Big Bumpin'

Xbox exclusive

You've been in a bumper car before, right? It's a simple concept: you drive around and smash into people. But in Big Bumpin', there's a catch. These bumper cars come with big hazards like surprise saws, bottomless pits and ice patches so you can dole out bumps so bumptastic we hesitate to even call them bumps! But we do, because that's the name of the game.

Released: 19 November 2006
Platforms: Xbox Xbox 360
Genres: Action Racing Sports
Developers: Blitz Games
Publishers: King Games
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Action Comedy
Country: United Kingdom
Age ratings: ESRB E

About

Big Bumpin' is an advergaming title from Burger King for the Xbox and Xbox 360 video game consoles. Published by King Games and developed by Blitz Games. On November 19, 2006, Burger King started selling it with any value meal. It is one of three titles released by Burger King.

›Story

Get bumped royally. In Big Bumpin'; part of a trio of budget games released by Burger King from November 19th to December 24th 2006; your job is to go head to head with friends online and off in a bumper car mayhem.

You will choose from six characters and five arenas and compete in five different bumper car competitions. The playable arenas include, Ice Box, King's Court, Broiler, and Monsoon of Doom. The playable characters include; of course Burger King's The King mascot, Brooke Burke, and Subservient Chicken. The competitions are; Own the Puck, where you must keep the puck away from the other players the longest, Last Man Standing, where you have to outlast all your competitors, Power Surge where you must race to keep all your power, Shockball, which is a hot potato kind of game involving exploding bumper cars, and the last game is Hockey, where you basically play two-on-two hockey with power-ups and weapons.

Big Bumpin' also has a character creation mode where you can make a player as well as a bumper car. It also includes a tournament mode available only to solo players.

Keywords

vehicular combat
achievements
advergame
online
vehicle combat
based on - brand
xbox live
trilogy
product placement
online multiplayer achievements
retailer exclusive
backwards compatibility

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Development

The origin of three Burger King-themed Xbox Games came about in Cannes when senior executives from Microsoft and Burger King met at the awards for the I Love Bees and Subservient Chicken advertising campaigns. Microsoft wanted the Xbox games to be fun for the players and that the environment would be a Burger King-themed context not be reduced to simply pushing its brand. In the fall of 2005, Blitz Games entered into talks with Burger King and the development team began work in February 2006. In an interview with Gamasutra, Philip Oliver stated that he was talking with Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade portfolio manager, Ross Erickson and had an interest in developing Xbox Live games, but lacked funding as an independent developer.

During Oliver and Erickson's talks, Erickson agree to notify Oliver of any leads on advertisers looking for product placement in video games. A week or two after that, Oliver received a call from Erickson about Burger King's interest in creating three games. Gamasutra's interviewer, Brandon Sheffield, noted the odd choice of an American company using a British developer, but Oliver explained that Burger King was familiar with their first Xbox release Fuzion Frenzy.

Reception

Big Bumpin' was the most well-received of the three Burger King games. It currently holds a 7/10 based on 14 reviews on GameSpot.

The immediate impact of the project on Blitz Games was the financial boost it provided. The King Games allowed the company to improve its technology and partially funded Blitz Games' Blitz Arcade. Collectively, the games were enough to be ranked amongst the top 10 best-selling games of 2006. Story wrote, "Using Xbox data on game use, the Burger King game equates in time spent to more than 1.4 billion 30-second commercials[.]" The success of the project, including Big Bumpin' was noted as a key part of Burger King's 40% increase in sales during the quarter, and it was affirmed by Russell Klein that Burger King attributed the majority of that success to the project.