ONM Remembered – #14
“Cute characters. Nasty injuries.”
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 118 (July 2002)
This “object in a cube” format was used for a few first-party Nintendo advertisements early in the GameCube’s lifespan, and none of them were terribly engaging. I suppose it doesn’t help that very few of them made an attempt to show what the game was like. The Pikmin ad did feature the little creatures buried in soil, but… yeah, tell me, does seeing weird stuff inside a cube make you rush out and buy a game? Didn’t think so.
You’d think it’d have been funnier to have an actual Nintendo character wrapped in bandages. Showing Kirby in traction would have been an excellent example. Not only would it be amusing to see a nondescript pink puffball suffering from a broken limb, but it wouldn’t have been a hard image to make as either a prop or a CGI model.
The glass cube is the only thing about this image to cement it as video game related, and even that’s a loose connection. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this image reappear in the near future for accident benefits or car insurance ads. “This man is kept under surveillance so only the best accident benefit agencies can get to him!” Take me out and shoot me.
…on top of that, I’d wager that this image is predicated on a lie:
is there any Game Cube game where cute characters suffer from nasty injuries? Did any game realllly go down the Bubsy path of having danger-specific injury animations, or did they all just do the “hit, take-damage, blinking-invincible, continue” convention?
Oh wait; it says specifically that its about the game, “Super Smash Bros.” Hmm, did that game have specific nasty injuries? Given that its a fighting game, I can only imagine that it did not.
I’d love to see a game where your character can get hospitalised. Oh, sure, the main plot would be about thwarting some bad dudes, but if you get roughed up enough your new objective would be to move back onto solid foods again. You’ll never be able to use use any of the food items you find in trash cans! Not unless you start carrying a blender with you everywhere.
I think I’ve become tasteless.
[…] talked about another ad in this series before, so my basic complaints still stand: It’s outstandlingly bland. Look, it’s an ad […]