The McDonald's Gaming Kiosks That Raised a Generation

Before every kid had a phone in their pocket, McDonald's and Nintendo teamed up to put gaming kiosks inside McDonald's PlayPlaces across the US.

Nintendo's very first fast food tie-in was a Super Mario Bros. 3 Happy Meal promotion back in 1990, and the two brands just never really stopped working together after that. 

By the early 2000s, McDonald's started installing N64 kiosks right inside their PlayPlace areas, including games like Banjo-Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing, Jet Force Gemini; all free to play. Some locations went all out and hung giant banners visible from the street advertising a "Nintendo N64 Arcade" inside. 

When some locations upgraded to the Gamecube system games like Rogue Squadron, Wave Race, Sonic Adventure, Super Monkey Ball and Mario Kart Double Dash were commonly found. Game selection seemed to vary by location since there was no single standardized game list across all restaurants.

Nintendo eventually helped bring WiFi to McDonald's locations so DS owners could connect and play Mario Kart online. By 2007, Nintendo DS handhelds were eating up 25% of McDonald's total WiFi bandwidth. A quarter of all their WiFi. Just kids playing Mario Kart at McDonald's.

It's one of those things that feels like a collective memory; a very specific slice of early 2000s childhood that was somehow both totally normal at the time and completely wild in retrospect.

Of course, the kiosks had a dark side. The controllers were being handled by hundreds of greasy, ketchup-fingered kids every single day. Whether it was boredom, habit, or just being five years old, kids could not stop putting the controllers in their mouths. It was a biohazard disguised as a fun family experience. The issue of the unsanitary controllers is wildly assumed to be the reason the kiosks were removed in the late 2000s as individual locations remodeled or updated their PlayPlaces.