three_frogs
Goomba
Some of you may remember the 2006 Mario/McDonalds toy promotion that had toys like the Mario ball and the Mario Tennis hammer. At the time, the McDonalds official Happy Meal website had an Mario section that feature content such as videos, screensavers to download, a contest to win a free Nintendo DS, and, most interestingly, two flash games you could play. These games were called Mario's Driving Range and Jammin' with Mario. I remember playing these games as a kid, but unfortunately, once the promotion ended, these two games were removed along with the Mario site, and I was never able to play them again. I specifically remember playing the Mario's Driving Range game multiple times and enjoying it and was pretty disappointed when I found out it had been taken down. Unfortunately, these games don't seem to be available anywhere anymore, and the archived version of the original site is mostly broken, so the games and all the other features are inaccessible.
Fast-forward to earlier this year, I've been trying to find more information on these games, but to my surprise, there were no videos or images of this game anywhere. In fact, there was hardly any mention of these games anywhere. Only mentions I could find was this forum post, another forum post, and a blog post. Based on what was mentioned in these posts and my own memories, Jammin' with Mario was some sort of rhythm game or music maker in which you used your keyboard to play classic Mario tunes. From what I remember, Mario's Driving Range was a side-scrolling golf-style game in which you used your cursor to aim the trajectory of your shot. I remember there being different objects like coins and mushrooms on the course. I think the goal was to hit different targets to get points. To find more information about these games and to spread the word about them, I made a post on the Lost Media Wiki Forums. Since my post, somebody created an article on the Lost Media Wiki about the games.
I mentioned earlier about how there was a screensaver available to download on the website at the time. I had actually downloaded the screensaver back when the site was still active and was actually able to recover it on an old drive I had. A drive that I long thought had died out. I posted a download for the screensaver on the Internet Archive, and I posted a video of the screensaver on Reddit. As far as I was aware, this screensaver wasn't available anywhere else on the internet. The reason I bring up the screensaver is because I remember there being a secret message that mentions a cheat code for the Mario's Driving Range game. However, when I ran the screensaver, the message was nowhere to be found. I eventually realized that I had to set back the date of my computer to the month and year of the original promotion (September 2006). Depending on the day, the screensaver would show different secret messages after waiting a moment. The first week of September 2006 would display a message that advertised the promotion itself. The second week of September would display a message containing the logo for Mario's Driving Range alongside the code I remembered. Other weeks in September would display a message advertising the Jammin' with Mario game and featured its logo. As far as I'm aware, these logos are the only images related to these games that have ever been found since the games were discontinued.
I'm posting this here because I figured you guys might be interested in these obscure and forgotten pieces of Mario media. I'm also hoping to find others that might remember playing these games or using the Happy Meal/Mario site back in the day.
Fast-forward to earlier this year, I've been trying to find more information on these games, but to my surprise, there were no videos or images of this game anywhere. In fact, there was hardly any mention of these games anywhere. Only mentions I could find was this forum post, another forum post, and a blog post. Based on what was mentioned in these posts and my own memories, Jammin' with Mario was some sort of rhythm game or music maker in which you used your keyboard to play classic Mario tunes. From what I remember, Mario's Driving Range was a side-scrolling golf-style game in which you used your cursor to aim the trajectory of your shot. I remember there being different objects like coins and mushrooms on the course. I think the goal was to hit different targets to get points. To find more information about these games and to spread the word about them, I made a post on the Lost Media Wiki Forums. Since my post, somebody created an article on the Lost Media Wiki about the games.
I mentioned earlier about how there was a screensaver available to download on the website at the time. I had actually downloaded the screensaver back when the site was still active and was actually able to recover it on an old drive I had. A drive that I long thought had died out. I posted a download for the screensaver on the Internet Archive, and I posted a video of the screensaver on Reddit. As far as I was aware, this screensaver wasn't available anywhere else on the internet. The reason I bring up the screensaver is because I remember there being a secret message that mentions a cheat code for the Mario's Driving Range game. However, when I ran the screensaver, the message was nowhere to be found. I eventually realized that I had to set back the date of my computer to the month and year of the original promotion (September 2006). Depending on the day, the screensaver would show different secret messages after waiting a moment. The first week of September 2006 would display a message that advertised the promotion itself. The second week of September would display a message containing the logo for Mario's Driving Range alongside the code I remembered. Other weeks in September would display a message advertising the Jammin' with Mario game and featured its logo. As far as I'm aware, these logos are the only images related to these games that have ever been found since the games were discontinued.
I'm posting this here because I figured you guys might be interested in these obscure and forgotten pieces of Mario media. I'm also hoping to find others that might remember playing these games or using the Happy Meal/Mario site back in the day.