Taste Coca-Cola’s first ‘gamer’ flavor – and the history of game-and-soft drinks

If you’re looking for a TL;DR on what the first “gamer” flavor of Coca-Cola tastes like, I can answer that at the top: It’s weird. Blueberry, maybe? But only if a blueberry was dipped in a pool of Red Bull. That’s “Coca-Cola Byte”.

At the announcement, I asked Coca-Cola if I could taste Byte, which will hit the market in early May in the United States, because I found its existence bordering on gaming fascinating. Many other soda and junk food makers have had a cozy commercialization relationship with video games for decades — so much so that you can close your eyes and imagine a stereotypical “gamer” holding a sugary, fizzy drink by default. (It’s probably Mountain Dew. So much “gamer” Mountain Dew out there.)

Yet somehow Coke has avoided direct ties to the game universe in most of the world. We’ve never seen a limited edition super mario cans of Coke. We’ve never had bottles of Coke under their caps giving away free XP in online games. And the stuff never actually appears in the virtual worlds of games, despite so many brands screaming for gamers’ eyes and available budgets.

A Creations primer, from Starlight to Byte

That changed this month with Byte, which advertises Coca-Cola as “inspired by the humble and iconic pixel.” His advertising card about this fact puts a can of Byte on a Tronlike grid of black, green, and violet neon lines, next to two colored 3D blocks. (Should those be pixels? They have a Z-axis, Coca-Cola, so technically they’re polyhedra.) And the launch was accompanied by a Fortnite “creator island” zone, full of Coca-Cola branding (but made by an advertising agency, not Epic Games). So I had to know: what did this all look and taste like, and how did it fit into the games-and-soda pantheon?

If you’re wondering where pure flavor Coke is going, check out the Coca-Cola Creations line of temporary soft drinks. The first, called Coca-Cola Starlight, launched earlier this year and was pretty decent — at least, in a world where any Coke flavor is seemingly possible if you experiment long enough with one of those Coca-Cola Freestyle machines. In the case of Starlight, Coke mixed cinnamon and cream-soda syrups into its standard formula, resulting in something best described as Coke Roasted Marshmallow. Unique! Drinkable! Not bad. Doesn’t necessarily fit Doritos though.

Byte, on the other hand, goes for a fruity taste, and I had someone photograph my first impressions as I sipped them. For context, I liked the atypical Starlight taste, and I can appreciate bold, weird and sweet flavors. In particular, I manned the soda fountain at a fast-food restaurant during high school, where, much to the chagrin of my colleagues, I made a bizarre mix of pink lemonade, root beer, and lime juice as a daily driver.

But still:

I ended up drinking the rest of the can I was given, and it probably got better still a few days later, revealing more raspberry flavor. But unlike Starlight, or even standard grocers like vanilla and cherry, Byte’s mix of new flavors loudly makes Coke’s signature nutmeg base. It may still be there, buried beneath this drink’s lab-generated berry formulation, but the recognizable cola core is virtually nonexistent in this drink.

And yes, it goes well with snacks like tortilla chips. But that’s because the texture and saltiness of the chips balance out the phosphoric acid-driven kick.

Avoiding Coke Legal’s Laser Beam Eyes

Byte is technically Coke’s second overt game tie-in. The first came in 1994 as a Japan-only Game Gear game made by an old Japanese Sega support studio, and it revolved around the Coca-Cola Kid mascot of the mid-90s in Japan. Perhaps Coke’s Japanese office thought this exception to the company’s history was okay if it happened on the road — and the game was played on the Japan-exclusive Coca-Cola Game Gear model, which was as red as a Coke can. Either way, players must run, jump, kick, skateboard and throw red Frisbees through a colorful city while beating up anyone who comes between Coca-Cola Kid and his Coca-Cola addiction.

Outside of that game, the Coca-Cola company was surprisingly mother in the multibillion-dollar gaming industry. That’s in stark contrast to film and TV, where the company is obsessed with finding ways to get its variety of drinks into productions — and it has a huge network of business historians, product placement specialists and supply chain assistants who are eager to make it happen. Make sure you see as much cola as possible in your entertainment. Era-appropriate plates, ’80s cans, desperation to make SmartWater seem like something modern folks like: they’ve got it all… [Coke’s] brand values ​​and strategically aligned with where we are going as a company.”

Such statements are the best we have to understand Coke’s general absence in the gaming realm: They probably felt that their products in games were not properly reflected in the brand. Still, Coke and his sugarwater rivals had every chance in the world to appear organically as brand elements in decades of games. This Tumblr site can spend hours browsing the robust history of video game soda vending machines, and brightly colored aluminum cans have often served as an arcade-style health item. The most cola-like of these virtual cans appears in Data East’s 1991 arcade blaster desert attackand if the game ever saw a formal re-release, it would really need a revamp to avoid Coke Legal’s laser-beam eyes.