Marketing can be a thankless job. Most people do not want advertisements shoved down their throats. But we know that if there weren't ads then there would be less content and television would consist solely of reality shows and all games would be text based. But there are times when the marketing goes so overboard that we shake our heads and flip our monitor the bird.
#4 Marketing Is Virtually Easy
The Nintendo Virtual Boy
In the early 90s Virtual Reality was "the" thing. Malls were filled with booths that allowed you to "feel" the game in a more realistic environment than ever before. VR was expected to become the one and only way to game in the future. A VR game at the mall would cost at least $5 for two to five minutes of gameplay. That didn't stop hordes of kids and their parents from dolling out big money to experience the cutting edge of technology.
You could slap the word Virtual onto almost anything and people would buy it before they even knew what it was that they were buying.
Nintendo took that information and capitalized on the virtual reality market by quickly coming up with the portable Virtual Boy VR gaming console and releasing it in 1995. The brains at Nintendo hoped that people everywhere would buy their own portable Virtual Reality machine to enjoy realistic 3-D images and top quality games on the go.
Well they hoped people would buy it, enjoyment was optional and the "virtual" and "reality" components were scrapped during the design phase.
Virtual Boy, game console of the year, American Association of Chiropractors.
At a weight of 760 grams for the headset(and upwards of 2.4 kilograms or 5 pounds with all the attachments) the headset was too heavy for someone to wear it on its own and thus came with a stand. That reduced the Virtual Boy’s portability to playing the game within 0 inches from your parent’s coffee table. The stand allowed for only two adjustments, mildly uncomfortable and Special Ops neck breaker.
Instead of being life like representations of the real world, the graphics were a monochromatic demon-blood red color that caused eye strain, seizures and intense bloodlust.
Remember that movie The Lawnmower Man? This was worse.
People reported that they could only play the game for 30 minutes before having neck cramps, eye strain and headaches.
Nintendo estimated they would sell 3 million of these portable spasm machines but ended up only selling 770 000 before discontinuing production one year after the initial release.
#3 Enter the Matrix: For activation code, purchase The Animatrix.
In May of 2003 the first game based on the movie The Matrix was released. Enter the Matrix was supposed to transcend the typical movie-based game with a reputation for being 1) Horrible and 2) Have next to nothing to do with the movie.
But Enter the Matrix was tied directly into the massive cross promotion for The Matrix Reloaded, including comic books, animated movie The Animatrix and The Lady in Red inflatable love doll.
The movie promoted the game and the game promoted the movie. Enter the Matrix was even released the same day The Matrix Reloaded hit North American theatres in the hope that people would watch the movie and then go buy the game immediately before their minds started finding plot holes.
Why did Reloaded have a 20 minute rave scene? And why is this guy shooting at my penis?
Enter the Matrix had theatre-quality cutscenes with characters from the movie, written and filmed by the Wachowski brothers. The entire story of Enter the Matrix was developed by the Wachowskis at the same time as the Matrix sequels were being filmed.
So right off the bat, die hard Matrix fans that would normally stay away from a movie game flocked to buy the game in order to learn more about the backstory of the Matrix universe.
And had the game been great then the shameless self promotion of all things Matrix would have been forgiven. But other than the cutscenes the game was crap. The game had a lousy fighting system, characters who were missing the backs of their skulls and the only playable characters were minor characters from the movie who lacked Keanu Reeves charm and wit.
Woah.
Well okay, maybe that's stretching it a bit. But still, Neo could fucking fly.
On the upside, the game was so horrible it made the Matrix sequels look good by comparison.
#2 Gamespot, more like Gayspot.
There are plenty of game review sites around and the competition is fierce. Every site wants their name on the back of the box of the latest and greatest game and the game makers want a positive review(or at least one sentence that, out of context, sounds like a positive review).
The gameplay was fun and exciting, for about thirty minutes. - IGN
THE GAMEPLAY WAS FUN AND EXCITING!!!! -IGN
When prison break game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men was set for release, the game developers(Eidos) poured a bucketload of money into advertising on Gamespot. The entire site went through a total conversion, changing the regular Gamespot theme into one featuring nothing but Kane & Lynch.
In theory, the advertising money buys only ad space. It shouldn't buy a good review. And in this case, it really didn't. Gamespot editor Jeff Gerstmann did a text and video review of the game. His conclusion? The game sucked and you shouldn't buy it. He didn't call it the worst game ever and his video review didn't have a sequence where he literally shat on the disc, so the review was not the harshest review ever given. And in the text review Jeff gave the game a 6.0 out of 10. So really, there shouldn't have been that big a fuss.
Here's the actual video review.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBD0cUeeEQc
So,what did Gamespot do shortly after the review aired? They fired Jeff, pulled the video review and changed the text review of Kane and Lynch so that it seemed more favorable.
KANE AND LYNCH GAME CURES CANCER! – Jeff Gerstmann
Review sites were created to give people a heads up on what's good and what's crap so that they don't waste their money on lousy games. Ideally it would also force game developers to actually put some effort into a game instead of arranging a few roses on a fresh pile of cow shit and calling it a bouquet.
News of the firing led to outrage among gamers when other gaming sites picked up the story. The incident also damaged Gamespot's workforce by causing a total of six Gamespot editors and writers to quit due to their treatment of Jeff.
With Gamespot's reputation tarnished they decided to do the honorable thing and deny everything.
#1 Captain N : The Marketing Master
In 1989 Saturday morning cartoons were at their peak. Millions of children (and teenagers who would never admit it) would wake up early to watch four to five hours of quality entertainment and six hours of toy commercials.
Nintendo, in their marketing wisdom, decided to streamline the process. Why not make a show that was a commercial. That's when Captain N: The Game Master was born.
Captain N was about a teenage boy who got sucked, maybe that's a bad choice of words. The boy was transported through a warp zone into a cartoon land that featured characters from dozens of Nintendo games. Each week Captain N (and his friends) would have to fight a game villain using a Nintendo brand light zapper gun (Duck Hunt) and an NES controller on his belt.
Stars in the show included such well known Nintendo characters such as Mega Man, Kid Icarus, Simon Belmont (Castlevania), Mother Brain(Metroid) and others.
The show was an entertaining way to make kids fall in love with many characters from numerous Nintendo games. After weeks or months of subtle exposure to characters from a total of 25 different Nintendo games (over 34 episodes), the urge to buy a game could become so strong that a kid walking past the electronics section of a store could catch a glimpse of the newest Mega Man game and rush over to grab a copy, smashing anything in their way and savagely beating any kid who would dare come between them and their fifty dollar "child friendly" electronic ecstasy.
The kids that were beaten were probably Sega fans so Nintendo didn't mind. In 1991, after two years on the air, the series was cancelled, along with the other Nintendo propaganda show, The Super Mario Brothers Super Show. Coincidentally, the shows were taken off the air just a few months after the SNES came out and started selling consoles at a record pace.
Marketing mission accomplished.
rudezombie(10 months ago)
This list is incomplete without mention of the 1989 film The Wizard, since it was essentially a 2 hour commercial for the Power Glove and Mario Brothers 3.
Digital(10 months ago)
@rudezombie
come on, you know the power glove was "bad"! And who doesn't love mario 3? Besides that, the kid in the wizard was sad and depressed about some dinosaur in the desert... so I guess there was some sort of story there. One thing I never did get though, where did they get all the money to talk to the nintendo rep for all the tips... Were those calls not A DOLLAR A MINUTE?
Stomach(10 months ago)
the virtual boy. That brings back memories. I think I had one friend who had one.
Brian Stuckey(10 months ago)
Let's not forget the Burger King XBox games...
Anthony C.(10 months ago)
The Super Mario Brothers Super Show. my favorite 90's cartoon of all time!! "HEY PISANOS!"
Ryan From SillyReviews.com(10 months ago)
The story about Gerstmann really makes me doubt EVERY review site or review written online, in magazines, on t.v, or wherever. Stories like his are what made me some up with my site, Silly Reviews.
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Why is PepsiMan not in this list?
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"Gayspot" Really? Why don't we grow up a little.
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Wow great post.
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Don't forget McKids. Marketing for Mc Donalds via video games.
I actually liked that game. I think I almost beat it once.
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I really liked virtual boy...
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The kids that were beaten were probably Sega fans so Nintendo didn't mind. In 1991, after two years on the air, the series was cancelled, along with the other Nintendo propaganda show, The Super Mario Brothers Super Show. Coincidentally, the shows were taken off the air just a few months after the SNES came out and started selling consoles at a record pace.
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Stars in the show included such well known Nintendo characters such as Mega Man, Kid Icarus, Simon Belmont (Castlevania), Mother Brain(Metroid) and others.
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Captain N was about a teenage boy who got sucked, maybe that's a bad choice of words. The boy was transported through a warp zone into a cartoon land that featured characters from dozens of Nintendo games. Each week Captain N (and his friends) would have to fight a game villain using a Nintendo brand light zapper gun (Duck Hunt) and an NES controller on his belt.
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