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Button Mashers is a periodic audio podcast covering a range of topics in the gaming industry. This blog was created for myself, Tetsuotrunks, as well as a few guest co-hosts, to contribute our 2 cents on topics that really don't warrant any discussion, or to just express things that we'd like to get off our chests. Check back often, as we update frequently and feel free to leave any feedback.

June 2008
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Grabbing your attention
By Biccy on 06.26.08 at 01:23 PM CST
Just to start, doing this a day early today because Brawl comes out tomorrow (hurrah!) so I probably won't have any time then. Or for the next few days.

Anywho, for those with a TV they can watch (not you Alex, stop reading) you might have seen a few commercials or adverts for video games. Now I'm gonna stay the fuck away from the PS3 adverts here, they're just...scary. I'm having nightmares about this one. They've gotten better now that Sony have stop deciding to make the majority of their choices while high, but I haven't seen many recent ones anyway.

So that leaves the Wii and the 360. And I do wonder at times if Nintendo started hiring hobos off the street out of the kindness of their hearts. But then again, a hobo could probably be more creative.

Now I'm not sure if the Wii commercials in American are any better, but the ones here in Britain make me want to gouge my eyes out and offer them to Nintendo as some form of sacrifice so they'll stop airing them on TV. They're horrible, I imagine short films made by students ran into higher budgets than they did with these commercials.
For example, the Guitar Hero 3 advert (which unfortunately isn't on Youtube yet). It's basically 5 shots of the actual game, then the rest of people badly pretending to play. Such as two girls moving in back to back to play looking like they're having a "really good time", putting their best "Yeah, woo, we rock!" faces on. It really does make me want to look away from the screen.

Heres one for Mario Party 8. Not even background music in this one.
It's obvious to see who those adverts are aimed at. It's not the kind that says "Buy me, I'm awesome". It's more the kind that says to your parents "Buy me, it's good ol' fashioned family fun!".

I know, they're just commercials. But it just goes to show who Nintendo are really marketing for. And as I've mentioned before, they're just dumping the more hardcore gamers where they stand, while their grandfathers do sudoku on their Wii.

Microsoft have put out some great commercials. I really liked the Gears of War one. It was simple and sure, it probably showed less about the game than some of the Wii ones but...it's just a good commercial. Even my sister liked watching it and she didn't even know what Gears of War was (she kind of guessed it was a shooter video game after watching the whole thing). Now that is time spent thinking about a commercial.
This one just advertising the 360 in general, is pretty old now but it definitely got down what a lot of people (like me anyway) would like to do. Find a sword, be put into a world fighting an army or a giant ogre thing or whatever. It uses humour as well, which if done well, is great.

The only humorous commercial I've seen Nintendo do is one Josh showed me (I hope to god it's meant to be humorous) for Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS.
The rest are the same old "family fun", "look gran, my Nintendog is called Sparky", commercials.

At least they didn't try and set that out for Brawl (as far as I know). The ones here have just shown individual characters doing attacks and their final smash. No little kids pretending to have fun, just Brawl. Now they wouldn't break their usual style of commercials unless they knew the normal ones were appealing to different people than those who might play Brawl.

I think I'll leave my rant there. Yes yes, Biccy, all you do is slag off Nintendo, give them a break or they might break your legs...I know. But I can't help it, I just feel slightly betrayed.

Now to prepare my living room to be Brawl worthy.
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