Pokémon Happy Meals have officially returned, and if the swarm of teenagers in my generally quiet local McDonald’s is anything to go by, they’re bigger than ever.

The Pokémon Company first announced the return of its McDonald's promotion several weeks back, causing some confusion by accidentally spoiling next year’s promo card list. Good times.

Now that I’ve gotten my hands on the 30th Anniversary Happy Meal, I can confirm the previously leaked card set is in fact the accurate one, along with new details about the promotion’s roll-out.

The Pokémon Happy Meal is available in all of McDonald’s traditional Happy Meal variants: hamburger, cheeseburger, or 4 and 6-piece nugget combos. Prices vary based on your meal selection, but every option comes with the same packaging and blind-boxed toys.

I was surprised to find how little my local McDonald’s was seemingly marketing the collab, which presumably varies across locations. My McDonald’s only had one poster, and otherwise sporadically flashed the Pokémon Happy Meal teaser on its digital ordering screens.

For reference, when I went to Target’s Pokémon launch, the whole store was covered in Pokémon materials. Many of these posters and stands ended up on eBay, so it’s possible TPC is now limiting its 'physical' marketing footprint to help stores avoid any tussles or, you know, crime.

While some social media users are claiming their local McDonald’s is approaching the collab as a progressive roll-out, my local D.C. McDonald’s had all three boxes and 15 promo cards ready to go. A staff member, however, did acknowledge that other stores may be receiving the promotional materials "in batches."

Given the swarms of kids and teenagers who had seemingly abandoned school for Pokémon, I was only willing to pick up two Happy Meals. (A six-nugget and a cheeseburger, in case you were curious.) The working manager was kind enough to ensure I got two different Pokémon boxes, which ended up being Torchic and Pikachu.

I quickly realized that was a strategic choice — almost every other customer was specifically requesting (and getting) the Umbreon box, so the staff was trying to manage its stock.

Of course, one of the main draws of the collaboration is new promo cards, which often end up reselling at the same price as the Happy Meal itself. While rumors had already been circulating online, I was still shocked to discover they really do give you the two promo cards without any packaging. They’re slipped into a box right next to a hard plastic toy that, for whatever reason, does get delicate tissue paper wrapping. The box, at least, is definitely serviceable for storing decks.

I’ll admit the lack of packaging does make the card reveal less climactic, and I can imagine there’s already someone complaining out there about getting a damaged card. Still, I don’t mind Pokemon treating its promo cards a little more casually in the interest of promoting the TCG as a game to be played as opposed to a collector’s racket.

I anti-climactically slid out Eevee and Tyranitaur from my first box, then found Zoroark and Chandelure in my second one. Each card is a reprint marked with the M26 label and its own numbering system, and some have holo foil. You can see the (real) full list of 2026 promo cards here.

The other toy you get is a miniature plastic version of the Happy Meal box themed after an individual Pokémon, with the full slate shown below. Each toy box has a clip you can use to attach it to a bag or keychain, and I happened to get Diglit and good ol' Pikachu.

This is far from Pokémon’s first time teaming up with the fast-food giant. The partnership goes all the way back to 1999, when Pokémania first hit its stride. The modern 'Pokémon Happy Meal' first launched in 2011.

It was only natural that the promotion would return for the year of Pokémon’s 30th anniversary, offering what I believe to be one of the best budget-friendly ways for fans to get involved in the festivities. Safe to say, I'm satisfied, albeit still hungry.

The Pokémon Happy Meal is now available across all U.S. McDonald’s locations through December 14. The promotion will be expanding to additional countries over the next couple of months, with the full roll-out detailed in an official McDonald’s post.

Nintendo of America has opened up a new job position to help preserve and archive the older games in its vast library.

Nintendo has released around 11,000 games in its lifetime. Now, it’s looking to organize those games — at least, the older ones — with a specialized role at its Redmond, WA location.

As per the official job description, Nintendo of America’s future Digital Archivist, Historical Systems will support the “preservation, organization, and accessibility of historical hardware and software information” by designing and implementing a “structured framework for organizing technical records, engineering documentation, source materials, and institutional knowledge related to legacy systems and platforms.”

Essentially, the digital archivist is a librarian of sorts, whose job is to create a means of organizing and documenting all of Nintendo’s older games, systems, and platforms, as well as any documentation or materials related to them. It definitely sounds like a fun role for video game history buffs, especially if they like organizing data.

The job listing describes its ideal candidate as someone with “expertise in archives, metadata management, information architecture, and research” who will work “closely with subject matter experts across engineering, product development, legal, and business teams” to “establish standards and processes that ensure historical information remains discoverable, usable, and preserved for future generations.”

The position is a 12-month contract role with a salary of $35-$55 per hour. A Bachelor’s degree in library & information science, Archives, Museum Studies, Information Management, History, Technical Communication, or a related field is preferred, although equivalent professional experience may be considered.

This is a major step forward for video game preservation, something that activists and enthusiasts in the space have been calling for for some time now. For example, the Video Game History Foundation was founded in 2016 with the intent of preserving and teaching the history of video games. Since then, it has worked toward creating the United States’ first dedicated library for the study of video game history, as well as preserving games’ source code.

Given Nintendo’s relevance in the games industry and its role in the history of the medium, it makes sense that the company would seek to archive its works. Perhaps this could result in some unexpected discoveries; for example, one collector came across 97 copies of an unreleased version of Super Mario Bros. Duck Hunt earlier this year, five of which were graded perfect 10s by PSA.

World of Warcraft Forever has been incredibly popular, and has gone down as the biggest WoW launch in history. It's little wonder, then, that some zones are absolutely packed with players — but thankfully, Blizzard has implemented a fix.

In a hotfix last night, Blizzard lowered the population in overcrowded zones, which should give players more of a chance to get quests done without competing with a hundred other players to tag a spider. In the developers' notes, Blizzard also noted that "We’ve made this an even bigger change on the PvP ruleset, following feedback from players that they felt overcrowded in several places. We will continue to monitor how zones feel and make further adjustments as necessary."

Unlike past versions of WoW, which had a variety of servers available, World of Warcraft Forever has one server that's divided into different rulesets: PvP, PvE, RPPvP, RP and Hardcore. Instead of dividing players among different servers, Blizzard uses layering to group people into different instances of the world. And because WoW Forever's whole thing is being surrounded by other players, Blizzard seemingly opted to try and get as many people into each layer as possible without causing problems.

However, while it's fun to see hundreds of players running around each zone, this approach has caused some issues. Some people on the PvE rulesets have reported difficulties in being able to finish quests, especially in the earlier zones, as they have to compete with dozens of different players to get anything done. But the problem is especially bad for players in the PvP rulesets because of a faction imbalance.

At least here in the US, The Horde is much more popular than The Alliance, and that's causing problems. For Alliance players, they're outnumbered when they're questing in the world, which means they get killed instantly in later zones. For Horde players, they can't create new toons, because Blizzard is throttling character creation to try and preserve faction balance.

Blizzard Community Manager Kaivax has addressed this in a seperate note last night, saying, "It’s vitally important that the PvP rulesets in WoW: Forever have balanced factions where both factions vie for supremacy, creating memories of epic victories and stunning defeats that we all remember for years to come. While even the most extreme case in a region is currently at roughly a 55/45 split, that is not as close as we want it to be." Blizzard wants to get that balance as close to 50/50 as possible.

To address the matter, Kaivax says, "In the short term, that means that it will become increasingly difficult to create characters on the more populous faction in each region – currently Horde on North American PvP rulesets or Alliance in EU Roleplay-PvP. As everyone settles and shifts, these may flip to the other side."

Despite some of these growing pains, though, World of Warcraft Forever is still proving to be one of the smoothest launches in Blizzard history. Launch night went off without a hitch, thanks to the servers running on around 251TB of RAM and over 70,000 CPU cores.

November 9, 2026

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