As it did with My Word Coach, Ubisoft sees a lot of potential in My Weight Loss Coach (My Health Coach in Europe), putting enough money behind the nutrition and fitness trainer's marketing budget to support several print and television advertising campaigns worldwide. The publisher has timed the title's release and its promotional push perfectly, too, riding the exercise-game wave set in motion by Wii Fit.
In this edition of Promotional Consideration, we look at several of those My Weight Loss Coach advertisements to pick out the goofy details and voice our trivial complaints. Eat a light lunch, run up a flight of steps, and meet us after the break for the ads!
With the Dragon Quest IV DS remake announced for the US and Europe this week, we thought it'd be good a time to dig up Enix's commercials for the original Famicom game's release in Japan. They're completely different from the retro ads used last November when the DS remake shipped.
As with Squaresoft's chocobo commercials for Final Fantasy IV on the Super Famicom (launching a little over a year after Dragon Quest IV), these ads were just plain odd! They show hardly any in-game video, relying on logos and recognizable theme music instead. Gather your party and meet us in the fifth chapter, past the post break, for the commercials.
Of the three Godzilla: Unleashed games released (Wii, PS2, and DS), the DS version is, without a doubt, the worst of the bunch. That's saying a lot considering that GameSpot described the Wii version as "the worst thing to happen to Godzilla since getting killed by Mothra's babies." In its review of the DS game, Godzilla: Unleashed Double Smash, Nintendo Power opined, "The slow descent in Godzilla games has finally hit rock bottom."
Nevertheless, publisher Atari had a job to do -- sell copies of the game -- and it did its best to win over fans with monster-sized ads befitting of the radioactive monster. Lurch past the post break to see what we mean!
If you recall, back in November, we put up a short piece on the increasing number of ads in Nintendo Power after the magazine was handed over to Future US, the same publisher behind the official Xbox and PlayStation magazines.
Chris Slate, Nintendo Power's new editor in chief, explained the ad-bloated issues: "Love or hate the ads, their number should go down significantly over the next couple of issues as we move away from the busy holiday selling season. We saw a huge upswing in ad pages last month because more games than ever are being released right now for the red-hot Wii and DS. However, new titles will slow down midway through December, and the ads will follow suit."
So, now that we've put a few months in between us and December, has the magazine kept its promise, scaling back the number of ads in favor of delivering more news, reviews, and previews? Jump past the post break for the breakdown.
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
In advance of this coming week's Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 releases, Nintendo has commissioned two commercials to herald the dungeon crawlers, one for each edition, Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness.
Once again, this sequel adopts Chunsoft'sFushigi no Dungeon (Mystery Dungeon) design to allow gamers to play as a Pokemon. It's a solid set of titles, by most reports, but many genre veterans consider them inferior to games like The Nightmare of Druaga and Shiren the Wanderer.
Nevertheless, kids are crazy for the Pokemon branding, and the original GBA/DS Pokemon Mystery Dungeon releases went on to sell over 5.5 million copies worldwide. And that's why we now have a major publisher supporting an extremely niche genre with two separate commercials.
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
As we've discussed before, a company's logo or branding can be just as important as the commercials and ads used to promote a product. This week, we'll take a look at a print piece that combines our favorite handheld with one of the most recognizable emblems in the world. Join us past the post break!
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
Though Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has sold exceptionally well in North America, topping the software charts for its PC and console releases, Activision is smart enough to know that marketing the title in Japan, where the DS is king and first-person shooter sales is an oxymoron, requires a different strategy.
The result? Activision actually produced a 30-second spot specifically for the DS version of the multiplatform game ...
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
Long before Nintendo began its international Touch! Generations campaign to beckon casual gamers with promises of trained brains and improved vision, the company was putting its marketing money behind the original Game Boy to expand its audience to adults.
The resulting commercials were cringe-inducing productions, so much so, it's hard to believe they captured anyone's interest at all. Of course, with Tetris leading the push, the handheld sold like hot cakes anyway, nullifying the ineffectiveness of the ads. But that doesn't mean we still can't dig them up and have a laugh at their expense!
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
Our featured item for this Easter Sunday, the North American commercial for Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, already made the rounds earlier this week, but if, like us, you're a fan of stealth assassins, that's probably of little concern to you. Put on your cleanest black jumpsuit -- make sure to run a lint-roller on it first to pull off all that cat hair -- and sneak past the post break for the video.
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
We applaud any video game ad that eschews the common official-art-and-screenshots approach, a template that's been in place for as long as we can remember. This week's piece abandons those conventions, marketing EA's SimCity DS port and its city-management features in a much more creative fashion. Expand you commercial zoning, lower industrial taxes, and join us past the break!
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
We had so much fun presenting fan-madecommercials these past two weeks, we decided to create our own ad, repurposing an old page ripped from a 1970s comic book, its pages yellowed with age. Strap up your boots, grab your rifle, and report past the post break for this week's edition of Promotional Consideration!
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
Many of the commercials for Nintendo-published DS titles in Japan or Korea follow the sameformula -- alternating shots between in-game clips and reactions from the player, typically a celebrity. It's an effective approach, as game and system sales can attest, but what happens when a bored video editor decides to mess with the recipe, replacing the cheerful game scenes from a Korean Animal Crossing ad with much more violent footage? Follow us past the post break to find out!
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
You don't have to try too hard to find similarities between the Nintendo DS Lite and Apple's Macbook Air -- they're both sleek, attractive devices, curves at every corner. Also, both of their designs place a heavy emphasis on their portability. And, most importantly, they both fit in an envelope!
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
Revisiting last week's theme of recycled assets, we're taking a look at the familiar artwork seen in a recent print ad for Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. Unlike the Flower, Sun, and Rain commercial which repurposed an old promotional music video to great effect, this one's a forgetful piece, the video game equivalent of a comic book cover with a generic superhero-team action shot.
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
As the official hub for the Flower, Sun, and Rain DS remake, the game's Japanese site embraces Goichi Suda's (and Grasshopper Manufacture's) hip presentation, its background shifting through a collection of blown-up and blurred screenshots. Even if you don't understand the Japanese characters strewn around its pages, it's evident that something very cool is taking place. The site added a television commercial to its list of updates late last week -- jump past the post break for the video and more.
