Tuesday, February 20, 2007

McDonalds cool Atari placemat


From x-entertainment, "McDonald's once used placemats merely for the aforementioned purpose of keeping loose McNuggets and fries from becoming forever linked with whatever tray grime the person who ate before you left behind. Oh sure, they wash the trays, but there's a big difference between running something through a dishwasher and running something under the vague caress of a sloppy towel, and unless you know for sure, NO, you will not eat food that touches the tray directly.


In 1982, McDonald's teamed with the time's biggest video game producers in the "Atari Scratch 'n' Win" game, where customers were given neat scratch-off cards based on one of three now-classic games: Star Raiders, Missile Command or Centipede. There were ten scratchy spots on each card, and if a player was able to reveal two identical prize symbols before landing on a game-ending "zap" symbol, he or she would win that prize, no questions asked.The interesting thing here was that every card had the potential to be a winning one. To offset that, there were far more prizes offered for "free McDonald's food" than for what people were actually playing for: Atari games, systems, computers and so forth. They even gave out full-sized Centipede arcade cabinets. The Atari Scratch 'n' Win game could also be credited with the small spike of 1982 suicides, because it was entirely possible for a customer to lose on a grand prize winning card by scratching onto a "zap" symbol before hitting the identical "BIG WINNA" symbols. Fortunately for us, it was also possible to cheat. By manipulating the cards with various bends and trick lighting, players could determine which symbols were where before going through with the no-backsies coin scratch. While this only lent most people free sodas and fries, it probably saved a few "real" winners from needing to blow their brains out.

3 comments:

Octopunk said...

Yeah, remember when we'd sit on the floor for a crazy game of Star Raiders? Right, me neither.

I don't really remember Centipede for the 2600. Better than Pac-Man?

JPX said...

Yeah, despite crappy graphics, Centipede was a farily faithful adaptation and was fun. The only downside is that Atari never released a trackball, which would've been awesome for Centipede, Missle Command, and, eh, I guess that's all.

Octopunk said...

That's enough! With those two games, the trackball is all. Just like Tempest is all about that spinning dial.

Malevolent

 2018  ***1/2 It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. ...