The Best (and Worst) Video Game Commercials
- June 05, 2007 17:16 PM PST
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More than 5,000 video game commercials can be found on Game Ad's online archive. That's a lot of ads. Sadly, a majority of them aren't worth your time, so we've taken it upon ourselves to hand pick the best using only the finest ingredients; humor, creativity, cachet and a hint of nostalgia. Peep 'em. They're the best video game commercials of all-time:
Table of Contents
Page 1: The Best Game Ads (the first six)
Page 2: The Best Game Ads (the last six)
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Page 3: The Worst Game Ads (the ads that didn't make the cut)
12. PS2 Fun Anyone?
What better way to start our list than with Sony's excellent New Zealand PS2 spot? The ad is inclusive, features Shirley Temple's peppy Get on Board, and exemplifies what gaming is about: play. It even won a prestigious award at Cannes. That's good enough for us.
11. Pole Position
It's all here, folks. A godless, marauding giant randomly plucks a nerdy suburban family from their station wagon only to force them to play Pole Position, the real kind. Add a touch of patronization, inexplicable hostility, and 80s butt rock, and you have commercial magic. Magic I tell ya!
10. Commandos
Very little is known about the most obscure commercial on our list. Other than the fact that it was for Eidos' Commandos, it merely shows an imaginative and unaware gamer caught soldiering in a hardware store. Weird, but funny, and a reminder to always stay young at heart.
9. Genesis Does What Nintendon't
Sega cut right to the chase when it released the first Genesis ad in 1989; "Genesis does what Nintendon't," specifically with regards to graphics when comparing 16-bit to the 8-bit NES. The ad would be the first of many in which Sega played the anti-Nintendo card, and unapologetically so. That and it had a bunch of celebrities, another first.
8. PS3, This is Living
Even though early Play Beyond ads were widely criticized, we feel the above encapsulates all that was the PS3 launch: confused, expensive, gaudy, elite, daring, artistic, chic, bold, risky and clever all in one. Though probably not as effective as Sony's "U R not e" commercials of the mid 90s, this one is much more cinematic... in a Quentin Tarantino, Memento sort of way. I love it.
7. Legend of Zelda Rap
Can you get any more 80s than this? An old school metro-sexual befriends a geek to impose on his toys. "Wow, nice graphics! I'd like to get my hands on that game," he says as if talking about some hottie skirt. This truly is the epitome of mid 80s Nintendo advertising. Corney, yet I can't stop watching in amazement.
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- Sep 21 2009 at 08:14:42:AM PST
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Very terrible list. I doubt the authors have ever even seen a half-decent game commercial.
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Plus for a list that talks about "video game commercials" it has very few commercials actually about the games themselves.
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