Welcome to another edition of Playing With Power. The review article that looks at all things Nintendo Entertainment System. And once again it’s time to look at the advertising side of the great grey box. We’ve seen the madness that the ad men of the late 80’s and early 90’s provided us. From stealing ideas from kids while they dream, to terrible Zelda raps, to a pair of stoners pleased at the ability to cheat. And it’s time to add five more commercials to the list. Did they work? Do they sell the products in question? Or are they just plain silly? Let’s dive on in.
#1. Kirby’s Adventure
Kirby has become one of Nintendo’s most iconic video game characters. The lovable pink puffball has always been presented as cute. However, in the west, kids advertising was not the place to sell something on cuteness alone. That’s why most of the Kirby ads in the states presented the character as a bad ass. And in most of the ad, they show Kirby as a body builder, a western sheriff, and even a master swordsman. Which makes sense considering this is Kirby’s Adventure, the first Kirby game that gave Kirby his copy ability, allowing him to be prepared for any situation. The ad states that he’s cute, but if you cross him, he’s one tough cream puff.
I remember this ad vividly airing during the Disney Afternoon, and with me still not into the 16-bit era by this time, I was immediately fished in, and wanted this game. And eventually I would have it, and I loved it. It’s a game I still consider to this day to be one of my favorites on the NES. So, this commercial definitely worked to attract me, even if it portrays the very opposite of what kind of character Kirby is. I love this game, and I still love this ad.
#2: Yoshi
And speaking of commercials I remember from the Disney Afternoon, it’s Yoshi. The ad begins with everyone running in fear as a giant dinosaur shadow casts over the city. But we soon see that it’s just a really nice looking stop motion Yoshi, who is just out to eat Goombas, Bloobers, Boo Buddies, and Piranha Plants.
This ad is pretty solid, if mainly for the well done stop motion characters. It also does a good job of really making what is honestly a rather bland puzzle game look awesome too. Although it was quite a disappointment after finally playing it. This was right around the time the Nintendo advertising department were hitting it out of the park with some knockout commercials that were much better than the products themselves. And this was no exception to that.
#3. Yoshi’s Cookie
Another game late in the NES lifespan that I owned thanks to the greatness of its ad. This time, everyone’s running not from Yoshi, but cookie crazed kids, walking like zombies, and moaning for cookies. It’s a great looking sendup of classic Horror B-Movies from the 50’s. Although a weird choice for a game that’s about Mario and Yoshi running a cookie factory.
The ad works because like the previous Yoshi game, it sprinkles just enough of the gameplay to make it look good, and wrap it in a crazy commercial for some sweet satisfaction. And unlike Yoshi, this time around the game being advertised is far more fun. It’s ads like this that really come off as fun, and makes me hate this era where advertising has gotten stupid. I mean, in the 90’s at least advertisers didn’t think we were stupid enough to think we ate a chicken bone.
#4. The Simpsons Games
Despite being my favorite show of all time, it’s sad to say that one of my least favorite licensed franchises on the NES is the Simpsons. Games with annoying difficulty and mediocre at best gameplay. If we were more educated now, we’d have avoided them, but this was still the early 90’s and the beginning of the mania that The Simpsons had placed on the world. We were too busy doing the Bartman, and buying anything with Bart in front of it to care. Didn’t help that we got ads with official Simpsons animation like this one.
In this ad we start with Bart playing “Acclaim’s Best Selling Game” Bart Vs. The Space Mutants. He then switches to Bart Vs. The World and enjoys the game, until Homer kicks him out of the room to mow the lawn. He then plays the game “Bart Simpson in Escape from Camp Deadly”, until Homer takes that from him too. He returns to his room only to see that his family are having fun playing his video games.
Oh if only they were that fun. I do admit that Bart Vs. The World is a bit more tolerable than Bart Vs. The Space Mutants, but Camp Deadly was just awful. I remember playing it and hating everything from the annoying controls to the poor and sometimes just confusing gameplay. But the ad still worked. It was Simpsons and we were going to fall for it. And all the while we really wished Konami would have snatched those console rights before Acclaim did.
#5. Super C
I had previously mentioned in the first Ad Break video that there was a rather creepy ad from New Zealand that gloated about how kids could not beat the NES. Well the states also had their share of creepy NES ads. Case in point the ad for Super C. The ad has a rather creepy looking alien puppet by the name of Red Falcon gloating about his new game, Super C for the NES. While showing footage of the game he shows off his collection of severed heads from kids who couldn’t beat his game.
While not as creepy as the ad from New Zealand, this ad still comes off as screwed up. So if I buy your game and lose, you’ll cut my head off? No thanks. Thank goodness this game is the sequel to Contra, and therefore was going to sell well either way. So in a way, I don’t know if this ad really worked all that well. It was more just weird for the sake of weird than a really strong seller for the game in question.
And that ends a rather quick installment of Ad Break. It’s always great to look back at these great ads and see just how different things are now. How commercials had more creativity and fun to them (even if they got a tad too odd at times) back then, and now they all rely on dickish gloating, or unfunny awkwardness. It’s such a shame. But at least we have the old ads to fill that nostalgia void.