This story originally appeared on Kotaku.
A Reddit user found something quite odd inside their dentistâs waiting room: An old McDonaldâs N64 video game kiosk that had been converted into an Xbox 360 arcade complete with multiple controllers and games.
The dentistâs office waiting room can be a tense place as you wait to start whatever procedure brought you there. Even a simple cleaning or check-up can cause a lot of stress, especially for younger kids who might have had a few bad experiences with the teeth cleaners. So instead of them playing games on your phone and killing the battery or making them read five-month-old issues of a random fashion magazine, why not let them play some Xbox 360 to distract them from their upcoming root canal? At least one dentist seems to think thatâs a pretty good idea.
On April 16, Reddit user Asleep-Tumbleweed-99 posted some images on the Xbox 360 subreddit of an Xbox 360 kiosk hanging out in his dentistâs waiting room.
âPretty cool. [Doritos Crash Course] is what I see on one of them and the other just has the scoreboard up,â explained Asleep-Tumbleweed-99. âIt was for little kids in the dentist so I didnât want to actually play it as Iâm almost 30 and donât want to seem like a creep LOL.â
While they didnât play it, the user âhad to postâ about the discovery, adding: âYou donât see these much anymore especially an old Xbox 360 one.â
Quickly others chimed in, pointing out that the kiosk in the office looked a lot like the N64 machines found inside some McDonaldâs restaurants back in the late 90s and early 2000s. However, digging a bit deeper, this isnât simply an old N64 kiosk that has had some Xbox 360 consoles shoved in it.
The real story behind this Xbox 360 dentist kiosk
At first, I thought someone took an old kiosk and cleaned it up, removed the McDonaldâs logo from the tall pole sticking out the top, repainted the red dome silver, and pulled out the old screens and consoles. Those were then replaced with three devices from a company called KidzPace, which sells self-contained video game units designed for restaurants, businesses, hospitals, hotels, and basically anywhere else bored kids might be waiting around.
However, digging deeper, I discovered that this unit is not a refurbished â90s kiosk, but a product that KidzPace used to sell. A rep told me they no longer offer the Xbox 360 model. But I found a 2017 YouTube video posted by the company that shows it off.
Looking closely, itâs likely the company reused leftover shells from those old N64 kiosks becauseâafter I did more researchâI discovered that KidzPace made those old McDonaldâs machines back in the day, too. In fact, they still make gamesfor the fast-food giant to this day.
If you are curious, buying just one Xbox Series S standalone play unit from KidzPace in 2024 will cost you $3395 and that doesnât include shipping, a rep told me. Yikes!
Anyway, so uh, what were we talking about again?
Oh right, yeah that weird old Xbox 360 kiosk in the dentistâs office someone posted on Reddit. Yeah, itâs real. It was a thing you could buy, and itâs probably not made from an actual old McDonaldâs N64 kiosk. But it likely shares some DNA with those nostalgic devices and maybe some plastic, too.
Iâm going to stop digging into this now before I find some new piece of info that leads me down another rabbit hole.
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