eCrew Development Program
| eCrew Development Program | |
|---|---|
 Title screen | |
| Developer(s) | Unknown |
| Publisher(s) | Unknown |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo DS |
| Release | 2010 |
| Genre(s) | Education, simulation, quiz, |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
eCrew Development Program (eCDP, Template:Lang-ja), also known as the McDonald's Training Game, is a rare educational video game developed through a collaboration between Nintendo and McDonald's. Released for the Nintendo DSi sometime in 2010 internally within the Japanese division of McDonald's, it was only ever distributed to the company's own restaurants domestically and never released to the public.
The game teaches the player to make hamburgers and do various other tasks in a McDonald's restaurant and was used to train new restaurant employees. It features several game modes and features, including simulations of food preparation and customer interaction, quizzes, player profiles for employees and managers, and performance statistics. It was distributed in tandem with a separate game titled eSMART which aimed to train preexisting employees rather than new ones.
The game had a budget of ¥200 million and was planned for use in all 3,700 McDonald's locations across Japan by the end of 2010,[1][2][3][4] to which it was distributed together with two McDonald's-skinned Nintendo DSis.[5] It is unknown to which extent it was used and for how long.
A single copy of the game surfaced in September 2020 on an online auction,[6] which was sold to American YouTuber Nick Robinson. Robinson then uploaded the game cartridge's image publicly online on November 17, alongside a self-created documentary detailing how he acquired it.[7][8][9] This was the first time the game was made publicly available.
References
- ^ Loftus, Jack (21 March 2010). "McDonald's Japan To Begin Training Employees with Nintendo DS, Software". Gizmodo. Retrieved 2020-11-20.
- ^ Brown, Damon (20 April 2010). "Bad Recipe: Why McDonald's Shouldn't Use Nintendo To Train Staff". CBS News. Retrieved 2020-11-20.
- ^ Gantayat, Anoop (21 March 2010). "McDonalds Uses DS To Train Part Time Workers". Andriasang. Archived from the original on 24 March 2010.
- ^ Firn, Mike (12 April 2010). "McDonald's Japan Teaches Burger Making With Nintendo DS". YouTube. Bloomberg Quicktake. Retrieved 2020-11-20.
- ^ Reilly, Jim (14 June 2012). "McDonald's Japan Using Nintendo DS To Train Employees". IGN. Retrieved 2020-11-20.
- ^ Lehecka, Eddie (2020-06-30). "Rare McDonald's Nintendo DSi with Training Software Surfaces on Auction Site". Otaquest. Retrieved 2020-11-20.
- ^ Lo Giudice, Federico (2020-11-18). "Nintendo DS: te contamos la historia del misterioso juego perdido de McDonald's y cómo reapareció". Cultura Geek (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-11-27.
- ^ Mosena, Michele (2020-11-19). "La ROM del gioco perduto di McDonald's per Nintendo DS è stata pubblicata online". Nintendoomed (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-11-27.
- ^ Houlihan, Ryan (23 November 2020). "Do yourself a favor and watch this video about a lost McDonald's DS game". Input Magazine. Retrieved 2020-11-27.