McDonald’s – Golden Arches Adventure

What you will see

AtariProtos describes the surviving build as unplayable and “title screen only”. Dave Engman had also programmed the 2600 version of Tutankham for Parker Brothers, and he put a simple McDonald’s title screen on top of that game’s code as a demo. According to AtariProtos, about 90% of the ROM is actually Tutankham. The cartridge label reads “Big Mac Hex 3 6.6”, and the build is dated 6 June 1983; “Big Mac” was the project’s code name.

The game that was planned

Isabel Garret has described the idea. You would play Ronald McDonald flying a spaceship, while hungry aliens came down to eat the Golden Arches on the ground. To stop them, you would fly down, collect McDonald’s food and carry it up to feed the aliens. The catch was that each kind of alien would only eat one kind of food, such as shakes, fries or hamburgers, so you had to bring the right one.

The game was never finished because Engman never got further than the demo. For many years the prototype was a mystery. Curt Vendel of the Atari Museum eventually tracked down this early version, spoke with Isabel Garret and found documents and sketches from its development, which AtariAge then published.