Saturday, March 6, 2010

Hurl Through Space!

In the 1980's and early 90's, we saw an approach to videogame advertising that I never quite understood, in which the game publisher promises to serve up an intense and generally negative physical reaction.  Insanity was a popular element in these ads; not so popular, I'm happy to report, was vomiting:


Seika is aiming for humor here, of course; we're supposed to find it amusing that the young man in the ad is flying, hurtling through the vacuum of space, wildly out of control, and may consequently have to void the contents of his digestive system.  But Thunder Spirits (a.k.a. Thunder Force IV) is a 2-D side-scrolling shooter, not, say, a rollercoaster, and even the vaunted 3-D creatures are unlikely to induce motion sickness in most people.

Of course, the layout of the ad also implies that the kid in the ad has just coughed up a clean, boxed copy of the game, in which case that could be a pretty profitable bout of nausea.

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