Viral marketing is insidious and horrible. Anything that openly names itself after a malicious foreign body that invades organic matter, twisting it to its own torrid ends cannot be trusted. To make matters worse, it’s almost always more cloying than regular, old, huckster-with-a-smile advertising (let us never forget the late, not-great Sony “All I Want For Christmas is a PSP” campaign.) That said, I have to hand it to publisher D3. Their viral campaign behind upcoming (but still-unseen) title Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, is absolutely hilarious and brilliant in its execution. They’ve created two websites, a fan page and news blog, devoted to an imaginary classic gaming series surrounding a convincingly vintage character by the name of Matt Hazard. Starting with a 1983 arcade game named The Adventures of Matt in Hazard Land, D3’s constructed a full history of a non-existant franchise that hits on all of gaming’s milestones from the past thirty years. While the 8 and 16-bit parodies are well-trodden, sprite-based fare, the fake cover art and screenshots for Matt Hazard’s late-90s and early-aughts adventures are hilariously spot-on. Take a look at this obviously Nintendo 64-inspired packaging for 1995’s You Only Live 1,317 Times.
Read More...