The Mega64 ad from yesterday got cogs in our mind turning. There have been a lot of good ones over the years, some of which have been featured here on DS Fanboy through Promotional Consideration. Like, this one. And this one. And this one we made ourselves. And ... well, you get the idea.
So what have been some of your favorite gaming advertisements? A random billboard? Some commercial you saw on TV? An ad you flipped past in a magazine? Out with it!
Can't get enough of those wacky Rhythm Heaven commercials? There's a new dose of quick and quirky spots, fresh for Friday, featuring footage of some different mini-games with the same players we've seen before. They've also swapped some games from the last batch of commercials (which are also included in the second half of this video, if you missed them). Considering the way Toshihiko Takamizawa is dressed, the other players should be grateful that's all they're trading. We're not so sure we'd want to raid that guy's closet.
Check out the new (and old) commercials after the break, but be warned that, while the video plays just fine, the frame will display oddly here in some browsers. You can always go check it out at the source ... or at the real source, which is the Rhythm Heaven site. Or, uh, on Japanese televisions.
We didn't have to wait long for footage of more of Rhythm Tengoku Gold's games after the three-game E3 demo. Nintendo has posted seven short commercials demonstrating gameplay. The YouTube video above collects six of the commercials; to see the other one, you can check the website, although (spoilers!) it's just footage of a metronome anyway.
The celebrities in the videos are almost as interesting as the gameplay videos themselves -- the Japanese Steven Tyler in the pink suit (actually Toshihiko Takamizawa from the venerable Japanese rock band The Alfee) is quite a departure from the indistinguishable idols these companies normally use in game commercials.
If that's not enough Rhythm Heaven for you (it isn't), the Japanese site has also been updated with new screens and control diagrams.
Need to put together an impressive meal to wow the girdle off an older lady friend? As demonstrated in the above commercial with Hamish (of Hamish & Andy fame), Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat? might have just the recipe you'll need to get your Golden Girl giddy. Older women go wild over yakitori, apparently.
Nintendo has several of these commercials for the cooking training game airing in Europe and Australia, three of which we've embedded past the post break, but none of them are nearly as saucy or entertaining. Do you have a secret, sensual dish that girls (or guys) can't resist? Let us know! We've always prided ourselves in our ability to cook a mean leche flan.
Making the most of its multiple media production, Sega debuted two new commercials for its forthcoming World Destruction DS game during the Japanese premiere of its accompanying World Destruction anime series. The videos are blurry, and there's less than fifteen seconds of actual in-game footage between the two clips, but you can still see a preview of the JRPG's combat! Plus, one of the girls totally kicks a prison door off its hinges.
Sega has also announced that it will throw in a "premium soundtrack" for anyone who puts in a preorder for World Destruction's September 18th release in Japan. The CD will contain five tracks picked out by composer Yasunori Mitsuda, whose name you should recognize from his work on Chrono Trigger and the Xenosaga series. Jump past the break for the album cover and second commercial!
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!
Did you forget that Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift ships in North America this week? We wouldn't be surprised if you did, as, aside from two magazine advertisements, Square Enix hasn't done much to promote the SRPG sequel.
In fact, unless we've missed something, the only two handheld game commercials Square Enix has aired in the U.S. since the GBA were for the Final Fantasy III remake and Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker -- Mario Hoops 3-on-3 doesn't count. That's a shame considering how creative the original Final Fantasy Tactics Advance commercial was!
Bring your mages, ninjas, and gunners past the break for the GBA clip and the two FFTA2 magazine pieces we mentioned above!
The Patrick Fugit lookalike returns! Publisher Activision is ushering in this week's release of Guitar Hero: On Tour with a new trailer for the rhythm game, giving you a preview of its euphonic allure -- cool kids everywhere will gather around you at the park, dancing and losing their damn minds as if you were Elvis reincarnated.
Because On Tour has an optional system bundle, retailers should have the game on their shelves starting today instead of later this week. Make sure to drop your impressions in our comments if you pick up On Tour!
As ominous as the quiet subway scene in the first 50 seconds of this video might be, there's little in this new trailer to convinces us that Twilight Syndrome: Kinjiraneta Toshi Densetsu (Twilight Syndrome: The Forbidden Urban Legend) will be even half as scary as Twilight Syndrome: Search for the PlayStation.
Check out the old commercial we embedded past the post break to see what we mean! The animated skeleton and bugs are a bit goofy, but the smiling girl that pops up at the end for half of a second freaks us out every time!
Fun trivia: Did you know that famed game designer Goichi Suda worked on the original Syndrome games during his tenure at developer and publisher Human Entertainment? More fun trivia: Did you know that we have Twilight Syndrome: The Forbidden Urban Legend's boxart after the break? It's all true!
Nintendo of Japan's DS site has a new commercial up for Band Brothers DX. With the title due for release in Japan on the 26th of this month, Nintendo is putting on its marketing hat and showing a new ad to Japanese gamers.
Nintendo has enlisted the aid of Japanese celeb Thelma Aoyama to help them promote the title. If you're clueless as to who she is, then you probably don't live in Japan and should check out this Wikipedia page.
Sadly, like most Japanese advertisements, this one is way too short and doesn't show enough gameplay.
We're aware that we write about the Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer games much too much, especially considering that it's a niche series representing such a hardcore genre. But after playing Shiren the Wanderer DS, Chunsoft's remake of the original Super Famicom game and the first Shiren game brought stateside, it's hard for us to think of anything else but the other five Shiren titles that've yet to touch soil outside of Japan.
Chunsoft's recent announcement for Shiren the Wanderer DS 2, another remake, this time porting Furai no Shiren GB2: Sabaku no Majou (Shiren the Wanderer GB2: Demon Castle in the Desert), originally a Game Boy Color title, has only stoked the flames of our yearning. Though it's reckless to assume Sega will eventually localize the game as it did with the SFC remake, we've thrown caution to the wind, blinded by our optimistic heart's promises.
With that explained, hopefully you'll forgive us for featuring another piece on roguelike commercials less than two months after our installment on Pokemon Mystery Dungeon ads. Bring your talking weasel past the post break for two Japanese commercials from Shiren the Wanderer GB2's original 2005 release.
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.
You know, we were thinking about the celebrity DS endorsement put on by Nintendo over at "I Play For Me" and we wondered how effective such marketing actually is? Everyone and their grandmother has at least 4 DS Lites and 4 copies of Brain Age and Brain Age 2 to accompany their handhelds, so what could this accomplish? Does the thing even need to be advertised, even on the web?
Then again, we thought that perhaps thinking about advertising is a wasted effort. If you're anything like us, you're too busy playing with one of your DS Lites to watch television. So let's switch gears.
If you were in charge of creating an advertising campaign for the DS, what would it be like? Would you sell out and have a commercial starring Chuck Norris? Would you travel to a small, mid-west town and hand out bundles to all the folk residing within?
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
Square Enix has rolled out no less than seven commercials for its DS Style line of "non-games," one for each of the series' seven casual software titles. They're low-budget productions shot with simple scripts, spartan sets, and a single actress in most of the scenes.
Bring your trivial dilemmas past the post break, where we've posted a medley of the 15-second spots past the post break, as well as early 90s commercials for the minty product referenced in this installment's title.
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.
Can't get enough of those wacky Rhythm Heaven commercials? There's a new dose of quick and quirky spots, fresh for Friday, featuring footage of some different mini-games with the same players we've seen before. They've also swapped some games from the last batch of commercials (which are also included in the second half of this video, if you missed them). Considering the way Toshihiko Takamizawa is dressed, the other players should be grateful that's all they're trading. We're not so sure we'd want to raid that guy's closet.
Nintendo of Japan's DS site has a new commercial up for Band Brothers DX. With the title due for release in Japan on the 26th of this month, Nintendo is putting on its marketing hat and showing a new ad to Japanese gamers.
We're aware that we write about the Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer games much too much, especially considering that it's a niche series representing such a hardcore genre. But after playing Shiren the Wanderer DS, Chunsoft's remake of the original Super Famicom game and the first Shiren game brought stateside, it's hard for us to think of anything else but the other five Shiren titles that've yet to touch soil outside of Japan.
You know, we were thinking about the celebrity DS endorsement put on by Nintendo over at "I Play For Me" and we wondered how effective such marketing actually is? Everyone and their grandmother has at least 4 DS Lites and 4 copies of Brain Age and Brain Age 2 to accompany their handhelds, so what could this accomplish? Does the thing even need to be advertised, even on the web?
