", I'm surprised nobody has called out their
| previously lost DS Game[1]. The game was distributed to
| McDonald's locations throughout Japan in 2010 for the training of
| existing employees[2].
|
| [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e6xOBCAVvA&ab_channel=NickR...
|
| [2] https://kotaku.com/we-can-all-finally-learn-how-to-make-
| big-...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Interesting. Title: McDonald's dropped a game. Article:
| McDonald's released a game. Weird that they are saying the
| opposite. I was initially very confused.
| danparsonson wrote:
| Yes, ambiguous - 'dropped' as in 'content drop' (release), not
| as in 'dropped from the list'.
| mcmoor wrote:
| The wonders of English
| kibwen wrote:
| The era where "retro" meant "NES" is behind us, now retro means
| Game Boy Color, PS1, and Quake-era PC aesthetics. To wit, the
| developers of Shovel Knight (the premier NES platformer homage)
| are developing a GBC-styled Bloodborne-like called Mina the
| Hollower: https://www.yachtclubgames.com/games/mina-the-hollower/
| (though sadly it's not designed to run on original hardware).
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the PS2 is considered retro now too.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Many in the community, such as the long-running Retronauts
| podcast, use 10 years as the line when something becomes
| "retro". By that definition, the PS4 becomes retro later this
| year.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'd even argue that any console that is no longer in
| production can be considered retro; after all, you're then
| dependent on secondhand consoles and repairs to be able to
| play things on them; they have become a finite product.
| bogwog wrote:
| There are Gen Z that played PS3/Xbox 360 when they were
| children, and are now adults out of college with their own
| children. I think that's a good measure of "retro", and it
| would mean PS4 will enter retro status in ~2031.
| a_cardboard_box wrote:
| Most modern games could be ported to the PS3 and Xbox 360,
| keeping gameplay the same but lowering graphical fidelity.
| The same cannot be said of porting N64 games to the NES. I
| think a better measure of retro-ness would include the
| degree to which gameplay experience is influenced by the
| game's age.
| consentreality wrote:
| The PS2 was released as far from now, in 2000, as the Atari
| 2600 was to it, in 1977.
| cubefox wrote:
| That just blew my mind.
| layer8 wrote:
| How many orders of retrotude is that in total?
| LesZedCB wrote:
| 42
| doubled112 wrote:
| The progress that was made in the last 23 years doesn't
| feel as massive as those first 23 years, does it?
| anthk wrote:
| Nope. I was born in 1987, and Chinese NES clones were sold well
| up to 1997 until everyone in ~1999 got a Play Station at home
| as the prices went down. So, to US, retro was NES and the older
| GB games such as Mario Land 1.
| bityard wrote:
| In the late 90's to early 2000's, I considered "retro" games to
| be anything from the beginning of time right up the the NES.
| So, roughly anything that fell out of popularity about 10 years
| in the past. It didn't seem weird because in the late 90's, we
| were calling everything in the '80's retro. All that funky
| synth music and hair was pretty weird and alien to those who
| grew up on either side of it, after all.
|
| The most modern gaming system in our living room (if you don't
| count the Steam Deck) is a Wii which is legitimately a retro
| system these days and I get a little grumpy every time I am
| reminded of this.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| "anything that fell out of popularity about 10 years in the
| pas"
|
| So... Xbox One and PS4 launch games?
| wkjagt wrote:
| I find it difficult to call any PC that has a CPU clock
| expressed in GHz retro / vintage. Even though I know PCs 20
| years ago were already in that ballpark.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Imo the Xbox 360/PS3 are the newest retro consoles currently.
| anthk wrote:
| Pentium 3-4 CPUS up to SSE2 from the last days of the W98SE
| era surely are.
| wkjagt wrote:
| I'm currently playing around with a PC I built up from
| random parts, based on an AMD Duron 1200. I have Windows 98
| SE on it. It does feel retro. But then I compare it to my
| 486, and it suddenly doesn't anymore.
| anthk wrote:
| Well, both have the same access to the SSL/TLS web:
| almost nil. With W95 on the 486 with 32MB of RAM and a
| de-IE4'ized W98 both would be virtually the same except
| for the speed.
|
| A Pentium II would be a better example for both: Not too
| old, not too recent. Yet it suits as retro and a usable
| machine. Enough to render some XVID videos at 360p and
| 420p with a good video card. Slackware, NetBSD and lot of
| distros would still run fine. TLS under Lynx and Gopher
| would still work, the same as a Gopher client.
| wkjagt wrote:
| I hope to be able to play GL Quake on this Duron PC. The
| graphics card (ATI Rage 128) should be able to do it I
| think.
| anthk wrote:
| Software Quake@800x600/640x480 under a CRT will look
| better.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| The GBC was closer to a NES in capability than the SNES.
| willis936 wrote:
| Does anyone know if I can check which Mcdonald's have these? I
| have a bit of a retro collection and this would be a cute
| artifact to add.
|
| Oh it isn't a physical cart run. I was curious about the
| logistics of such a thing. If it were a physical cart I'd like to
| take a peek inside and see the board.
| somat wrote:
| The questions it raises are almost more interesting then the
| game.
|
| Why GBC? Did someone have a canceled but mostly finished
| mcdonalds game laying around since the late 90's and finally the
| right person at mcdonalds heard about it and got corporate to let
| them publish it as a marketing tie in?
| sosodev wrote:
| The article states that the game was made by a member of the
| gbc homebrew community.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Why did they decide to make a retro game and then hire a
| member of the gbc homebrew community? The choices behind this
| are interesting. Even after somebody successfully convinced
| corporate to fund this game it's surprising someone else
| didn't say "we could do this in Unity for half the price."
|
| It really only makes sense to me if someone on the corporate
| ladder was already a fan of the gbc homebrew community, or
| close to someone that was.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| If you want something retro is seems a lot easier to just
| get someone who made a quality homebrew game to make you
| one rather than search for some generic Unity shop and have
| them make something good that looks sufficently retro.
| sosodev wrote:
| That's a really interesting point. It's probably much
| easier for a skilled developer to make a cool, natively
| retro game with modern tooling. I wonder if there's a
| future for freelancers in this space?
| facecheekwall wrote:
| That purple shake is so mysterious, it doesn't even have a
| database entry.
|
| "Big Mac(r), World Famous Fries(r) (Medium), undefined"
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >Just be sure to order some McDonald's to support them. Who
| knows... if we keep eating McDonald's, they might keep producing
| these oddball retro gaming related projects.
|
| >I, for one, will NEVER stop eating McDonald's. You have my word.
|
| Uh... hail marketing! Nothing quite like getting nostalgia
| exploited for corporate profits. But hey, its important to
| support... uh... 'retro gaming?'
| hbn wrote:
| The article feels very "teacher set a minimum word requirement
| on the essay"
| packetlost wrote:
| Get used to it, it's probably at least partially generated by
| ChatGPT which really likes fluffing up the prose.
| groestl wrote:
| TBH, there are also quite a few posts here in this thread
| where my internal ChatGPT detector goes off. The funny
| thing is, they could also very well be meant ironically,
| and I can't really separate this anymore.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Explains the recent slew of "long form" articles.
| tmtvl wrote:
| Kinda makes me think of those tobacco advertisements of
| yesteryear. It's like "oh hey, Winston cigarettes sponsored the
| Flintstones, I'll never stop smoking Winstons."
|
| Who knows, perhaps one day we'll look back on modern day fast
| food ads and consider them equivalent to cigarette ads.
| bigyikes wrote:
| Maybe the author likes retro games and fast food?
|
| The anti-corporatism shtick is so lame. Just because something
| is done by a massive corporation doesn't make the thing bad.
| Just because something is an advertisement doesn't make it bad.
|
| I think this is pretty cool. Maybe I'll buy some McDonalds
| today too.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Yeah, the evisceration of corporate-everything has really
| unnecessarily crowded out enjoyment of all the good parts,
| while at the same time somehow managing to look more
| ridiculous as a POV than I ever expected.
|
| Back in the edgy days, I never thought I'd find blanket-
| corporate-hatred becoming quite so lame, to the point of even
| taking on its own corporate-style blandness, in the 2020s...
| relativty wrote:
| The "other people don't speak how I prefer" regardless of
| the context is such a lame complaint.
|
| Corporate blandness has infected us all; from my reference
| frame you're just some bland text on a corporate website
| that silences spicy discourse.
|
| Are others lame or is that all you feel given
| hypernormalized routines?
|
| Look at the rebels willing to risk going against this
| thread by eating McDonalds; highway to the danger zone.
|
| How bold
| noduerme wrote:
| I was gonna eat McDonald's tonight anyway. Regardless of
| the sneering of the privileged commies who live around
| me.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| "privileged commies" is a fascinating oxymoron. Is that
| really how you think of the people that disagrees with
| you?
| relativty wrote:
| [dead]
| noduerme wrote:
| I say it with humor, because it sounds like an oxymoron.
| But it does describe a certain wealthy, anti-capitalist
| clade here in Portland. (And I'll happily point that out
| to my friends, whether or not we agree on things).
|
| I was just thinking of the last time I was waiting in my
| car at the McDonald's drive-thru with the rest of the
| proles, and a friend called. When I told him where I was,
| he had let out an involuntary "ugh" sound, and expressed
| that he _can 't believe I eat that garbage, let alone
| support that corporation_. This particular friend owns a
| business that serves billion-dollar corporations, lives
| in a $1.2M house, drops $200 on bottles of wine at fine
| restaurants (where he's known for showing up in
| Transformers pajama bottoms) and grows almost all his own
| vegetables. Bernie stickers all over his (multiple)
| Subarus.
|
| I guess "privileged commie" was a bit of wry shorthand,
| but it's not that much of a stretch.
| issore wrote:
| It's funny since pricing is set based upon social
| behavior (do we spend that or not and/or should we charge
| that or not?) capitalism is socialism with obligation to
| carry around a mind virus that preserves the figurative
| identity of Bezos and the like; they're "better"
| capitalists.
|
| Also hi from Portland
| noduerme wrote:
| I mean, socialism is capitalism with a mind virus that
| encourages displays of self-sacrifice, without really
| eradicating greed. Personally I think hypocrisy is more
| corrosive than ambition, and bitterness is more corrosive
| than misplaced hopefulness. (I also don't compare my
| worth to others based on money, and I don't envy the
| likes of Bezos. I do enjoy being paid and occasionally
| buying things that make my life more enjoyable, but
| certainly not because other people can't afford them;
| holding a grudge upward or holding a superiority complex
| downward _would_ be the kind of "mind virus" you
| describe, but it's totally unnecessary if all you want is
| to have an enjoyable and productive life in a capitalist
| society full of fun shit and chances to build things that
| people in communist societies couldn't have dreamed of).
|
| The thing I love most about Portland is that you can have
| these intellectual debates almost everywhere you go,
| really get to hear other people's thought processes based
| on their personal situations, and understand where
| they're coming from. I'm by no means a hard-liner; but I
| spend half my time out in Newberg which has an entirely
| different set of baked-in assumptions and priorities. I'm
| as likely to get into deep debates with people there as I
| am here, but far less likely to get into interesting
| theoretical territory. At least this place still has the
| ferment, the ideological exploration and experimentation
| of one of the 1920s capitals of Europe, as opposed to the
| stochastic but rigid normie-core preference structure of
| everywhere else in America. I appreciate that.
|
| So yeah, greetings from inner southeast ;)
| yehtah wrote:
| [flagged]
| issore wrote:
| [dead]
| libraryatnight wrote:
| American culture is sick from advertising. There will never
| be enough anti corporate sentiment anywhere. You should
| assume these businesses are killing you and know it because
| that's the one thing they reliably do. Anything else is to
| distract you from that. If they do something "nice" you can
| bet they could have done more better.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I think this is pretty cool too, but um..
|
| > Just because something is done by a massive corporation
| doesn't make the thing bad
|
| I don't think anyone was saying this. Some airlines plant
| trees. That doesn't make planting trees bad.
|
| But massive corporations (with maybe ~1% or fewer exceptions)
| don't base their practices on anything remotely resembling
| bad or good, and this leads them to profit-seeking behaviours
| that harm people on an individual level (which I think is a
| "bad" thing), as well as the planet, the environment, the
| economy, their competitors.
|
| McDonalds is not a good or ethical company. The corporate
| apologism is "so lame".
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| You think that finding a way to get food in front of people
| at the largest possible scale and the lowest possible
| marginal price hasn't helped anyone at the individual
| level? In your own words, they don't base their practices
| on good or bad. Meaning their actions should be
| statistically uncorrelated with doing help or harm. You can
| say its not a good or ethical company, but you can also say
| its not a bad or unethical company either. It just is, and
| that was kind of the point.
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| > You think that finding a way to get food in front of
| people at the largest possible scale and the lowest
| possible marginal price hasn't helped anyone at the
| individual level?
|
| I agree with your point. McDonald's value meals have been
| a staple for low income households for a long time, and
| from what I hear the app provides daily deals that can
| mean the difference between someone going hungry or not.
|
| Of all the corporations a person could get mad at,
| choosing one that is well known for feeding low income
| families is an odd choice.
| brvsft wrote:
| > I don't think anyone was saying this. Some airlines plant
| trees. That doesn't make planting trees bad.
|
| Then you misunderstood the comment in question. It was
| quite clearly saying this. We're reading an innocuous blog
| post, and this person is aping reddit /r/hailcorporate
| language to vilify a marketing ploy by McDonald's, _"
| exploiting nostalgia blah blah blah."_
|
| You're right, they are not a good or ethical company. If
| it's corporate apologism to disagree with this complaint
| about "exploitation" of nostalgia, count me in as an
| apologist too. This doesn't register on the list of
| corporate misdeeds for me to be mad about. I'm more upset
| with "flushable wipes" that end up clogging local sewage
| systems.
| p3rls wrote:
| As a plumber flushable wipes have kept several of my
| service-friends employed-- use more, they've got kids!
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| It's hard to see what they misunderstood. The comment is
| about this thing being done by McDonald's rather than
| "something ... done by a massive corporation". The
| difference is in the specificity.
|
| The point I get is not that "advertising from any large
| corporation is Bad" but instead that advertising from a
| corporation whose operations are Bad is Bad (because that
| specific corporation is Bad). It reads to me as an
| uncharitable take that OP is saying "making retro video
| games is Bad" (because large corporations are Bad) when I
| read "McDonald's being McDonald's is Bad" (because
| McDonald's is Bad).
|
| (where Bad = "not good or ethical")
| golergka wrote:
| Their profits pay pensions of the ordinary people. How is
| that not a good thing?
| megablast wrote:
| So therefore anything that produces profits that pays
| pensions is a good thing? Wow.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Relativism is used as a universal cudgel to reason that
| some short-term good of limited scope, outweighs a
| widespread long term bad behavior.
|
| Moral objectivism is more popular than moral relativism.
|
| ie Some good does not outweigh lots of bad.
|
| > Their profits pay pensions of the ordinary people. How
| is that not a good thing?
|
| It's difficult to take your comment as anything but raw
| trolling, as it intentionally chooses to strawman limited
| benefit by ignoring obvious consequence.
| brvsft wrote:
| I would otherwise be 'on your side' but this is not a
| great take. Lockheed Martin's profits also help pay for
| pensions. Phillip-Morris as well. I don't think this
| makes their business actions a net good.
| golergka wrote:
| Lockheed Martin's profits pave way to Pax Americana,
| unprecedented peaceful period in world history, deter
| China and Russia and helped getting Saddam, Gaddafi and
| Miloshevich to justice. It would be a net good to
| humanity either way.
| LinXitoW wrote:
| Their profits exist solely because they exploit and steal
| from other ordinary people. Most ordinary people will
| lose far more money to labour or wage theft than they'll
| ever gain from profits.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > I don't think anyone was saying this. Some airlines
| plant trees. That doesn't make planting trees bad.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| The parent comments only criticism was this was done by a
| large corporation. There is literally no other substance to
| their comment.
|
| The behaviour you're describing as profit seeking is also
| really just value seeking, as in providing something that
| their customers value. I don't think there's substantial
| moral consequences one way or the other for a company to do
| this, but there's nothing wrong with enjoying or commenting
| on a corporation providing a product that you value.
| moonchrome wrote:
| > don't base their practices on anything remotely
| resembling bad or good
|
| Exactly - they base it on profit and people who think this
| is good react accordingly
| bentcorner wrote:
| Paste this reply:\r\n Their Big Macs are also incredibly
| tasty. The sauce and double patty beats anything at their
| competitors.
| krapp wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Fuck capitalism, though.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I just think it's weird to say that McDonalds, of all
| companies, needs or deserves 'support'.
|
| No one needs to "support McDonalds", and no one needs to be
| encouraged to. It'll do fine.
| willis936 wrote:
| If anyone can find a spark of counterculture in 2023 I
| encourage it. There is no longer a battleground for the soul
| of society. It's safe to say the suits won.
| strken wrote:
| Counterculture doesn't really work post-90s because
| mainstream culture started embracing all the previously
| marginalised groups.
|
| You can hold an illegal gay rave under a bridge, and in
| response mainstream media figures will write articles
| demanding the permit process be made easier, then
| McDonald's will retweet photos of your ravers eating a meal
| the morning after. This is...okay, I guess. Social
| permissiveness is the circus, and it's still good even
| though our share of the bread is constantly shrinking.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| Hmm, I think I actually have something to contribute here
| in terms of understanding: you're right that counterculture
| doesn't really exist as it may have in the past, but the
| desire to show individuality still is there which has led
| to a progressive acceleration in the edginess/weirdness of
| modern meme culture.
|
| If you feel slightly put off by the memes you see and/or
| discourse around them, it's sort of by design. It's meant
| to differentiate.
|
| I've only recently realized this though (as I've expanded
| my perspective), and I think for the most part, this is
| something that largely happens subconsciously. If you ask
| someone gen z or younger, they won't know what you're
| talking about if you ask. That's mostly because your
| baseline of edginess/weirdness is defined by relative
| experience, and someone who's grown up perpetually online
| is likely to be skewed much more differently than someone
| who hasn't.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Of course there is a battleground. The counterculture is
| more alive than ever. It's just all been thoroughly
| subsumed by capitalism.
|
| Those kids on the streets protesting most recent excesses
| of multinational corporations? The hoodies and Guy Fawkes
| masks they're wearing, the signs they're holding, the
| chains they're rattling - all bought on Amazon, happily
| providing specialized merch for the "fuck the system"
| market niche. And what do those kids achieve? Mostly they
| generate attention that moves newspapers and keeps millions
| glued to where they can be best exposed to ads. Etc.
|
| Yes, the suits love the anti-corporate movements. They are
| a quite profitable form of entertainment.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Are you familiar with normcore? There's an argument to be
| made that the most counterculture thing you can do is to
| semi-ironically eat a Happy Meal in order to support indie
| Gameboy devs
| z3c0 wrote:
| > the most counterculture thing you can do is to semi-
| ironically eat a Happy Meal in order to support indie
| Gameboy devs
|
| Like Winston at the Chestnut Tree Cafe
| Eater_of_food wrote:
| Yes. Only once you truly love eating your big mac will
| the hamburgalar murder you.
| schnable wrote:
| Hate to break it to you but the counterculture in the 2020s
| is the mindset of Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, and that
| overall crew. They are the ones pushing back against
| mainstream consensus and institutions, for better or worse!
| Really gives a perspective on how the "counterculture"
| glorified by the baby boomers was perceived by the older
| generations.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
| gowld wrote:
| Why not give money to support retro game creators, instead
| indirectly via a fast food chain?
| howlin wrote:
| > I think this is pretty cool. Maybe I'll buy some McDonalds
| today too.
|
| Plenty of people will have plenty of issues with a major
| corporation. But it's worth pointing out that McDonald's is
| one of the most prominent fast food chains which has no
| problem with animal abuse in terms of products from horribly
| treated livestock animals. They have trouble even making
| their french fries livestock-torture free .
|
| Maybe this issue doesn't personally matter to you, but it
| does create a huge problem for a company that does something
| so shamelessly unethical.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > They have trouble even making their french fries
| livestock-torture free
|
| They haven't cooked their french fries in beef tallow since
| 1990.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Chex Quest and Sneak King were both pretty amusing for what
| they were.
| poisonarena wrote:
| For me, it's the McChicken. The best fast food sandwich. I
| even ask for extra McChicken sauce packets and the staff is
| so friendly and more than willing to oblige.
|
| One time I asked for McChicken sauce packets and they gave me
| three. I said, "Wow, three for free!" and the nice friendly
| McDonald's worker laughed and said, "I'm going to call you
| 3-for-free!".
|
| Now the staff greets me with "hey it's 3-for-free!" and
| ALWAYS give me three packets. It's such a fun and cool
| atmosphere at my local McDonald's restaurant, I go there at
| least 3 times a week for lunch and a large iced coffee with
| milk instead of cream, 1-2 times for breakfast on the
| weekend, and maybe once for dinner when I'm in a rush but
| want a great meal that is affordable, fast, and can match my
| daily nutritional needs.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| What is McChicken sauce packets? Mayonnaise?
| gowld wrote:
| It's a Canadian thing
|
| https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca/product/mcchicken-
| sauce-p...
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I'm concerned that it says "Mayonnaise Style Sauce
| Packet" and thank you for bringing that to my attention!
| ksaj wrote:
| Mayonnaise Style Sauce ingredients: Soybean oil, Water,
| Liquid egg yolk, Vinegar, Sugar, Salt, Mustard seeds,
| Mustard bran, Xanthan gum, Potassium sorbate, Calcium
| disodium EDTA.
|
| Miracle Whip ingredients: water, soybean oil, sugar,
| vinegar, modified cornstarch, egg yolks, salt, mustard,
| spices, potassium sorbate, calcium disodium EDTA, dried
| garlic.
|
| Thankfully you don't have to be too concerned. It's for
| the same reason Miracle Whip doesn't actually call itself
| mayonnaise, and Hellmann's Real Mayonnaise does. Mustard,
| garlic, etc., are not mayonnaise ingredients.
| amon22 wrote:
| mustard is definitely a mayonnaise ingredient
| ksaj wrote:
| Indeed, you're right. I thought at its most basic it is
| just egg whites and oil, but googling that specifically
| says mustard is part of the recipe.
|
| So it's still a mystery why McDonalds doesn't just call
| it Mayonnaise when the ingredients are pretty much
| identical to every other mayonnaise out there, including
| Hellmann's REAL Mayonnaise.
|
| Maybe it's one of those "It's only X if it comes from the
| X region" type issues. It just makes it sound suspicious
| for no discernable reason. Like buying a bottle of "Wet
| 'water' style beverage."
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| probably no eggs, which is what holds the oil and water
| together
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| Hey, good for you finding something that you like, but god
| damn if this doesn't read like ad copy. If you're not
| getting paid by them, you should be.
|
| You probably already know this, but fast food 5 times a
| week is basically putting in a request for health problems.
| boneitis wrote:
| Right. My experience in this realm is often the store
| employee either charging me or acting like I'm stealing
| from their personal savings account by asking for extra
| sauce.
|
| e: Wow, I got sniped big time.
| robgibbons wrote:
| It's a copypasta. There are different versions floating
| around, but this one's my favorite:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnXgbMgfkYg
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| Damn. The sooner reddit gets its shit together the
| better.
| poisonarena wrote:
| agreed, you need to go back
| lovich wrote:
| As someone who eats like shit all I can think at that list
| is that's a lot of McDonald's
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| >> when I'm in a rush but want a great meal that is
| affordable, fast, and can match my daily nutritional needs.
|
| Huh. My experience with McDonald's: never met daily
| nutritional needs, no longer affordable and struggling to
| be fast.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| Sounds like a win for society of you eat as much of it as
| possible. It'd really teach us a lesson if you ate multiple
| meals a day.
| larvaetron wrote:
| > The anti-corporatism shtick is so lame.
|
| Oh give me a break.
| perardi wrote:
| Don't have a cow, man.
| tropdrop wrote:
| Honestly I've been impressed with their fish sandwich
| recently - wild caught and actually flaky filet!
| toolz wrote:
| I'm no expert, but I thought we should prefer farm raised,
| no? Seems weird to advertise they are wild caught when
| that's a big concern with over-fishing in the wild.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The new burgers are better as well. It's not in-and-out
| but they improved the cheese and the patties have gone
| from "circular cardboard" to "kind of resembles a burger"
| on the quality scale. For folks that live in Europe and
| have access to better McDonalds this might not be
| anything new, but for us it's a big upgrade.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| My understanding of the situation is that the U.S.
| federal government has been doing an excellent job of
| managing fisheries over the past couple of decades --
| there was an overfishing crisis in the 80's, but since
| then we've gotten our act together and implemented
| population monitoring and fishing quotas. There are
| definitely problems (especially with certain methods of
| fishing causing bycatch problems or habitat destruction),
| but researchers and regulators seem to be mostly on top
| of them. Farm-raised fish have their own set of
| challenges -- mainly health concerns and the potential
| for environmental disasters [0] -- so there's not
| necessarily a clear winner between farmed and wild fish.
| It also depends heavily on the particular species of
| fish.
|
| My source for this is an elective class I took at Oregon
| State University a few years ago, taught by a professor
| who is deeply involved in fishery research and
| management. So perhaps he was biased, but from what he
| presented I was thoroughly impressed with the
| sustainability practices of the seafood industry. One of
| my big takeaways was that wild Alaskan halibut in
| particular (which is what McDonald's uses) is among the
| best seafoods, and one of the most sustainable foods in
| existence.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Island_Atlanti
| c_salmon...
| sh34r wrote:
| I agree with you broadly, and despite their abhorrent
| reputation for sourcing unethical animal products, it
| does seem that you're right about McDonald's fish.
| However, on a larger scale, one of the hidden ethical
| pitfalls is that a lot of wild-caught fish comes from
| international waters, where there are no regulations
| whatsoever, or are imported from Asian countries with
| little to no regard for such things. Japan infamously
| still allows whaling. The global fishing industry is also
| rife with modern-day slavery.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| > or are imported from Asian countries with little to no
| regard for such things. Japan infamously still allows
| whaling. The global fishing industry is also rife with
| modern-day slavery.
|
| Those are very good points that I neglected to mention,
| and my professor spent a lot of time discussing them. One
| of the main points of the class is that seafood
| sustainability is extremely dependent on the species of
| fish and the country of origin, and so it's important to
| do research on where your fish is coming from. I don't
| remember a lot of details anymore, but I do specifically
| remember that most stuff from Alaska is excellent, and
| shrimp is awful in terms of ethics & sustainability.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Pick your poison. Wild caught can deplete wild fish and
| farmed fish pollutes the environment. I spring for wild
| caught whenever possible.
| gowld wrote:
| There's a third option...
| artursapek wrote:
| Not a nutritionally viable one
| Alupis wrote:
| Literally everything you do has an impact in some way on
| the environment. If you want to boycott everything, you
| won't have an existence.
|
| Living is all about understanding trade offs and making
| informed decisions. Just because plants don't scream when
| you kill them doesn't mean a plant-only diet is without
| negative effects as well.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > If you want to boycott everything, you won't have an
| existence.
|
| And a fourth option, it seems. However dark.
| sh34r wrote:
| [flagged]
| megablast wrote:
| Fish flavoured soylent green?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| For bulk, sure; for flavour, wild is superior. But it's a
| finite luxury.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Double-blind tested, of course.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Have you been trying the fish sandwich multiple times over
| the course of time? I didn't think that was allowed.
| cazum wrote:
| I don't think it's unreasonable anti-corporatism so much as
| it's a very rational cynicism about the psychological effect
| of marketing.
|
| They did something cool and now you want to give them money.
| Why is that?
| veave wrote:
| Ask a busker
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Because the food is delicious.
| toolz wrote:
| What is rational about being cynical that I want to spend
| my money on things I think are cool?
|
| Maybe there's merit in asking why I think it's cool to
| begin with (and in this case I hardly think mcdonalds is
| responsible for people who like gameboy games), but there
| doesn't seem to be much to gain in asking myself why I want
| to spend money on things I like. What else should I spend
| my money on?
| cazum wrote:
| But that's not what's happening.
|
| They made a Gameboy game and now you're buying
| hamburgers.
|
| If you're doing a 'vote with your wallet' thing to try to
| convince them to make more retro games that at least
| makes sense, even if id argue it's a little naive, but
| that's not even what were talking about. They made a
| videogame and now people are pledging to buy their
| hamburgers.
| comfypotato wrote:
| Acknowledging that it's a multifaceted mega-corp (and
| some of the facets are bad) is it really naive to
| associate excellent marketing with moral goodness? What
| is this marketing doing if not signaling that at least
| some of the company reflects values you support? Deciding
| to support the company by buying hamburgers logically
| follows.
|
| I'm enjoying the corporate apologetics personally. I've
| heard there is a Christian resurgence among the youth,
| and this makes me wonder if there will be a resurgence of
| pro-capitalism sentiment as well. Ideas, values, culture:
| it all evolves with time.
| disruptalot wrote:
| It makes perfect sense. McDonalds did something
| unconventional and apparently popular. People that found
| that valuable send the strongest signal you can send in
| an economy - money. "Corporate profits" take a look at
| the bank and they think "hmm, that seemed to work, we'll
| do more of that". They might not produce another gameboy
| game, that signal might need to be calibrated over
| further attempts to figure out why people bought more
| hamburgers. But certainly some signal concerning the
| approach they took will be loud and clear.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| That makes perfect sense to me.
|
| McDonalds obviously made the game in the hope that it
| will sell more hamburgers. If you buy a hamburger, their
| strategy worked, which means they (and other companies
| that are watching) have a reason to do similar things in
| the future.
|
| What's weird about incentivizing behavior you like in the
| hope that you get more of that behavior?
| ksaj wrote:
| The behaviour in question isn't simply producing retro
| games. It is producing something unique and interesting
| that their competitors are not offering. It is an edge.
|
| If their competitors copycat McDonalds' marketing, they
| totally didn't get that message, because by the time they
| clone it, the uniqueness McDonalds demonstrated does not
| apply to them - they've made a copy, or even a shadow of
| what came moments before. The edge McDonalds had is their
| cliff to behold unless they find something unique to
| counter with.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| It may be reasonable and rational but it makes for very
| boring reading.
| tootie wrote:
| I'd wager the game was made by a digital agency for expressly
| this purpose
| chatmasta wrote:
| I cannot read any enthusiastic endorsement of McDonald's
| without thinking of the meme/patent [0] from Sony proposing
| that viewers skip commercials by yelling brand names at their
| TV:
|
| > Say "McDonald's" to end commercial
|
| > "McDonald's!"
|
| [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sony-patent-mcdonalds/
| endisneigh wrote:
| The irony of this post on YCombinator
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| It is okay to like things, even if those things are marketing
| campaigns by global corporations.
| artursapek wrote:
| You will eat the feedlot beef to support retro video games,
| citizen
| TillE wrote:
| If you see something obviously stupid, consider for a moment
| that the author may not be entirely serious.
| praisewhitey wrote:
| They're clearly joking.
| TillE wrote:
| How is this the only response which acknowledges the obvious
| joke? Are people even reading the words, how do you not see
| the jokey tone?
| TMWNN wrote:
| One of the symptoms of autism is the inability to recognize
| sarcasm
| <http://www.healthcentral.com/autism/c/1443/162610/autism-
| sar...> without the "help" of idiotic, illiterate signals
| like "/s".
|
| There are a lot of autists on social media, sadly not
| excluding HN.
| superdisk wrote:
| I wrote the music engine they used in this game... never thought
| I'd see the day haha :)
| jpadif wrote:
| The music sounds particularly awesome, first thing I noticed is
| how deep the bass sounds given the limitations of the medium.
|
| Looks like it is using a separate tone for the initial kick,
| and then a sweep an octave lower, it really sounds huge. This
| is the first time hearing a Game Boy game through nice
| headphones though, so I'm not sure if this is also present in
| older games.
| iAmAPencilYo wrote:
| That's pretty cool! Is this a new development or something that
| was reused from decades ago?
| superdisk wrote:
| I built the initial version in late 2019 and have been
| maintaining it since. It's used by GB Studio which is what
| this game was made with.
|
| https://nickfa.ro/index.php/HUGETracker
| esotericsean wrote:
| I've been using GPTPlayer with my GBDK project. Is there
| any benefit to me switching to HUGE?
| superdisk wrote:
| There's a mismatch between GBT Player and the GB hardware
| due to what can be expressed in the .mod format, meaning
| GBT is only capable of really beepy sounds (unless you're
| super good). hUGE gives more control over the hardware
| since it was made for it (and you can losslessly import
| GBT .mods). Ultimately though you can use whatever works
| for you, there are other drivers out there as well.
| 0xGod wrote:
| This may be one of the most amazing marketing moves I've ever
| seen in my life. The day I see this headline is the day I see
| Grimace's Birthday on these delicious McNuggets w/ bbq sauce. And
| these fries, so good.
|
| Def in moderation tho.
| krapp wrote:
| Related: The 10 Year Hunt for the Lost McDonald's DS Game[0]
|
| [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e6xOBCAVvA
| i_c_b wrote:
| This isn't even the first legitimately interesting video game
| connection to McDonalds, weirdly.
|
| Treasure is an influential game development studio that did a lot
| of really interesting work in the mid to late 90s, responsible
| for games like Gunstar Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga,
| Bangai-o, Silhouette Mirage, Dynamite Headdy, Mischief Makers,
| Alien Soldier, and others. They were a bunch of ex-Konami
| developers (who had worked on games like Contra 3, Axelay, Super
| Castlevania 4, the arcade Simpsons) who were tired of making
| license games and wanted to make their own original games. A few
| of their games did well in the market, but they and their
| particular approach to innovation in action game rule systems has
| had a much, much bigger impact on other action game developers
| since.
|
| And their very first game when they left Konami and started their
| own studio, the game they had to make to stay afloat to make
| Gunstar Heroes, was... a Sega Genesis McDonalds game, the 1993
| "McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure".
|
| Longplay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNbmJyL872c
|
| I've never played it, but it looks really solid and vastly better
| than it has any right to be.
| csdreamer7 wrote:
| I played that alot as a kid. I struggled with staying focused
| to beat a game, especially with the infamouse Sonic 3 Carnival
| Night Zone before the age of Youtube. This game was one of the
| first I was able to beat as a kid.
| spbaar wrote:
| and there was a crazy freaky 3d test Easter egg found just 2
| years ago for the first time. https://youtu.be/BvGC5dJg3E8
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Don't forget the legend of the lost Mcdonand's Training DS
| Game: https://kotaku.com/we-can-all-finally-learn-how-to-make-
| big-...
| askiiart wrote:
| And don't forget Nick Robinson's fantastic mini(?)
| documentary on it: https://youtu.be/-e6xOBCAVvA
| tm-guimaraes wrote:
| Gunstar Heroes is still one of my favorite games, it had so
| much stuff, and fun co-op.
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| I played the crap out of that game as a kid and it WAS better
| than it should have been. You can play it here:
| https://www.playroms.net/sega-roms/mcdonalds-treasure-land-a...
| SECProto wrote:
| And predating that by a year is M.C.Kids for NES [1], which I
| remember from my childhood
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.C._Kids
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Love the knowledge drop! Thank you!
| leshokunin wrote:
| Let's not forget Mick and Mac (Global Gladiators?).
| Ileca wrote:
| That's right, Global Gladiators >
| https://www.guardiana.net/MDG-
| Database/Mega+Drive/Global+Gla...
|
| A cool game, fun and dynamic, with a bonus stage where you
| have to pick up garbage falling from the sky faster and
| faster, and sort it for recycling.
|
| Because, yes, it was a game that wanted to brainwash you into
| thinking McDonald = environmentalism. What a joke.
| musha68k wrote:
| x + a
| saulrh wrote:
| That game's music is particularly special. Listen to the final
| boss theme! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJaWgvWvvgc.
| defrost wrote:
| Not bad, ... but I was secretly hoping for a chip tunes cover
| of _Pair-a-Buns_ by _Mac Sabbath_ :(
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7kFfLRcHjU
| pram wrote:
| Sounds a lot like some stuff on Dynamite Headdy, very nice.
| sean_lynch wrote:
| Not even the only McDonald's branded game of the era! I played
| MC Kids growing up on NEWS and it also was a dramatically
| better game than it had any right to be. Not quite the same
| storied history but still recommend playing if you're looking
| for some hidden NES gems.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nKywTkMnAs
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.C._Kids
| illinx wrote:
| The guy who programmed MC Kids did a writeup on the game's
| engineering that serves as a wonderful introduction to
| programming for the NES.
|
| https://games.greggman.com/game/programming_m_c__kids/
| dakial1 wrote:
| Man, that video was nostalgic. I played this so much that I
| remember the song...
| shon wrote:
| Yep, thanks for posting. I have it on my Batocera rig right
| now.
|
| Also let's not forget about the long tradition of Pepsi video
| games including the interesting Japanese Pepsiman and the
| PlayStation release!
|
| https://youtu.be/lNF3dBiSH4M
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I've seen Pepsiman played at a GDQ[0] event and it is such
| good entertainment. I forget which year it was but I remember
| commentary about how the community found the guy who did the
| acting ("Pepsi for TV Game!") in the game and how he claimed
| to have been specifically directed to use broken English.
|
| (2016: https://youtu.be/C33Xo1hE9XE 13:00 for the quote)
|
| [0] https://gamesdonequick.com/
| adultSwim wrote:
| Great job! People are clearly enjoying this work.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| I was about to hop in my car and order a happy meal, too bad
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| McDonald's plans to overtake Microsoft and Sony in their ploy to
| become the future gaming console of choice has been revealed.
| binji wrote:
| This is using my gameboy emulator, binjgb[0], on the website!
| (well one of my gameboy emulators, heh [1][2]) It's been used as
| the emulator for GB Studio for a little while now, but I don't
| know how often people embed it in their websites, so it's really
| cool to see.
|
| [0] https://github.com/binji/binjgb [1]
| https://github.com/binji/pokegb [2] https://binji.github.io/raw-
| wasm/badgb/
| hackernewds wrote:
| do you get compensated for use?
| manojlds wrote:
| Funny how people ask this while also being critical on
| Nintendo. If creator of emulator is to be compensated, are
| you going to compensate Nintendo as well?
| datpiff wrote:
| Why would Nintendo be compensated? All the technologies
| used are re-implementations of their work.
| manojlds wrote:
| "their work" - enough said.
| datpiff wrote:
| Lol should open source projects pay commercial vendors?
| They are recreating "their work" right?
| manojlds wrote:
| I didn't even argue for it. My only comment was on
| someone saying the person creating this should get money
| while they won't think of Nintendo.
|
| Oracle v Google also comes into the picture.
| binji wrote:
| nah, people can do whatever they want with it :)
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Represent
| splatzone wrote:
| McDonalds makes ~$23 billion per year. You deserve
| something.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| They are getting exactly what they asked for.
| mynonameaccount wrote:
| They developer isn't complaining, why are you? Maybe you
| can create something, opensource it MIT, and then
| complain.
| Andrex wrote:
| Morally, maybe. Legally, no.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I personally don't think we should expect more from a
| "richer" user as soon as they're following the license of
| OSS (or expect anything different at all, regardless
| users' background or purpose).
|
| It just doesn't make sense, not even morally.
| benj111 wrote:
| Not only that but Macdonald's presumably paid for this
| game to be developed etc.
|
| That developer is more directly profiting from the tools.
| If you want to make a moral argument, surely it's them
| that should be passing money down the chain.
|
| If I buy something from Amazon, should it be on me to
| identify the open source projects they use and pay them?
| Further where does it stop? Someone presumably used Linux
| in all this, do I need to send Linus a cut? Which driver
| writers do I need to support? How many copies of busy box
| were used in all this?
| hnbad wrote:
| Morally, everyone in a value chain should get a cut,
| including the cleaning lady keeping your toilet stalls
| fresh and the midwife who helped deliver her.
|
| Alas our cultural narrative frames achievements as
| products of genius individuals existing in a vacuum
| rather than celebrating them as accomplishments of
| humanity or at least the societies that enabled them to
| be brought about.
|
| So yeah, legally it doesn't make any sense. Morally it's
| highly debatable.
| pdntspa wrote:
| But... but... but... the startup bros compel you to
| monetize! How could you leave money on the table?!?!?
| [/sarcasm]
| mickael-kerjean wrote:
| Where do you put the bar of the legal vs morale argument?
| A few days ago, I discovered a government entity in
| Pakistan was using my AGPL software [1] to handle
| censoring of media through their "ministry of information
| and broadcasting". I did release my software under AGPL
| as I like the underlying ideology of free software with a
| large emphasis on the freedom and not the free of charge
| but would have never expect some regime would come to use
| it to handle censoring.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I personally think your particular scenario is the easier
| one: such "client" will ignore any license requirement or
| "moral pressure" anyway, as soon as they can acquire the
| software in some way. There shouldn't be moral burden on
| the devs. You do more good (way more) than harm.
| Otherwise I doubt Linus can sleep at night. I'd say this
| is no difference from, say, a knife manufacturer when it
| comes to the harm the knives do.
|
| Commercial use is something devs are more torn because
| they feel they're being exploited while the client is not
| doing anything wrong inherently (doing business).
|
| And in that case, you have to adjust your expectation to
| be exactly the same as the license you put in to resolve
| such cognitive dissonance.
| vocatus_gate wrote:
| "the harm the knives do"
|
| Ah yes, those famous knives that jump up and attack
| people, when they're not too tired from autonomously
| cutting steaks and chopping vegetables.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| You got what I meant. Sorry, not a native speaker.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Woah. This is really an incredible project. I'm currently
| running a seafile server for this purpose but it really
| isn't all that great and I keep debating going back to
| simple SFTP. Using your frontend would be a great addon.
|
| Very nice work and congrats on taking this on
| successfully.
| ekianjo wrote:
| You used the wrong license then.
| kortilla wrote:
| You're thinking of revenue. Where is your outrage over
| the government using open source given its revenue?
|
| You're missing the point of open source if you think it's
| quid pro quo.
| pongo1231 wrote:
| Not everyone does everything with the expectation of
| seeing their bank account inflated in return. Sometimes
| people work on things just for the gist of it and I
| always appreciate seeing something driven solely by
| legitimate enthusism. :)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| ... Recalls Simpon's episode where Bill Gates says "I
| didn't get rich handing out checks"
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Please read the licensing terms in their GitHub repo
| first before making a comment.
| makapuf wrote:
| I have the right to stand up in front of a music
| performer, invite friends to come over and listen to the
| great show, receive expensive gifts from my friends for
| their great evening and then give nothing to the street
| performer. Its my right !
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| I mean... yeah. In the meantime you haven't taken
| anything from that person; they are performing on a
| public street. On the contrary, similar to a packed
| restaurant, your presence might signal to others that
| there is something worth experiencing where you and your
| friends are crowded. This could in turn benefit the
| person you're crowded around by bringing more wallets
| within earshot. So you haven't actually given nothing,
| you've given your attention, and you've advertised for
| that person as if you were wearing a giant chicken suit
| spinning a sign and shouting, "Hey everyone, check out
| this person! Their music is good enough to attract a
| crowd!"
|
| The fact that your friends in this scenario would weirdly
| shower you with expensive gifts after inviting them to
| watch a street musician perform doesn't negate the free
| advertising you've provided.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Yes, the performer would benefit from that attention.
| Maybe some of the people your presence brings around will
| tip them, etc.
|
| The difference is that the existence of the performer is
| super obvious while in this case author and their work is
| hidden so author will not benefit in the same way.
| [deleted]
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| > The difference is
|
| Sure, that does differentiate the two scenarios. I was
| responding specifically to the first scenario.
|
| I have an arguably bad habit of responding only to
| specific points that people make in their arguments,
| while ignoring the rest of their argument until they
| address the unresolved point. In this case, someone tried
| to make a point about standing around street performers.
| I had something to say about it.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I see, I took it as objection to the bigger point,
| because many probably do the same if you want to avoid
| misunderstanding you can keep doing what you're doing
| just with a clarification that you have no strong opinion
| on the issue
| Talanes wrote:
| The author is also hidden from anyone who would be
| authorizing payment. The only person involved who might
| know the author is the guy making the game, and they
| likely used what leverage they had on their own contract.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| based on what I know about other engineers it's almost
| certain that no one used any leverage whatsoever and the
| only reason they even checked the license is because
| legal forced them
| gchamonlive wrote:
| What you can do isn't necessarily the same as what you
| should do. McDonald's missed an opportunity to make this
| even cooler by compensating the developer. A couple
| thousand dollars in the right place can be more effective
| than millions in marketing. It just shows the company
| cares.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Who else should get random bonuses?
|
| How about the hundreds of open source contributors to web
| browsers? What about the children of the people who clean
| the offices of the studio that made the game? I bet I
| could identify about a million people who deserve a bonus
| here.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| It's not a random bonus though. It makes sense in the
| context of the promotion.
|
| In any case, that is far off the point of my comment,
| which is explicit in the very first sentence. You tried
| flipping my argument but destroyed the context in the
| process.
| yellowapple wrote:
| ...yes? They all arguably deserve something.
|
| Hell, we're long overdue for a universal basic income -
| such that _everyone_ can pursue things for the sake of
| coolness or intellectual curiosity or whatever if they
| want to, without needing to worry about making ends meet.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Even with UBI, wouldn't the argument that the people
| involved should get a bonus still exactly be the same?
|
| I'm pretty sure that most developers in western countries
| have no problem making ends meet and freely pursue things
| for intellectual curiosity.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Ubi Now you are showing your true colors here
| yellowapple wrote:
| I haven't exactly been quiet about my Georgist
| socioeconomic stances :)
| LinXitoW wrote:
| One could argue that the relatively high compensation for
| programmers is the main reason so much cool opensource
| stuff could even get started. A universal income for
| everyone could, hypothetically, put everyone in a similar
| position of being able to afford to do "productive"
| hobbies, vs. working a third minimum wage job.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Maybe it's both OK to say things like this to promote the
| megabusiness...
|
| >Just be sure to order some McDonald's to support them.
| Who knows... if we keep eating McDonald's, they might
| keep producing these oddball retro gaming related
| projects.
|
| >I, for one, will NEVER stop eating McDonald's. You have
| my word.
|
| ...and it's also OK to wonder if that megabusiness
| could've paid or otherwise credited the small guy. Not
| that it's obligated to.
| Aeolun wrote:
| When they decided to release it how they did they decided
| that compensation was secondary.
|
| Maybe just the fact that their software is now used by
| millions of people is cool enough?
| Andrex wrote:
| If this is the same emulator ejected by GB Studio when it
| exports to web, that makes sense. All GB Studio projects on
| Itch.io likely use your emu too!
|
| https://itch.io/games/made-with-gb-studio
|
| 725 listed so far (lots of asset packs and tech demos I'm sure,
| but still.)
| binji wrote:
| heh, good point! Most of the older ones are using GameBoy-
| Online[0] instead, since that was the GB Studio default for a
| while. But I think everything since GBStudio 3 should be
| binjgb.
|
| [0] https://github.com/taisel/GameBoy-Online
| Andrex wrote:
| GB Studio 3 is the shit. Thanks for (unintentionally?)
| being apart of that!
| chrismaltby wrote:
| As the creator of GB Studio, thanks, really appreciate
| that! And thanks to binjgb for the excellent emulator.
|
| Really cool to see GB Studio being used for this.
| nacs wrote:
| Online version using the emulator is here:
|
| https://grimacesbirthday.com/
| polygot wrote:
| The animation when grimace wipes out is mildly amusing
| brennopost wrote:
| Thank you for your emulators. I've used pokegb as reference to
| my own emulator, and used binjgb debugger to fix many issues.
| binji wrote:
| Glad they've helped! There are plenty of better emulators,
| but I'm pretty proud of binjgb for being small, pretty fast,
| and pretty accurate.
| j-kent wrote:
| Poor Ronald, not even invited to Grimace's party. IT really did a
| number on Mcdonald's branding.
| rsiqueira wrote:
| There's an even cooler thing in the page: the McDonald's TETRIS
| portable game console shaped like Chicken McNuggets.
| https://retrododo.com/mcdonalds-tetris-handheld/
| whatscooking wrote:
| Great, fast food marketing targeting kids
| wturner wrote:
| In beginning of the game, the McDonalds logo only appears on a
| garbage can and if you run into it - you die. It's a positive
| message for health conscious parents.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Back in college (now 15 years ago) I did an analysis of fast
| food menus for a nutrition class.
|
| McDonalds turned out to be the easiest to get a healthy meal
| from at the time. They had things like salads, apple slices,
| and a much wider variety of items than other fast food
| restaurants meaning that if you were to eat there every day it
| was much easier to make different healthy meals than it was at
| the others but like an order of magnitude.
|
| Basically just skip the soft drink and only occasionally order
| the fries and you'll be fine.
| autoexec wrote:
| The last time I tried McDonalds apple slices they somehow
| tasted like chemicals. I wonder how much of their "healthy"
| food is actually healthy. You could recreate a lot of their
| menu at home using fresh/real ingredients and it'd probably
| be a lot healthier than the stuff they ship all over the
| country in plastic, pumped full of salt and preservatives,
| then wrapped in PFAS.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Back in college (now 15 years ago) I did an analysis of fast
| food menus for a nutrition class.
|
| >McDonalds turned out to be the easiest to get a healthy meal
| from at the time.
|
| The McDouble is "The greatest food in human history"
| <https://nypost.com/2013/07/28/the-greatest-food-in-human-
| his...)
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Title is a bit misleading - it's a ROM for an emulator, it isn't
| a game that you could play on an actual Gameboy, were you still
| to own one.
| circuit10 wrote:
| You can if you have a flashcart
| jonny_eh wrote:
| You can burn it to a ROM.
| DanTheManPR wrote:
| I just tried the rom out on my flashcart, and it boots and
| plays on a real gameboy.
| cubefox wrote:
| Still different. A normal Gameboy doesn't include a flash
| cart, it only plays physical games, no mere ROM files.
| Oxodao wrote:
| Guess what's in a physical game ?
| cubefox wrote:
| Guess what's not in a ROM file?
| circuit10 wrote:
| If it's only officially playable through an emulator I wonder why
| didn't just use a modern game engine to make something in a pixel
| art style? This is definitely more interesting though
| foldor wrote:
| It gives it enough authenticity to make headlines. A generic
| html game wouldn't have made any where near the same buzz.
| circuit10 wrote:
| Do they advertise it as a Game Boy Color game anywhere? I
| wouldn't be surprised if they can't (or rather don't want to
| risk it) for trademark reasons
|
| Edit: The game page itself doesn't mention it but the article
| has information on how it was made and by who so they must
| have got the information somehow, maybe the developer talked
| about it
| LukeShu wrote:
| There's an in-game credits screen.
| bityard wrote:
| The article implies it runs on GBC hardware and a few comments
| on HN here confirm it.
| circuit10 wrote:
| That's why I said "officially". I doubt they want you to rip
| the ROM from the page or they would just add a download to it
| Nition wrote:
| What the parent comment means is, they're not releasing it on
| the hardware officially. So it didn't need to be specifically
| a GameBoy Color game.
| Andrex wrote:
| Is legitimate GB publishing making a comeback like I've always
| dreamed?!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36009454
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-06-14 23:02 UTC)