McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure Review

    Hello and welcome once again one and all to another game review. This review is going to be a return to normal lengthwise after a pretty lengthy two part Diddy Kong Racing review. I can't say that I am one hundred percent going back to my traditional way of reviewing. I'm going to try something a little different here. Part of the reason that the Diddy Kong Racing blog took so long was that I was playing a few different games at the same time in addition to trying to get out of the house a bit. Pretty much all the games I was trying out were difficult or dare I even say bad games on the NES. I also decided to give a few Sega Genesis games a try. One of them entitled McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure really caught my eye and surprised me. I went into it thinking that the game was going to be a poor controlling, crappy sounding, McDonald's advertisement. What I got was much much more.

Developer: Treasure Co. LTD

Publisher: Sega

North America Release: 1993

Systems: Sega Genesis/Mega Drive

    The game's plot is far from a massive McDonald's advertisement. Ronald, Birdie, Grimace, the Hamburglar, and even the Fry Kids are all in the game and participate to an extent on this adventure, but outside of of them, the McDonald's references are not overly abundant. You will see the McDonald's logo here and there, but it's not like you are running around collecting burgers, chicken Mcnuggets, and Coca-Cola. Instead Ronald leads an expedition to find treasure after finding a piece of the treasure map. As Ronald and the gang follow the map they will stumble upon additional map pieces. Eventually the crew finishes the map and takes off in a rocket ship to the moon. After crash landing Ronald and the gang split up to try to find help. After defeating the final boss he opens the treasure chest. Inside the chest is a rainbow that takes Ronald and his friends back to McDonaldland. The final screen shows some delicious looking McDonald's hamburgers jumping out of the treasure chest. So I'm not entirely sure what all that means. I thought the rainbow was the treasure, but apparently the burgers are? Whatever the case the plot is overall silly and childish, but that (children) is the target audience of the game so I guess the plot works. 

    The first thing that stood out to me is the sheer amount of color in this game. I mean that too. There is a ton of color here. It kind of reminds me of Kirby Super Star on the SNES. All the characters and enemies all look very cartoon like and overall look great. I think my favorite visual effect in this game is what happens upon beating a boss. It reminds me a little bit of what happens in a lot of Atari 2600 games. Explosions. Lots and lots of crazy explosions. It's so random in this game, but it's almost like a huge celebration at the same time. Outside of all the explosions, there isn't anything visually that is special or over the top. Is it bright and colorful? Yes, but at the same time it doesn't do anything new really. I feel the same way for it's sound and music. For the Sega, the music and sound effects are pretty good, but at the same time, they really aren't anything special per say. 

    The thing that surprised me the absolute most about this game is the gameplay. I expected the game to be a mess as far as controls went, but what I got is a very playable platformer. To my surprise, Ronald actually handles very well. Jumping is pretty on target, the camera behaves nicely, and only one of Ronald's actions seemed a bit clunky. Ronald has a couple abilities that you can use in your quest. One of them is shooting magic at enemies. You can collect certain items to upgrade your magic allowing you to do more damage. The clunkier of Ronald's techniques is the ability to shoot what appears to be a crazy scarf or something out of his arm and grapple onto structures above. There were a few times where I felt that pin-point accuracy was needed and failure to time the scarf at just the right moment lead to a long drop to death. Speaking of death, Ronald can float on with balloons. Scattered throughout the stages you'll find powerups (like the ones that increase your magic). One of those powerups is balloons. If you were to fall to your death, Ronald will deploy the balloons and float upwards for a time. You can control where he goes with these balloons so you can actually skip over a portion of the level before they pop.

    Along the way Ronald is helped out by his friends. He will also come across stores (image above) that he himself seems to run. It's kind of weird because it seems like you are buying stuff like powerups, lives, and health from Ronald as Ronald. Whatever. Sometimes you'll run into a minigame instead of a shop. It's a puzzle game similar to Columns where you get prizes based on the symbols you are clearing. The boss battles are actually very unique. Not to give away much about them, but it's a game of give and take. In order to damage them you may need to damage yourself. It's a real interesting concept that I honestly kind of liked. Who knew Ronald would sacrifice so much to reach the treasure?

    All in all McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure is actually a very surprising game and as such I feel like I can give it 7.5 out of 10. It's a really good looking game that plays well, but doesn't really do anything that was new at the time. It's a treasure hunting game that you can finish in just a couple of hours and features some very familiar faces. For me, this is the best game that was made for a food company. I really liked how in my mind I knew it was a McDonald's game, but as I played, the only big reminder of that was Ronald himself. I think this game is certainly worth a try as there is quite a bit of exploring to do on the levels and overall the experience is quite fun.

    Thanks for reading! My next blog is going to be a return trip to the Donkey Kong Country universe (surprise surprise). I will be taking a look at Donkey Kong Land 3 for the Game Boy Color. How does the Japanese remake stack up to the original Game Boy version? Find out next time! Also. Thank you all!!!! This blog is blog number 60 here. It's taken quite a while to get here, but with a growing audience I just wanted to say thank you all again!