Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week.
Once upon a time, video games weren't cool; sure, everybody played them, but from the Nintendo era until the mid-90s, they were regarded as toys for children, manchildren, and the unemployable. But with the debut of the Playstation, Sony changed all that; suddenly, video games were remade as this hip, new product that fit in well with all of the flannel and alterna-rock that dotted the landscape of our country like so many Taco Bell wrappers. It was around this time that Nintendo began to look significantly less cool--and some would say they never regained their cred until the recent wave of Wii-mania. So how would Nintendo try to shape its own image to fit in with whatever those damn kids were into? Why, the "Play It Loud" campaign, of course.
I'm not sure how much good this campaign did for Nintendo, because it certainly ruined the credibility of at least a few games; magazine readers of 1995 may remember the scratch and sniff Earthbound advertisements that did nothing but piss people off--and let's not forget the slogan "this game stinks," built completely around one of Earthbound's minor bosses. Ideas like these had to be fueled by cocaine or at least some mild hallucinogens.
Thankfully, everything that was ever aired on TV is now on YouTube, so I can show you Nintendo's tragic mistakes through the power of streaming video. Ain't life grand?
Our first ad is the Play It Loud campaign in a nutshell: baggy clothes, skateboarding, defiance of authority figures, and goofing around in front of a video camera going through its various special effects modes. Note the strange manifesto-like quality that comes through in the initial narration. Also note how the "we don't give a fuck" freewheeling teenage attitude completely faceplants when the word "hell" is bleeped out of the accompanying Butthole Surfers song. Think of the children!
Deal. With. It. Mom and dad! I'm gonna drink Snapple and watch Aeon Flux on a school night and there's nothing you can do about it! *slams door, puts Rotting Piñata in CD player*
If you thought bleeping out "hell" was embarrassing, here's an entire commercial centered around bleeping out swear words that are never said. It is troubling.
I leave you with perhaps the biggest injustice of the Play It Loud campaign, Nintendo's treatment of Yoshi's Island. Question: how do you sell the best 2D platformer that will ever exist? Why, rip off a joke from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, of course! I was an adolescent in the mid-90s. Now you know my hell.
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