The Fast — A Dream I Once Had… of Fast Food and Video Games

Not a “dream” so much as a random conjecture

I took it upon me to discuss more than just ideas that already existed, mostly about video games but sometimes also about other stuff. Sometimes, I take the time to talk about theoretical subjects, such as my Digital Museum or the possibility of an Australian pantheon called Smite. I realised I should write more of those, about the relevant matter of languages, of course.

My last article was about ad games, video games that exist for the sole purpose of promoting products. I may or may not have described in a portion of that article an idea that I had once that fascinated me when I was younger, like 15 years younger. In retrospect, I fail to understand what propelled me to come up with that idea because no one would ever be able to take it seriously… or so logic says. It might be a ridiculous idea, but good thing it’s in the past. Anyway, it goes something like this…

The game is called “The Fast”, as in “fast-food” and not something that moves really fast. To put it into a gamer’s perspective, it’s Kingdom Hearts with fast food mascots instead of Disney characters. The game is an action RPG where the hero goes from world to world trying to defeat the ultimate evil or something, seeking aid from the likes of Ronald McDonald and the Burger King, among other mascots, only to find that the greatest strengths are their friendship or some other trope-y premise every JRPG has. In truth, I never really knew what the plot was. I liked Kingdom Hearts back then, so I came up with my own take on a super popular crossover franchise. I want to describe, so let’s see what I can squeeze into a 1000-word article (give or take).

Remember: this was forever ago

So in the game, you have multiple worlds, similar to the game that inspired it. Every world represents an existing fast-food franchise. The ultimate dream scenario describes the game to have roughly 20 different worlds, and each one plays by a theme associated with the franchise it represents. You have all-time favourites such as McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Wendy’s, Jack in the Box, Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway, and Pizza Hut. Then you have the ones that most people outside America probably haven’t heard of, such as Carl’s Jr., Arby’s, Little Caesars, Dairy Queen, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Panda Express, Krispy Kreme, and probably some others that may or may not be noteworthy to mention. And like I said, each world is themed around what defines the franchise thematically, such as the world of Burger King is a kingdom. Subway could be themed around New York, with the most exciting world probably being that of Sonic (drive-in, not the hedgehog), because most exciting that world, you’re driving all the time (because its drive-in style restaurants mostly define sonic). As for the gameplay never really occurred to me beyond “same as Kingdom Hearts”, and I have no idea what the overarching plot is beyond “fast food mascots working together against the greater evil”.

I don’t remember how long I obsessed over this idea before moving on to the next random obsession. Still, I can’t imagine that it was long since, even then, I realised how ludicrous and impractical this idea is. It was easier in Kingdom Hearts because the same company owned all the Disney characters. But with “The Fast”, every fast-food company is independent, meaning that you’ll have to get each of their permissions to make this happen just on the legal level, and I don’t know how willing these companies are in permitting the use of their IPs by someone else. Not that it matters since this idea is nothing more than a creative sentiment from the yesteryears.

Also, as envisioned, the game’s scope was pretty large, which means that it would require a large budget, and I don’t think any investor who’s sane in their head would invest in something so farcical. So yeah, that’s also a problem.

This is a special case…

I’ll be frank with you: there is no solution this time. I would say that this idea needs to be reimagined from scratch, but I think today is not how I thought 15 years ago, so I’m hardly interested in this random brainstorm. More so, the scope and legality of the subject would make it hard to materialise as an actual game (practically impossible). Because of this, there’s no reason for me to further indulge you with this section, which is usually dedicated to coming up with a solution, but there isn’t one, so we’re going to keep it at that.

Did you see something that I didn’t?

And, as usual, I will be relinquishing my duties to find anything that could make this scenario better and subsequently hand it over to you. If you have an opinion on the matter, or maybe you have an idea to make this better, or maybe you just want to say that you liked it or disliked it, then this is the place. But you’d be sharing a sentiment with something that may or may not have happened, even theoretically, 15 years ago. But hey, I’d be glad if it fascinated you.

In Conclusion…

I didn’t have a language problem to discuss this time. Still, I enjoy sometimes taking the opportunity to write down theoretical subjects about whatever video games I might’ve imagined in the past that never materialised. This is one of my more nonsensical ideas, but I can’t remember how my brain worked back then. It baffles me as well. Anyways, I’ll try to keep these theoretical discussions to a minimum since it’s not the focus of my work, if not fun, to write from time to time.

To finalise the subject, I too am aware that a game such as this cannot happen, which is also why I keep repeating that it was 15 years ago because back then, I probably didn’t realise it yet.

Then again, I’m not even sure if it was 15 years ago. I had to be longer than that because, honestly, this is something that only a 10-year-old can come up with.