Let’s talk about ads for a moment. I know – everyone’s favorite part of watching television. Personally, I do like ads. It’s what I’m most interested in seeing during the Super Bo – sorry, the “Big Game” and why I try to get to the movie theater on time. But I would like to specifically focus on video game ads. What exactly makes a good ad? Well, in the name of capitalism, a “good” ad is one that gets a viewer interested in using the product being advertised.
Traditionally, advertisements would simply talk about the product and its features. Literally. I think most of us have seen Lucille Ball slur her way through the Vitameatavegemin episode doing exactly this. However, in modern times, advertisers have to be cleverer. Many present day ads focus on making viewers feel a certain way and then connect that feeling to their product. One of the best examples of this is the Japanese ad for the game, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. The premise of that game is that you play through the entire plotline of the animated series, Dragon Ball Z from the perspective of different characters. The ad follows a man coming home from work. On the way, he passes kids pretending to be characters from the series. When he gets home, he opens the game and begins to play. As he does, he’s flooded with nostalgic memories of himself and his childhood friends enjoying different events throughout the series, which causes him to shout along with the characters in excitement. Cut to another scene of him walking home again, proudly admiring the kids again pretending to be the same characters he grew up loving. It’s really an amazing ad, and despite the whole thing being in Japanese, hundreds of comments on the video say that they didn’t need to understand Japanese to know what was happening because that was them. And then I think of the ad for the game, Black (PS2/Xbox 360), which is just a room getting shot, followed by a gun shooting. Why do I want that? What’s the premise? The only reason I even remember the ad for it is because of how annoyed I was at the lack of creativity for it.
That isn’t to say that only games with a built-in fanbase have good ads. The original ad for the NES game, Paperboy, was a classic, where the main character is mischievously tossing papers into people’s windows while dodging obstacles and eventually gets chased by an old lady (which was all from the game). Likewise for the original SOCOM U.S. Navy Seals ad. I wasn’t interested in the game at all until I saw the ad for it. It shows four guys playing together online (which was brand new for the time) and they’re getting killed one by one, quickly. As they do, they all get frustrated since they can’t see their opponent, and the last one to get killed rips off his headset, asking, “Who are these guys?” Cut to a tent in the Middle East, where a soldier wearing a headset high fives his friends and confidently states, “like shooting fish in a bucket.” I couldn’t say exactly what got me in that moment, but the moment I saw that ad, I knew I needed to play that game. Heck, I don’t even really like challenges like that. Upon first seeing the Daigo Parry, I put down Street Fighter III, never to play it again. Unfortunately, as a poor college student, it would take me many, many years to actually own it. Another example is the original ad for Nintendo 64’s Super Smash Brothers, which features a number of mascoted Nintendo characters frolicking in a field of flowers until Mario trips Yoshi, leading to a brawl.
That said, when it comes to franchise ads, the Japanese have a tradition of crushing it. Somehow, they’ve been able to read exactly what a fan is interested in seeing, and put that right into the ad. And to be honest, they aren’t generally all that creative, but there is a certain excitement that comes with seeing their ads because of some parts of them. One of my favorite staples of Japanese game ads is the character profile. This is a point during the advertisement when familiar characters are shown, along with a brief demonstration of their skill set and a catchphrase. These are particularly found in crossover game ads such as Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Sunday vs Magazine, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, or Final Fantasy: Dissidia.
In present day, it’s far less likely to see ads for a specific game anymore unless the game comes from a mega-popular franchise. Even then, sometimes, much effort isn’t necessarily put into it. Many of the most creative modern ads are those swaying a person towards one console or the other – for example, one of the greatest examples was some years back, when Sony featured a mysterious ad during the Supe — (almost did it again) “Big Game,” where a World War 2 paratrooper lands in woods, and goes to a secret bar, where we find people like Lightning (Final Fantasy XII), 47 (Hitman series), Sweet Tooth (Twisted Metal series), Chell (Portal series), Sackboy (LittleBigPlanet series), Ratchet (Ratchet & Clank series), Paul Phoenix (Tekken series), Ezio Auditore (Assassin’s Creed II), and Kratos (God of War series) among others. We start to hear testimonials of life harrowing experiences from different characters, like Nathan Drake (Uncharted series), Cole (InFamous series), and Snake (Metal Gear Solid series), until our soldier speaks his mind and dedicates his survival to “Michael.” A portrait of “Michael” holding his controller is shown as everyone raises their glasses in tribute, and we start to see the bar’s ceiling is full of portraits of countless other people we now realize are gamers. Truly a beautiful ad. I, for one, hope creativity like this never truly goes away. While I recognize what ads are there for and the pull they might have, it is still fun to see how they might try to sway us. Why else is the “Big Game” such a draw for so many people? When it’s that time of year, a significant amount of people seem to tune in purely for the big ads that premiere during this time. In a recent turn of events, one car company even spent millions to recreate one of the most famous video game exploits of our society. In the early 1990s, the premiere sports game for the Nintendo Entertainment System was a game called, Tecmo Super Bowl, sequel to Tecmo Bowl. It was the first game franchise officially licensed by the NFL, meaning you could play as real players. By today’s standards, it was fairly simplistic, featuring only 8 plays per team. If the defense picked the same play as the offense, it led to the entire defensive squad overwhelming the offense. However, there were a few legends in the game that made winning extremely easy. The San Francisco duo of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, the Detroit Lions’s running ace, Barry Sanders, but most of all, the LA Raiders’s Bo Jackson. With Bo Jackson, one could run from end to end back and forth, and relatively easily shake or break tackles (technically, it’s also possible with Barry Sanders, but it’s slightly more difficult). In 2017, for the “Big Game,” Kia aired a commercial featuring an 8-bit Bo Jackson who runs out of the stadium and uses a Kia Sorento to show off his famous agility and score a touchdown. So while it wasn’t exactly a video game ad, it did use a video game for the ad as well as reintroduce the game for a new generation. Which somehow leads us back to Dragonball Z: Kakarot. Ah, who am I kidding? I just really like ads and I don’t want to necessarily want to see them go away.
Hardxcore Geekin' It With Major G 