From Racist Sony Commercials to Rayman’s Genitals: The Worst Video Game Ads in History

Video game ads used to be very weird. While these days they largely focus upon graphics, online multiplayer or how many hours you’ll be able to spend ignoring your family, friends and adult responsibilities while playing them, back in the ’80s and ’90s they routinely went off the rails in order to cater to the newly pubescent teenage boy demographic. Every company from Sony to Nintendo got in the act, playing to our deepest fantasies or, in many cases, simply creeping us out in order to linger in our collective memories.

Though gaming ads now largely stick to a set criteria — an epic, cinematic score accompanied with a shot of a grizzled protagonist with his/her back to the camera, overlooking a deadly warzone/tropical vista/post-apocalyptic wasteland — just a few decades ago marketing companies hadyet to crack what most appealed to their audience. This led to a plethora of truly batshit crazy ideas being utilized, with some proving to be successful while others… not so much.

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With that being said, let’s take a look at some of the ads that fall into the former category. Here are the worst video game ads in history:

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