There is, however, more to McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure than another licensed 1990s side-scroller for the Sega Genesis. It was the first game completed by Treasure, the small and highly talented developer that deserved much more than a decent cult following. This was not their first game to hit the market, as President Masato Maegawa reportedly preferred that the company debut with the all-original Gunstar Heroes. Yet they never neglected Treasure Land Adventure, and playing it reveals how its creators were fresh on the scene and trying their hardest to impress everyone.
Treasure Land Adventure introduces no complexities to Ronald McDonald: he’s a chipper, crimson-haired clown who readily sets out on a treasure hunt after finding a piece of a map in the forest. Nor does he gain any spectacular powers. He can jump, vaporize enemies with glittering magic, and use his scarf to grab overhead handles. It’s the stages themselves that stand out, as Ronald’s led from one memorable encounter to another. A train ride turns surreal as Ronald leaps across a line of pirouetting rabbit ballerinas on a rail. A city street is distorted by the stomps of grunting sumo wrestlers. A spaceship’s laser slices the lunar landscape as Ronald jumps from one disintegrating cliff to another. And there’s often a web of ziplines or a wall of handholds for him to grab and navigate. Despite the game spanning just four levels, each has numerous substages, and almost every one introduces some new gimmick or challenge.
It's all full of bright colors and charming details, and not much of it comes from McDonald’s. Ronald meets up with Birdie, Grimace, the Fry Kids, and other friends, of course (CosMc is strangely absent despite the game’s interplanetary climax). However, the enemies and scenery are apparently all Treasure creations. The initial levels have metal turtles and armless, horned ogres who wander around smiling like pastel Totoros, and the game isn’t afraid of weirder designs, including an isle of top-hatted cactus men and metallic tribal warriors (who replaced the Japanese version’s more offensively rendered foes) or a low-gravity moonscape that includes living asteroids and a tree that sheds smiley-faced fruits. And then there’s the pirate captain whose head is mostly a giant cackling pair of lips, as though Treasure took a page from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Treasure even rendered Ronald at his best, giving him goofy mannerisms and a perfect clown walk. It’s amusing just to watch him gleefully stride into whatever dangers the game presents, be it a sunken pirate ship or the mouth of a giant stone dinosaur, and it’s even a nice touch when he’s summoning that McDonald’s logo out of thin air. And it’s amusing to see the cutscenes and wonder if some unlucky Treasure employee had to call up McDonald’s and ask how much of a buttcrack Ronald should have.
The music also goes above and beyond. Norio Hanzawa’s bouncing tones highlight of many Treasure games, and here they’re at their most whimsical and upbeat, including the gentle title theme and a particularly catchy tune for the island boat ride and pirate ship. Yet it’s the boss music that stands out the most, an intense little beat that always makes me want to draw out the battles.
Most remarkable is Treasure Land Adventure’s sense of balance. No one would expect grueling action-platforming from a McDonald’s title, and instead the designers hold a player’s interest in other ways. Levels have just enough nooks and secrets to invite modest exploration, and the rewards include extra lives, continues, and a balloon that instantly rescues Ronald from pits. Being an easier game even allows it to experiment here and there. Bosses are vulnerable only after they siphon away Ronald’s energy jewels, forcing the player to actually take damage in order to beat them—and adjust their tactics accordingly. Sorry, you can’t do a no-damage speed run here in Treasure Land.
On all but the highest setting there’s not much challenge. Ronald finds frequent moneybags as well as stores to buy power-ups (chiding you with “Not Enough Golds!” if you’re short), though it’s more sensible to save money for the game’s bonus puzzle game. A falling-block challenge similar to Tetris and Puyo Puyo, it’s a fun and surprisingly strategic diversion, and I usually end up playing it so much that I max out Ronald’s arsenal and leave him with dozens of lives more than he’ll ever need. McDonald’s is all about excess, you know.
That McDonald’s name clearly mandated a cute and harmless tone for Treasure Land Adventure. Routine enemies are zapped away without malice, bosses surrender instead of exploding, and Ronald is a consummate softie, so much that he ends up not caring about the treasure at the end of the game. My favorite sequence would be the second-stage boss, a machine-piloting gremlin who tries to swipe Ronald’s gems and then bursts into tears upon defeat. Ronald then simply gives him some jewels to cheer him up. When even Mario and Kirby games can be casually unkind toward enemies, it’s refreshing to play something where no one ends up unhappy. Even if it’s all just to make a burger chain look good. Perhaps Treasure resented that a little and decided to make Dynamite Headdy a mean little Muppet.
In fact, Treasure Land Adventure is very much a test run for the developer’s later side-scrollers. Ronald’s limited grapple-trick led to Dynamite Headdy’s multi-directional climbing methods, and you’ll see visual motifs that Treasure reused in Silhouette Mirage, Mischief Makers, and perhaps even the scarf-driven Stretch Panic. Yet while those games are more complex and sometimes more satisfying (my jury’s still out on Stretch Panic) than Treasure Land Adventure, they’re also denser, more challenging, and more reliant on the player mastering and enjoying a specific play mechanic. This silly McDonald’s outing has more room to breathe, to be a basic romp of walking and jumping and grabbing things. And it’s darn good at being that.
Is McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure somehow more insidious because it’s a well-crafted game? If it were disposable, tedious fare, it would be easily forgotten, cast aside like a cheeseburger wrapper or an unpopular Happy Meal toy, and serve no further as an instrument of the fast food industrial complex. But it’s too impressive as a game to be dismissed so easily, even if it can’t help but promote the McDonald’s monolith at every moment Ronald is on screen.
Granted, we’re well past the age when impressionable children might be the prime audience for this. With no official digital reissues, Treasure Land Adventure is now the purview of collectors, enthusiasts, and nerd historians all old enough to play through it without emerging with a trenchant craving for McNuggets and milkshakes, though McDonald’s recently brought over some drinks from that short-lived CosMc’s chain, and I wouldn’t mind trying a Toasted Vanilla Frappe or…uh-oh.
That aside, there’s the highest compliment for Treasure Land Adventure: it not only rises above its license, it even improves it. I have no problem calling this my favorite piece of McDonald’s. That’s not saying too much, but I admit that it raised my opinion of Ronald, a character who I usually regard with the same neutrality and ironic tone I’d show Snuggle Bear or The Cookie Crisp Cop. I now I appreciate him in this game as a relentlessly enthusiastic side-scroller protagonist who’ll share his very life energy with bosses who were trying to kill him just moments prior.
It’s also a compliment to Treasure that this endearing, inventive side-scroller is far from their best game. It’s certainly up there with Astro Boy: The Omega Factor and those Bleach DS fighters as their best licensed work, even if the McDonald’s tie-in makes it harder for Sega to revive it like they occasionally do with Gunstar Heroes or Alien Soldier. Maybe that’s for the best. McDonald’s recently brought Ronald and his McDonaldland retinue back to the marketing forefront in an uncomfortably blatant play to nostalgia. I can resist that, but I would be at their merchandising mercy if they also revived Treasure Land Adventure.
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