Advertising for video games has always been a mixed bag. Advertisers and marketers don't always know what they're doing—especially if they're unfamiliar with the products they're supposed to promote—and they're often clueless about their target audience.
Proof of their ignorance can be found in the numerous failed advertising campaigns for video games over the past few decades, as unlikely spokespersons were brought out to promote games to which they have no relation, or through gut-wrenching ads that leave viewers feeling humiliated.
Some advertisers may have known exactly what they were doing, with some of the most shocking (well, maybe to your grandma) and attention-grabbing headlines and concepts that remain spoken about in gaming circles today. Others remain in our cultural memory simply because of how bad they were.
I've compiled some—20, to be exact—of the wonkiest print ads in video game history. Read on!
Nintendo and Hudsonsoft knew exactly who they were targeting with this ad, which more or less encourages kids to get themselves grounded at home to spend more time with the Gameboy console.
Sony's seemingly racist ad for the PSP White in Europe graced the headlines on news websites half a decade ago. It's arguable as to whether the ad was ill-conceived, given the amount of press it brought the company and its product.
This advertisement for the Sega Saturn succeeded in grabbing the attention of its readers, but it drew no small amount of fire for its sexist depiction of a naked woman who had absolutely nothing to do with the games it intended to promote. Stay classy, Sega.
Following in the vein of Sega's ad for the Saturn, the Neo Geo console decided to focus on the adult market with this risque ad, which depicts a guy who looks like Patrick Bateman getting off on a video game instead of his hot girlfriend. Lucky for her, because she would've ended up dismembered.
Sex and tennis go well together, or so Tengen would have us believe with this ad for Davis Cup World Tour. Frankly, I'd be too distracted by the sight of her ass to look at the game she's trying to promote.
This ad for Video Maniac takes an obvious influence from some 1980s sci-fi show I can't remember, although I wonder what videogame peripherals have to do with half-naked exercise instructors.
Whoever came up with the pun "Shift Happens" must've been patting themselves on the back for their cleverness even after focus groups told them it was a bad idea. I can imagine a guy sitting in his office, refusing to let go of the pun and building an entire ad campaign around it.
This ad came about when everything was promoted as X-TREME. There was X-TREME Delta Force (Look it up, this game actually exists!). X-TREME Games. It's so X-TREME that just reading it will make your head X-PLODE.
I wouldn't want to play "Fantastic Night Dreams Cotton" either. The advertisement art looks like it was drawn by a 12 year old who spends too much time on DeviantArt. If it came out today, Square Enix would be the ones publishing it, no doubt.
It's hard to believe, but Kaneko USA actually made a game about Bill Clinton's pet cat, Socks.
Bad haircuts and a shitty mustaches can sell videogames. Renovation Products knows their audience.
This ad for Alien Resurrection: The Game will make you think twice about getting an ultrasound. Unfortunately, the game itself was an abortion.
There's nothing like some hot man-on-man action to get players to pick up a game about rasslin', starring Jake "The Snake" Roberts. The rage of the cage—that's a euphemism, right?
The Snake is what they call his penis.
The concept behind this ad isn't particularly bad or anything, but the execution certainly is. Whoever designed it was clearly so out of touch that every kid in the picture is dressed almost identically, with backwards baseball hats. Worse still is the text at the bottom: "YO DUDEability." And I have to ask, what's a VERSAT?
Is the game so bad that the advertisement has to promote the idea that you'd have to have your fingers sown onto your controller just to force you to play it? I thought good games had people playing them willingly?
Because the sight of a middle-aged man splurging what looks like semen out of his nose is the first thing to get me to buy a video game.
You've likely never heard of BloodStorm. It's a clone of Mortal Kombat so bad that its creators hired Daniel Pessina, the model of Johnny Cage, to market the game for them in its print ads. The saddest part of all is that Pessina lost his contract with Midway and got fired because of it.
The only way to get non-stop gaming is to stick cartridges into your head Matrix style but with an 80s twist in which your head isn't big enough to accommodate the size of the cartridges. Got it.
American advertising goes something like this: tits are not okay. Robot tits? Perfectly okay.
I don't know what the fuck is going on in this ad. It's got letters all over in multiple different fonts and colors—enough to make any self-respecting designer want to commit murder.
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