PixlBit

I think the worst part about those commercials in the 90's wasn't that it did such a poor job of advertising the games, but the perception it created of the people who played them. There's an entire generation of people out there who's idea what a gamer is was defined by those ad spots, which is very sad.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

There's some bad commercials these days, but I'm really glad you brought up the fact of how bad they used to be in the 90s and such. Angelo's comment above helps put things into perspective as well. I really liked the Mass Effect advertisement Julian mentioned, that one always gave me goosebumps actually. I was already sold on Mass Effect before those adverts and before launch because I was a huge KotoR fan and wanted a new universe from Bioware. But when that commercial came out it made me even more excited. Short trailers and adverts can be really great at times.

The commercial I have the very fondest memories of and represented the game best was the Portal 2 pre-order advertisement. It starts out cute and heartwarming like a Pixar short with Atlas and Pbody playing with portals, doing hijinx, and laughing with each other. Then Glados shows up, tears down the walls around them, the music picks up, and she sends them off on a high flying adventure as the ad ends and she tells them they're going to have fun with science. At a time when scientific literacy and technical education is awful in America and we are desperately trying to get kids in love with science, adventure, and mystery, Portal 2 admirably hit those "science is fun!" notes and sends the right message to gamers and parents. I could show that ad to anybody and be proud, I could show Portal 2 to anybody and be proud. The advertisement was the perfect tone, great music, visuals, and used the 30 seconds as perfect as you can for that type of game. Probably my favorite game of all time, a knockout production and knockout package on every front from the sleek clean advertisements to both stunning campaigns and all the memories I made. Watching that 30 second ad brings back all those great memories.

Portal 2 preorder commercial

The great thing about that spot is that it was done completely in-house by Valve. No outside marketing team to muck it up.

I followed the links and watched the ads for Zoop and Killer Instinct and all I can say is wow. I can't believe that's gaming history and that's the way some ads represented games and gamers. It gives me some context and makes me think that assholes like Jack Thompson or any other game-ban or censorship groups had good reasons to be scared of games or misinformed on games. Look at how games were marketed lol. The gamer in the Zoop commerical is in a straight jacket and drooling because they took his game away, and all the kids in the Killer Instinct commercial are implied to be cursing and it's all about xtremeness and uncensored violence. Compare those ads to the Portal 2 spot done by Valve, it's day and night. The difference between the ads is like the difference between the dark ages and the rennassiance or the stone age and the space travel age in terms of how gamers are represented and how the games come across.

These weren't even the worst ones, and print was way, way worse. I couldn't find the Alpha 2 ad I was talking about, unfortunately. But the first ads for the PSX talked about how Sophia from Tohshinden was every gamer's wet dream. The print ad for the Sega Saturn was a naked woman with screen shots in strategically placed areas. The 32X ad implied that it was having sex with the Genesis.

3 words: She kicks high. Also, I've never forgiven Eidos for Fear Effect 2's ads or for publishing the game at all really. Classy no?

Is that ad for real? It's actually trying to sell the game, and it's not an expose or critique or anything? If it's a real ad then I'm baffled. It's a really immature way to show "lesbians" or to tout the fact the designers think their game has "lesbians". I don't see lesbians when I look at that, I only see a bunch of guys who drew two fantasy girls in their underwear and they're laying on each other. The tag-line about 13 climaxes is pretty dumb, but the thing in the entire ad that is the weirdest is the supposed quote from IGN on the side. Is this ad real, is that a real quote from a real person that worked at IGN back in the day? Who wrote that? That passed as journalism or advertisement somewhere somehow? The comment sounds as illiterate, crude, and juvenile as something you'd hear casually on Live or something from some teenager not an industry professional or educated writer. And it ended up on an ad?

EDIT: You'll have to keep in mind that I never got into game mags, online communities, or anything until 1UP in 2011 and then Pixlbit shortly after that. The only game mags I ever read as a kid was Nintendo Power back when the Gamecube came out and I got a subscription somehow and I read those for several months. But that's it. So basically I never got to see a lot of these crazy ads. Or at least I don't remember them. I only remember reading about Luigis Mansion, seeing screenshots from lots of games, and whatever other stuff happened in Nintendo Power mags. I'm pretty naive to some of the crazy stuff that was happening.

Definitely, it's interesting to see how far things have come. It's not perfect today, like Julian said, there's a long ways to go but things have come a really long way. I didn't have the same context you guys did so I had less of a feel for how bad and crazy things could get at times back then.

I consider myself lucky now. The only game industry and journalism I've ever known is a tiny bit of Nintendo Power, a bit of 1UP, and a bunch of Pixlbit. I'm accustomed to seeing people who are passionate about games and like to write, and are intelligent fair folks with common decency and common sense.

All of that was very real sorry to say. Keep in mind that was a PS1 game, so we're talking about something that came out a while ago. That was also a very real quote. IGN may not be great, but it sure has come a long way from stuff like that hasn't it? I will give them this though, that ad was a perfect representation of the games content in every way.

I think Patrick was referring to Yoshi's Story, not Yoshi's Island. SMW2: Yoshi's Island is a damn hard game, Yoshi's Story was a HUGE let down. I also beat it in a day and it was pretty much the worst birthday present ever (not by anyone's fault).

Man poor Yoshi. Remember Yoshi's Safari? Neat concept for sure, but is there even any way to lose that game?

Yeah, it's called buying the game brand new.

My name is Jesse and this is my favorite comment on this thread.

Classic

Oh yea, you're totally right. I misinterpreted and heard what I wanted to hear. I guess I wanted to vent after all of these years.