M.C. Kids
| Developer: Ocean | Publisher: Virgin Interactive |
| Release Date: N/A | Also On: None |
For those of you who think Super Mario Brothers 2 is a unique game, I've got news for you. It isn't. Its gameplay style was copied by a third party game in the early nineties by Virgin Games called M.C Kids. Originally intended to be advertised through McDonald's Happy Meals, the deal to do so fell through, and as a result what was an excellent game by any definition of the word got left by the wayside so far as the mainstream is concerned. However, nearly anybody who has ever played it will tell you that even if it is a McDonald's game, it is not kiddy in gameplay or in difficulty.
The story of the game, as with most games of this era, is simple. Hamburglar has run off with Ronald's magic bag and these two kids clad in blue have to go get it back from him. In order to do so, they will have to traverse six worlds, each run by a different McDonald's character, collecting cards for them to be shown the way to the next world, or in the final world's case, to be allowed to confront the end boss.
Let's begin with the graphics. For a third party game, the graphics are really good. This game was released a year or two after Super Mario Bros. 3 and pretty much rivals it in graphic quality, although Super Mario Bros. 3 has a slight edge over it. That it can even be compared to such a game graphically is a testament to how good the graphics in this game are. Overall, very well done.
The sound doesn't fare quite so well, however. The sound effects are lower quality than Super Mario Bros. 3 and the music is pretty much standard platformer fare and not particularly memorable. However, for all that is good about this game, I'll take average sound.
The gameplay is similar to Super Mario Bros. 2 in many ways. One difference is that you can't pick up enemies to throw them at each other. However, blocks are liberally strewn around most levels, so that isn't much of a problem. However, there are other differences as well. There are springboards that can send you high into the air, some of which require you to be holding a block to operate. There are also moving block outlines that can be filled with certain blocks to become moving platforms. There are even blocks that can float you across lava and boats to sail across bodies of water that can be thrown. Among my favorite things in this game, though, are the bridges that burn across as soon as you step on them and the whirly things that turn you upside down or upside right when you run across them. There are many other things too that I am not mentioning here. Virgin took out all the stops in creating a very good platformer here.
However, this isn't one of those platformers where all you have to do is get through the levels. Like I mentioned earlier, you have to collect cards to get out of the worlds. These cards are hidden in the levels, so you have to search for them. To make matters even more complicated, some levels have two cards in them instead of one, and the game doesn't tell you which levels these are. Also, not all the cards for a world are found in the world you need them for, so by the end you might have to do a lot of backtracking if you haven't thoroughly searched every level as you've come along. This adds to the length of the game, at least the first couple times through as you look for everything.
Don't think that this even is one of those kiddy games you'll complete in an hour. This game has a very high difficulty level, especially at the end, even to the point of being too high if the game was originally aimed at young kids. Anybody who likes Super Mario Brothers 2 should give this game a shot if they can find it.
| Graphics: | 9 |
| Sound: | 6 |
| Gameplay: | 9 |
| Creativity: | 8 |
| Replay Value/Game Length: | 7 |
| Final: | 8.1 |
| Written by Martin | Review Guide |
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