Even though they still exist, I think we can all agree that video game commercials have largely fallen out of relevancy over the past few years. With the way the internet is used now, there’s just not as much need for the old TV ads that would worm their way into our minds.
I suppose that’s good in a sense, but I feel as though a lot of the fun of anticipating new games has diminished along with them. It is what it is, but it’s still a bit sad all the same. So today, I just want to take a look back at some of the best pre-2020 game commercials.
The Pokemon Bus – Pokemon Red & Blue
As a very young kid in the 90s, I remember thinking this was the funniest thing. It’s classic cartoon logic after all; of course crushing a container filled with Pokemon equals catching them all on you Game Boy! Man, I wish I could catch Pokemon like that in real life!
As an adult, though, I can’t help but think about what it is I’m actually seeing: a bus filled with Pokemon getting cubed in an industrial trash compactor. It’s totally unhinged if you think about it for even just a second, but that doesn’t take away from the greatness of this commercial.
Spooky Goth Girl – Luigi’s Mansion
There were a couple layers to this that were lost on me as a young grade school student back in 2000, I’ll admit. All I saw was a dude trying to look at a creepy-looking woman’s weird necklace and then getting spooked by the ghost that was haunting it. Then there’s Luigi’s very oddly high-pitched scream, some really cool-looking gameplay, and then the girl being replaced by a GameCube on the couch (or maybe she was a GameCube all along?).
I can’t say my impression of this is all that different now, except that the situation is a bit weirder since it’s obviously a dude trying to chat up a goth girl at what I assume is a club or something. Either way, I’m pretty sure I got sold on the GameCube by this as a kid since it never left my head afterward and I thought the ghost game looked cool.
“Simple and Clean” TV Spot – Kingdom Hearts
It might be hard to imagine now, but Kingdom Hearts started its life as a weird and kind of obscure spin-off of Final Fantasy. It was something of a gamble too, as Disney and Final Fantasy was just not a combination that made any kind of sense on paper. If the game was going to sell, then it needed to intrigue people more than it confused them.
That’s where this TV spot came in, and I just gotta say that it was an absolute home run. In just a handful of seconds, it conveys all of the fun and, more importantly, all of the possibilities awaiting you if you were to give it a shot. The tagline was even “you’ll never know who you’ll run into next.” It was an invitation to come and see for yourself, and it worked! Kingdom Hearts was a massive success and the series continues to this day.
PS3 Baby – PlayStation 3
I don’t think anybody who watched TV during the months leading up to the release of the PlayStation 3 will ever forget this one. That baby has gotta be hands-down one of the creepiest things to ever appear in a commercial, and I don’t think the competition gets anywhere close. For a teenager excited for the PS3, it ratcheted up the hype. For everyone else, it was definitely a WTF moment.
Thinking back on it now, I’m pretty sure that Sony wanted as much “impact” in their ads as possible since the tagline for PS3 was “Play Beyond.” Well, mission accomplished, I guess.
“Somewhere Beyond the Sea” TV Spot – BioShock
Pseudo-gameplay for video game commercials was fairly common in the mid-2000s, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get sold on at least one game by it. BioShock wasn’t one of those games (it was a different trailer that got me), but I still appreciated this one a lot because it did a pretty good job of showing the kind of danger you’d face in Rapture.
It shows an altogether much faster and more complex version of BioShock’s actual gameplay, but it was still fun to watch, and it did capture the excitement of the games’s more intense battles. Oddly enough, I think BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite actually came kind of close to what’s portrayed here. Anyway, between the crazy action and lighthearted music, this one was an instant classic.
Live Action Dovahkiin – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
It’s hard to express just how much of an event the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was, and how much hype there was in the months leading up to its launch. If you think people are hyped for GTA VI, you should have seen how we were as we counted down the days to Skyrim. Even those of us who’d never played an Elder Scrolls game before were all aboard the hype train!
Now, this live action commercial wasn’t what got the train started. That distinction belongs to the trailer shown at the Spike TV Video Game Awads (Not to be confused with Geoff Keighly’s “The Game Awards” show) back in December of 2010.
No, this is the one that clinched it, the one that sent everyone into overdrive during the final days leading up to 11/11/11. Is it terribly special to look at now? Not really. But, back then? My goodness you’d think you just watched the coolest thing you’d ever see in your life!
You’re a Kid Now! You’re a Squid Now! – Splatoon
Honestly, I didn’t remember a thing about this commercial for the original Splatoon until I looked it up for this post. Well, except for one thing: the tagline from its song. I’m convinced that Splatoon owes a great deal of its success to this stupid song and the commercial attached to it. I mean, how else do you market a game about squid kids that fight by throwing paint at each other?
Explaining it just makes it sound even weirder than it is, and gameplay only gets the mainstream audience only so excited. No, they played this exactly right. They didn’t bother explaining it and just bet everything on making the game sound as cool and crazy as they possibly could, and it worked! More than 10 years have passed and kids are still enjoying the heck out of being paint-throwing squid-kids!
What are some of your favorite video game commercials? What makes them classics in your mind?
Image is a BioShock concept image