When have you been consciously swayed by good/savvy marketing?
I remember seeing early pictures of DKC in magazines and being unimpressed -it had this plasticky look that reminded me of Claymates that I found unappealing. Then one day, Nintendo mails me picrel, which shows the game in motion and I was immediately sold on it. It looked amazing in motion and did felt next gen at the time. The VHS really makes it sound like it might be the biggest game of all time.
This video is great by the way, giving you a rare glimpse into the NoA of the 90s. I also love the ending sizzle reel that shit talks the other systems. It really puts me in a time and place and I probably watch it once a year.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv_YCSbWP78
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Also: Pokemon Power. A series of inserts included with six Nintendo Power issues that provide a guide for the entire game, also includes animanga versions of the first six episodes of the show. I had previously written Pokemon off as some sort of weird Japan only fad, like Barcode Battler or horse racing sims but this got me really into it. I'm hardly a Pokemon guy but I do enjoy the first few games..
Those inserts are the reason I played the first pokemon games.
The Sugimori art really sold Pokemon to me. I'd look through those Pokemon Powers and not just see them outline the path through this world but then they'd include this art of the creatures you'd find and they ran all sorts... the "cool", the "cute", the "weird". I didn't want Pokemon because Muh Charizard on the box, I wanted it because Oddish and Vulpix seemed adorable and interesting. That Pokemon put the bestiary front and center instead as the main draw made it unique to me compared to other games where it was just "here's some monsters you'll beat for experience". Especially for those kids who were big on reading books about animals or myths or sci fi, Pokemon was the perfect storm to mix it all together and let them have at it.
The fact that they gave out those VHS tapes for free to kids everywhere.
I am German and I got a German copy for free back in the day together with my free issue of the Club Nintendo Magazine.
It must have cost a fortune to hand out all those VHS tapes in different countries all over the world.
Wondering how much they have spent.
Was this the biggest marketing campaign during the SNES era? I have never seen them that confident. Okay they were when they launched the n64. Did. that also have a tape?
>The fact that they gave out those VHS tapes for free to kids everywhere.
It was great because back then you could plausibly reach like 80% of the gaming public with a single campaign like that. Either someone was a Nintendo Power subscriber or had a friend who was. Everyone was generally playing the same shit, too, since there weren't giant age gaps. Boomers were typically not playing video games at all. You can't really do that today because there's so much noise and so many games no single thing is going to capture the imagination of the entire landscape like that. It was way more intimate.
This was easily the game with the most hype. Only thing that could come close might have been Mortal Kombat II. But yeah, it had print ads, TV commercials, contests, the VHS tape, in-store marketing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIVN81aOlko), my local Toys R Us had a massive banner hanging off the side of the building (picrel). I believe Nintendo had some sort of deal with retailers that they'd buy back unsold copies. Absolutely massive hype and I bought into every ounce of it. A quick glance at Wikipedia says they spent 16 million on marketing in the US alone which was a ton for the time.
I was really curious about this but I knew this is something my sober, frugal parents would never buy me in a million years. A backpack that beats the shit out of you? Sounds great.
>A backpack that beats the shit out of you? Sounds great.
It does sound great on paper. It was advertised as essentially a Rumble Pak before the Rumble Pak, which obviously has it's draw. What my child mind failed to comprehend though is that because the games weren't programmed to use it the device had to use the in-game sound to know how to vibrate. But most games have music so all it turned out to be was a really stupid back massager.
>they spent 16 million on marketing in the US alone which was a ton for the time.
That's an insane amount. Why were they so confident??? I mean it's super crazy.
Nintendo is a Japanese company.
Now RARE comes along. A not so big third party developer from England. I don't even know WHAT did they do before DKC? And Nintendo makes such a big ad campaign for a third party developed game?? This is nuts and I would love to hear more background stuff about it.
Didn't they pioneer the technology that went into DKC and Killer Instinct and impressed Nintendo with it enough to get their approval? Euro devs get a lot of shit for making trash games but in terms of raw technical skill they were often unmatched. Argonaut was the same with Star Fox. This British studios would come up with something cutting edge and Nintendo was like "yes please" because at the time they were ass deep in a technological arms race of a console war.
I’m by no means a Rare expert but I think I can give ya’ll a good enough breakdown of their history with Nintendo:
After having both financial and critical success on the ZX Spectrum with stuff like Knight Lore, the Stamper brothers became interested in joining the console market. They learned about the Famicom when it was pretty new, and tried to get a development license from Nintendo. It took a while, but they succeeded in impressing Nintendo after reverse engineering the console and creating tech demos for it. Rare became the first non-Japanese Nintendo dev and made some pretty successful games for the NES such as Battletoads, RC Pro-Am, and Wizards & Warriors. In the early 90s they started experimenting the potential of using SGI computers for game development, and after Nintendo heard about these experiments they hired Rare to make a game using that technology to rival Sega’s graphically impressive Aladdin. From that point is where you get DKC and Killer Instinct.
Also I should probably emphasize that “unmatched in raw technical skill” describes Rare pretty damn well. Personally the best example of this pre-DKC is Knight Lore. It’s kinda quaint now, especially with the million isometric Spectrum games that would be made afterward, but at the time nothing really compared to it except maybe Ant Attack, which was pretty reserved visually in comparison to Knight Lore
Yeah I think they acquired some SGI computers and one of the programmers made a CG animation of a boxer and out of curiosity he basically "downscaled" it to see how it'd look at the SNES resolution and color palette and he was impressed with how good it looked.
When Rare tried pitching a game using Donkey Kong to Nintendo, they included a full story book laying out the story and "world" of the game - the original villain was Wario! I believe Tony Harman (guy in making of video) really pushed both the SGI and Donkey Kong game to Nintendo brass.
It seems like Nintendo was very ho hum when it came to working with western studios but that meant that the ones they did work with had to go above and beyond to prove themselves.
>I have never seen them that confident. Okay they were when they launched the n64. Did. that also have a tape?
It did, though I was subscribing to Nintendo Power at N64's launch and somehow didn't get one:
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I subscribed to NP too and got the DKC video, the N64 one, the hilarious Star Fox 64 video and a Diddy Kong Racing video. There was another video covering the 1995 holiday releases but I never got.
If you wanted to see gameplay the Banjo Kazooie vid was the best hands down as it's 99% gameplay footage. It's also narrated by Jon Lovitz.
>vid related
This, getting this video as a kid in the mail was one of the coolest moments I can remember since it was so unexpected I'm not really sure how they knew to mail it, I think I was subscribed to Nintendo Power but its been so long I forget. Rushed out to get Banjo as soon as it released, regret I don't still have this tape it got lost at some point and I could never find it.
>the n64. Did. that also have a tape?
I got a tape in the mail even though I didn’t have a subscription to anything Nintendo related. I watched that tape so many times. Had Jet Force Gemini on it, and some other I can’t remember. I didn’t get an N64 until 2003ish though.
I was the biggest fricking mark as a kid. Every gimmicky piece of shit accessory I wanted. I asked for the Power Glove. I asked for the Handy Boy. I asked for the Interactor. Whenever some piece of shit came out that promised to make your games feel more "real" I needed that shit. It took until I was about 10 or 11 years old before I caught up and started recognizing snake oil.
On a happier note I'm a sucker for really good print ads. I didn't even know Star Ocean was a thing before seeing this ad but I just needed to play the game after seeing it. Working Designs also sold me on several games just because the ads caught my eye as I flipped through a magazine.
We all were
>When have you been consciously swayed by good/savvy marketing?
When I saw an iPod touch ad on T.V. in 2009. I thought to myself "that looks like it could be fun", and you know what? It was. Helps that the first app I got was DOOM.
Only time an ad got me, and I'm glad it worked out.
DKC IS a solid game though, though it's using what you could describe as a gimmick to make it stand out. But they did a really good job with the aestetic to sell a sense of mystery, danger, and a bit of realism. It's obvious Nintendo had a lot of confidence behind it based on what they've seen, so they wanted to push it. And Miyamoto I'm sure was excstatic to have DK being a relevant character again.
>inb4 fake unsustantiated quote
That "quote" comes from a book published by a journalist who claims it's an off-hand remark by Miyamoto during an interview. We don't know the original context, we don't know if the journalist is adding spin or mistranslating.
Still the only game I ever pre-ordered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax1nvd8DF1Q&t=6m35s
I really like the glimpse at Nintendo HQ in this video. Visting the NOA of that era would be my equivalent of visiting the Wonka factory.
>warning this video contains imagery of graphic animals, viewer discretion is advised
>immediately cuts to a black guy eating bananas
Kek
Also, stuff like this really shows where the irreverent sense of humour of modern internet users comes from. The video is shot like a YTP.
I feel like marketing like the DKC tape can't be done today. The kind of graphics DKC used was itself enough of a selling point back then. Technological advancements today happen a lot slower and are more nuanced. I can't imagine a new game being sold on "WHOA! RAY TRACING!" with an inside look at how it was done on a technical level. People just aren't impressed by that kind of thing these days. Especially since some of the most successful current gen games aren't actually that visually spectacular, like Fortnite.
Its more the shitposty tone. Everyone is such a snowflake that they'd never dare use edgy marketing. Millennials prefer gay 'awkward' humour
The marketing back then was weird in it's own right. It was edgy in a juvenile way. Which I guess made perfect sense since at the time older kids rather than actual adults were probably the bread and butter of the gaming market. Nintendo went through a major Ren and Stimpy phase.
That's because for the most part it's not that interesting whereas a game like clayfighters, hate it or moderately like it, was developed in an interesting way.
idk if this counts but when I was younger I watched some compilations of old Nintendo commercials on Youtube and for some reason the ones for Metroid and Super Mario RPG in particular really worked on me. Only ended up getting Metroid on VC back then (was broke and wanted to save for like actually new games) but both were sick so ig my diaper shitting brain had good tatse.
Seeing this made me want to buy the game.
Its a shame my copy is in the trash someplace, I put some tape over the little square so you could record over the video and then recorded porno so I could jerk the shit out of my dick. Since I kept it in the vhs cover nobody suspected anything.
The old donkey kong jack off tape, put it in and see a black b***h getting two dicks up her ass and gang banged to hell and back.
I still have the two free VHS promo tapes: https://youtu.be/f2CEzyizXq8
I had already wanted the TurboGrafx-16 from seeing screenshots of Ys 1&2 in magazines, but they just offered such a great deal with the Duo.