We’re nearing the halfway point in Re:Creators, which means we’ve arrived
at the point where I’m honestly starting to feel sorry for the people who
dropped this show. The mystery surrounding Altair’s creator furthered this
week, and the best character on the show got a pivotal, albeit maybe final,
scene that turned out to be one of the show’s best.
It’s become blatantly obvious that
Sota (I think the main character guy joke’s run its course by this point) has
something to do with the creator of our villain, and this week the characters
all but confirmed what happened to her using some wordplay. She was friends
with Sota, but after her work with Altair took off, Sota continued to flounder
as an artist. Their friendship broke off, and three months ago she died
somehow. Altair is doing all this insanity to get revenge on the world that
took her god from her, which includes destroying the other creations that have
come in.
I like that Altair finally got some
major screentime again this week as more developments came out about her,
because she’s mostly acted as an endgame boss while the hero creations fight
her flunkies. She’s definitely shaping up to be a cool baddie, and the
connection with Sota will be really interesting to explore in the weeks to
come.
I have noticed another small issue
with the show lately that I feel is worth bringing up however: the uneven
distribution of the main characters. Some of the creations get ludicrous
amounts of screentime compared to others. Despite being the first character
seen in the intro and the one at the center of much of the advertising for Re:Creators, Selesia doesn’t enjoy
nearly the same amount of screentime that Meteora gets. She only had one or two
lines this week compared to Meteora getting a huge scene one on one with Sota.
Similarly, despite being introduced as a major player a few weeks back, the
mech suit guy’s still done absolutely nothing. He doesn’t contribute to the
conversations, nor does he participate in the fight scenes. Right now he just
feels like he’s there just because they wanted to get all the introductions out
of the way early on.
Speaking of characters, I probably
should talk about Mamika and the ending. Mamika and her relationship with Alice
has easily been the best part of Re:Creators
thus far. The microexpressions you see on her face when interacting with
the others is honestly second to none. You really can see complex emotions like
doubt and confusion on this anime girl’s face, and it’s insane.
Early in the episode it was blatant
that her character was about to go into a rough patch, as she had a
conversation with Alice about how she wanted her to know how much she liked her
and how she believed this world truly was worth saving.
Uh oh.
As is the magical girl’s lot in life
since Madoka Magica hit it big,
everything then proceeded to go horribly wrong for poor Mamika. Upon
confronting Altair about her master plan, she was quickly turned into mahou
shojou shish kabob. But before Altair could deliver the finishing blow, Mamika
finally cast the much-hyped Magical Splash Flare spell, destroying everything
in a one mile radius with a pink explosion.
As far as I can see, there are two
ways they can go with this since we didn’t actually see if she died or not. The
more obvious choice and the one I think they’ll be going with is they kill off
Mamika, arguably the best character with the most development, and set up a
story not unlike Magical Girl Raising
Project going forth where the creations are picked off one by one. The
other option is have Mamika survive, keeping their secret weapon character in
play, and have her join Sota’s side, leading to a rift in her relationship with
Alice. I personally think that she’s a goner (her scene early on in the episode
made it laughably obvious), and if that’s the case, I’ll really miss her.
Despite the character screentime issue,
this episode was easily the best we’ve seen from Re:Creators so far. Mamika’s scenes were excellently animated and
directed, being extremely emotional and providing what looks to be a satisfying
end to her character arc. Outside of that, I also enjoyed the further
worldbuilding and giving Sota more of a role in things going on. I just wished
his interactions weren’t limited to just Selesia, Meteora and Makagami. Overall,
this episode alone really made all the exposition we had to get through worth seeing.
If you dropped this anime, I highly recommend picking it up again.
I’ve played a lot of averagely bad
games in my time, but sometimes I come across one so mind-bendingly awful that
it defies expectation. Troll and I is
the latest game to join the ranks of stuff like Star Trek 2013, Star Fox Zero
and Lego Worlds as a recent release
so inanely terrible that it’s just plain stunning.
This one legitimately needs to be seen
to be believed, but I’ll do my best to go over the whole experience for you.
The game is apparently set in Scandinavia
during the late 1950’s, but honestly I find that incredibly hard to believe
because everything looks like it waltzed straight out of Lord of the Rings. The main character lives in a tiny peasant
village, they need to use spears to hunt boar just to eat, and he and his
family are dressed in clothes that would look more at home in a pioneer village
than in 1957. Is this like M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village where it turns out at the end that the main character
is living in a secluded area outside of modern day? I didn’t get far enough
into the game to find out, and I’m not well versed enough in Scandinavian
history to know if they actually became a fantasy world for a few years after
World War II, but something tells me that neither of those are the case.
From the moment you boot up Troll and I it’s obvious that this game
is going to be a bumpy ride. The game looks so dreadful that the character
models in Majora’s Mask look better
than these nightmarish mannequins (and by that I don’t mean the 3DS remake, I
mean the original game from 17 years ago). The voice acting is especially
terrible, making me honestly wonder if this was an instance of some family
members of the dev team being called in to play the characters. Sound effects
are also frequently completely missing in cutscenes, while others are insanely
loud compared to the rest of the game.
The story, from what I played, doesn’t
seem to make a lick of sense. Ignoring the fact that Scandinavia’s been
reverted to fantasyland after World War II, the main plot seems to be that
everyone’s trying to kill a Bigfoot for some reason or another. Said Sasquatch
teams up with Otto, the main protagonist, for no explicable reason. Last Guardian this ain’t. The two of
them are then sent on a journey where they must face off against two of the
most nefarious gaming foes in history: clunky controls and a plethora of
glitches.
The controls are horrific, some of the
worst I’ve seen in a very long time. Both Otto and the Troll/Bigfoot thing move
around with all the finesse of a three wheeled shopping cart. The simple act of
getting them to turn around is a chore in and of itself, and don’t even get me
started on how dreadful combat is. While it’s mostly just swinging whatever
weapon you have into your enemy’s face until you win, trying to focus on them
is a task straight from gaming hell itself.
There’s also many, many, many, many
glitches all over the place, causing the game to feel more like the result of a
community center video game creation summer camp instead of a retail release.
For some reason, the entire forest is full of ghosts. There are weird water
ripple effects just hanging in thin air with no explanation, so I just assumed
that the woods were haunted.
Much worse is the problems with an
early quick-time event segment. You’re escaping from a forest fire and you need
to press X at certain times to jump over several identical looking logs. The
only problem is that even when you pull off a jump successfully the game will
sometimes register it as a miss and you’ll die anyways. It took me upwards of
twenty minutes to beat a level that should’ve barely taken five.
I think the funniest part of this game
is the back of the box. It advertises in big letters that Troll and I won “Best Original Game” at E3 2016 from Eyewave Games.
I honestly have to wonder if the folks over at Eyewave saw the game there and
assumed they were going to improve on it when it would be released. Regardless
of what happened there, I honestly feel sorry for the poor buggers now that
their good name is attached to Troll and I
for all eternity.
What’s significantly less funny is
what this game costs. If you want to experience the sheer unintentional
hilarity of Troll and I for yourself,
you first have to pay a suggested retail price of $64.99. The trailer on Steam
also looks significantly better than how the game actually looks when playing
for yourself, so it’s best to disregard that completely. The fact that these
developers decided to try to pull a highway robbery with this piece of crap is
just plain disgusting, and I’m glad that this game looks like one that’s going
to be lost to time.
It should go without saying that Troll and I isn’t even worth a rent, let
alone buying it for that insane price. This game feels like it was thrown
together over the course of a few months by a dev team that just didn’t care,
and how it won the few awards it did at E3 last year is beyond me. While this
game will hopefully be never touched by anyone ever again, I expect I’ll be
seeing it once more when it comes time to list the worst games of 2017 in
December.
I’m lucky enough to live in a library
system that gets most of the latest games released. While more often than not
they order the big-name stuff, every once in a while they find a title that
I’ve never heard of. This is one of those times.
Birthdays
the Beginning is perhaps the most clumsily named game I’ve played in recent
years. Despite this, it’s actually pretty decent and fun game for kids, but one
that I can’t recommend for more than a rental for a multitude of reasons.
It’s actually kind of hard to describe
what you do in Birthdays, but I’ll
try my best. Think of it as sort of a hybrid of The Sims and Viva Piñata.
You are given a cubical world that is yours to shape and build upon, as you
create life from a hunk of rock. There’s not much in sense of a story besides a
paper-thin way to tie the various missions together, but honestly this game
doesn’t really need one.
You are immediately thrust into a
lengthy tutorial, guided by a glowing blue orb by the name of Navi.
…I know what you’re all thinking, so
I’m just going to assume that that’s a huge coincidence and move on with the
review.
The visuals are pretty nice, but nothing
super impressive. All the various plants and animals are easily identifiable,
but with a fun spin that makes them look like plastic toys. Birthdays might be home to the cutest T.
rex in video games right now.
You actually don’t have much input in
building your world as far as I can see. You can create giant mountains and
various bodies of water, but that’s mostly it. Grass, plants and animals all
appear by themselves when you take a backseat and allow time to fast-forward.
Watching your world grow accompanied by some serene music is actually pretty
relaxing, but I actually really wish there was more I could do. I wanted to be
able to act like a real god of the world, like spawning and destroying species
or choosing terrain types like snow or desert instead of having the game
randomly pick them for me. While this game is really cathartic, I can’t exactly
call it fun.
This game also has two big issues that
really make it hard to continue after the first hour or so. The biggest issue
with the game comes with the stuff you get in the early stages. While the box
art advertises dinosaurs, you start off the game by collecting various types of
plankton and invertebrates, most of which are so small they don’t even appear
in the game world. You need to evolve stuff by either completing certain
objectives or using items to get to the big fun stuff. I can’t tell you how
disappointing it is when the game announces that I’ve created a new animal,
only to find it’s yet another invisible
jellyfish with an unpronounceable name. Most similar games like this (again
going back to Viva Piñata) start you
off with small but recognizable animals, like rabbits, frogs and birds. Having
plankton unknown to anyone outside of a real-life biologist be the game’s first
impression leaves a pretty bad taste in your mouth.
The other big problem with the game is
that, thanks to gaming being apparently dedicated to making everything as
realistic as possible until it stops being fun these days, Birthdays employs an extinction mechanic. At any point while
playing a creature in your world may go extinct, and as far as I can tell
there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You need to pay rapt attention to the
ever-scrolling list that dictates the current state of everything in your
world, lest a necessary creature accidentally kicks the bucket.
But to be fair, Birthdays does explain a way to bring back stuff that’s gone
extinct: reset and load an old save file!
There’s no autosaving in this game
either, by the way. You need to manually save the game every five minutes just
in case a crucial species accidentally finds itself on the chopping block.
So I reached the point in the main
campaign where I guess a creature necessary to progressing went extinct and
because I didn’t save beforehand I was kind of stuck. So I went over to free
play mode to see if it was any better. Trust me, if you ever want to play this
game I’d just jump right to free play once you’ve finished the initial
tutorial. It still has the same problems as the campaign mode, but you have
access to way more items that can help you speed up the process.
The last thing I should probably touch
on is the price. Right now Birthdays costs
$43.99 on Steam, which is just ludicrous for a game where you spend most of
your time sitting and watching your world spin around.
I’ll give Birthdays this: I like the concept. Building a world from the very
start sounds like it could be a lot of fun. The big problem comes with how
little interactivity and control you have over the world. The most you can do
is raise and lower the terrain to change the temperature. Everything else is
done for you, making it really hard to get invested in. I think if this was an
iPad game you checked up on once every few hours instead of a PS4 game where
you need to set aside time to play it would’ve been more successful. It also
doesn’t help that the early-game plankton overload and the complete frustration
that is the extinction mechanic really kicks the game in the balls and removes
a lot of potential fun to be had. Plus, the price is completely insane
considering the content this game packs. If you’ve got a young kid around that’s
into prehistoric life, there are worse choices. The thing is that there’s also
better choices at a much more reasonable cost.
What does it take to create a great
video game? Most would say that strong, compelling and satisfying gameplay are
the crucial part, but story, visual design and music are also aspects needed to
take in consideration.
So with that in mind, how do you
create a great video game that somehow manages to defy the odds and end its
first year basically ten times as popular as it was when it first released?
So, in honour of its first birthday,
it’s time to look back on Overwatch.
Even just skimming through this blog
it’s easy to tell that I am a huge fan of Overwatch.
I regularly cover big in-game events, I sing its praises frequently, especially
when comparing other online shooters, and I placed it at number two on my best
games of 2016 list (a hard decision to make, but one I still stand by). I still
play it regularly, at least once a week, reaching the point where I’ve become
good at multiple characters.
So…why? Why has Overwatch outlasted most other games in the increasingly clogged first-person
multiplayer shooter genre?
I think a lot of it is thanks to the
asymmetrical gameplay that’s seen here. One of the biggest problems in even
good modern FPS games like Titanfall 2 is
that the multiplayer mode can often fall flat due to every match feeling more
or less like the same thing over and over and over again.
With Overwatch you get nothing like that. There are four different
gamemodes spread out over fourteen stages, and you have no idea which you’ll be
playing when you start up the game. Thanks to this you have no idea what’s
coming up next, making it much more exciting to jump in and play.
It also helps that each of the
characters play differently. Out of the twenty-four options in-game, there are
a grand total of zero clone characters. Each has a unique kit with their own
strengths and weaknesses, and oftentimes a player that is dominating as a
certain character will cause an entire opposing team to completely rethink
their strategy.
But a unique level select method and
varying playstyles isn’t really why I think Overwatch
has resonated so much with people. I think people kept the game running
through the year because of the characters and how they relate to them.
Each character in Overwatch has a backstory, a unique and fun design, and a specific
real-world nationality. Whereas most modern shooter characters are members of
the U.S. Military, Overwatch features
heroes from Japan, England, Mexico, and Australia among others. This variety
allows more people to see themselves in the characters they play as than if it was
another angry soldier guy avenging his dead friends that Activision seems to
love so much (hilariously, Overwatch takes
that trope and does it one better in the form of Soldier: 76).
The world of Overwatch is also ludicrously different than most games you see in
this genre. Instead of a grim dystopian future, this world is bright and
optimistic. Iran has gone from being war-torn to becoming a technological
paradise to rival Silicon Valley, same-sex relationships are as normal and
nonchalant as anything else, and humans and sentient robots are working towards
building a world where they can live hand-in-hand. It’s pretty unusual to see
such positivity in a game all about who can blow up their enemies the most.
How much people have fallen in love
with these characters and this world is evident by the outpouring of fanart the
game is still seeing a full year after launch. The fans have really taken these
characters and made them their own, creating fun interpretations of them, like
Soldier: 76 as a disgruntled dad and D.Va as a dorito-munching gremlin. In
turn, sometimes references to these fan creations make it into the game itself,
such as D.Va’s Halloween victory pose featuring hidden dorito chips.
Blizzard has always been great at
creating fun and interesting worlds to explore, and in my opinion Overwatch outclasses even Warcraft as their best one yet. Creating
characters that fans can relate to and really make their own on top of a game
with already incredibly stellar gameplay really makes me feel that this game
might just be the first in a new golden age for the FPS genre, one I think it
desperately needs.
Continuing directly from last week,
Diana is still working to become the leader of her family, while Akko is trying
to convince her to return to Luna Nova.
It’s the Venus Eclipse, meaning that
tonight is the only night for years where the planet Venus is hidden behind the
moon. As part of the Cavendish family tradition, tonight is the only night
where the heir to the family throne may visit a secret shrine and become
officially crowned as the new leader of the family.
This is definitely one of the better
animated episodes recently, even more so than Episode 18. The animators definitely
had a lot of fun with this one, using a lot of over exaggerated faces and
movements on Akko. I especially liked that she was the only character in this
episode to really be wildly animated like that, adding contrast to the more
stoic Cavendish estate characters.
This is especially put to good use in
an early scene where Diana is captured by her aunt’s snakes and Akko
shapeshifts into various animal forms to try and rescue her. It’s very
entertaining to watch her solve the problem by turning into an elephant or a
tortoise among others.
Another highlight of the episode is
Diana getting more much-deserved character building. She and Akko share many
nice scenes working together, and for the first time in Little Witch as a franchise Diana truly lets her guard down and
allows Akko to help her.
While Akko and Diana work
exceptionally well as rivals (Episode 14 is a clear example as to how), I also
really like when they’re able to work as a pair. Their scene in Enchanted Parade where Diana indirectly
motivates Akko to finish the project is one of the best in the movie, and even
in the original short having Diana be the one to save Akko from falling at the
end as opposed to Ursula made for a fantastic ending. The two of them make a
great pair that I’d really like to see more of.
This leads to the discovery of the
fifth word, allowing the Shiny Rod to transform into Chariot’s broom and
leading the two of them on a madcap chase to the shrine as a last-minute secret
entrance appears.
Of course, in the end time runs out
thanks to the aunt and Diana decides to return to school with Akko in tow. The
two have a nice final scene where Diana thanks her for allowing her to return
to school, and the two seem to be building a stronger bond. Diana will surely
play a major role in these last five episodes as Croix’s master plan begins to
unravel, and I’m sure her newfound friendship with Akko will be tested.
This episode is a great conclusion to
what started last week. The animation is better, and Diana getting more character
development is always welcome. I still do wish Akko had a stronger motive for
all this though. Andrew asks her why she’s doing this, and she doesn’t really
give an answer. But overall, a weak reason for why we got this small arc is
better than not getting it at all.
Re:Creators
left us last week in the middle of an awesome fight scene between all the
creations as things finally started to get heated up. Things continued to get
better this week, as the overall mystery continued to heat up and the
characters got more interactions with each other.
The last remaining creations showed up
at the fight scene, but it didn’t last long before they all dispersed into
their own separate group. The rival guy with the purple hair’s decided to align
with Selesia’s group, as has the mech pilot. They both seem like really fun
characters to be around, and I hope they actually do something more than just
be extras that hang out and contribute with an idea every so often.
Mamika also got a lot more screentime
this week. Despite not being in nearly as many episodes as Selesia and Meteora,
I’d honestly say she’s had the most development out of any of the characters so
far. I love how she’s trying to bring her beliefs of love and tolerance into
this world. She meets up with main character guy in hopes that the two warring
creation factions can make up, as well as wanting to learn more about the
origins of the Military Uniform Princess.
The origins of this mysterious villain
was the major talking point this week, as the main cast spent most of the time
scrambling to figure out who she is and where she came from. It’s still obvious
that main character guy knows where she came from (I know his real name but I
refuse to use it until he actually contributes something to this anime), but
for whatever reason they don’t want to tell us. I guess they’re setting it up
to be a big groundbreaking reveal later on, but it’s kind of frustrating for
them to tease it, only to keep holding the information from us.
Whatever the case, the creators
learned that she’s a fan art creation named Altair, but that’s all we know
right now. I think she has something to do with the girl main character guy
remembered when he first researched her, but as of right now she’s a real
enigma.
While this episode was extremely
dialogue heavy, I feel like I can forgive it because we actually furthered one
of the major mysteries this time around. Still, I can definitely see why those
who dropped the show are referring to it as “Re:Exposition”. I definitely feel
that the story and characters are compelling enough for me to continue, because
even if there are some episodes with a little too much chatter they can still
be interesting if done right.
A
huge guilty pleasure of mine has always been watching commercials. While I’ve
usually fast-forward through them quickly and get back to whatever I’m
watching, there’s always something alluring about them. They get thirty seconds
to hawk whatever they’re selling, and every once in a while you’ll find a real
diamond in the rough, a rare ad that really takes its time to create a fun and
memorable narrative.
And Star Wars has never been a stranger to
advertising. In the forty years since the first movie came out, Star Wars characters have been used to
sell everything from electronics and cars to toys and food.
So I
thought it’d be fun to take a look back at ten of the best, worst, and just
plain strangest Star Wars commercials!
My only rules for this list is trailers and TV spots for the
movies aren’t allowed, and as I’m trying to focus on older ads this time around
I won’t be including any commercials from the Force Awakens era (but if I ever do another one of these I’ll
probably include some of them there). Also, this isn’t a top 10 list, so I’ll
just be listing them off from oldest to newest. With that said…
Burger King glasses
As
far as I can tell, this commercial is from all the way back in 1977, the same
year A New Hope premiered in
theatres. Once it became clear that the movie was going to be a success unlike
anything anyone had ever seen before, companies everywhere were scrambling to
get the rights to develop Star Wars products.
Burger King was one of them, and they held onto that license until at least the
release of the Clone Wars movie in
2008.
I
love how this commercial is a window into the 70’s. You get a new glass when
you buy a regular sized Coke for only 59 cents, meaning you can get the entire
set for roughly $2.35, provided you live in the 70’s and can get to Burger King
before February 2nd.
Speaking
of that, I wonder how much a full set of these glasses cost these days? Let’s
go to eBay and find out.
Yikes.
Japanese tuna (Sea Chicken?)
Like
I said before, back in 1977 everyone and their brother was scraping to get
themselves a piece of the Star Wars pie,
and some people decided that they’d get it themselves whether they had
Lucasfilm’s blessing or not.
This is
a Japanese ad that I think is supposed to be for a tuna brand called Sea
Chicken (I’m not even going to try rationalizing why they named their tuna
brand after a chicken), and it’s obvious from the first second that this isn’t
an officially licensed Star Wars commercial.
The costumes look like they came straight from the dollar store, especially
C-3PO, who only resembles the original character in that he’s wearing what
looks like an actual C-3PO mask.
This
commercial is so awful it never fails to make me laugh. It’s thirty seconds of
pure insanity onscreen while some disembodied voice sings “Sea Chicken! Sea
Chicken!” over and over again. It’s one of the more memorable commercials on
this list in all the wrong ways.
Underoos
“Star Wars Boba Fett is here! That means
Darth Vader’s always near!”
This
one’s such a classic that it made a brief (pun not intended) cameo in the Star Wars Celebration 2017 40th
anniversary sizzle reel. And why wouldn’t it? It easily ranks up there as one
of the most ridiculous ads the galaxy far, far away has ever seen.
The
premise of this one is that these kids are dancing and singing about Star Wars characters while wearing
Underoos. At the end of the commercial R2-D2 asks C-3PO for some Underoos for
himself, but is turned down because “Underoos are for earthlings”. Honestly, I
think the real reason is because R2 wouldn’t fit in them, but whatever.
Apparently
Underoos are still a thing, but I’m pretty sure that nowadays a bunch of kids
dancing around in their underthings on live TV wouldn’t fly as well as it did
back in 1980. I honestly don’t mind, if only because I don’t want to spend
another thirty years trying to get a Force
Awakens-themed Underoos song out of my head.
Return of the
Jedi AT-ST toy
Here’s
an ad for an actual Star Wars product.
The Kenner toy commercials usually came in two different flavours depending on
who they were catering to: there were more collecter-oriented commercials that
just showed off the different toys as well as advertising new ones you could
only get from mail-order, and there were ones more geared towards younger
audiences with kids running around and playing with the action figures.
This
ad is…neither of those.
Here
we see an AT-ST/Scout Walker storming through the forests of Endor while a
really cheesy narration explains everything the toy can do. The awful writing
on the narrator is what really makes this one stand out. For a fun drinking
game, take a shot every time he says “walk” or “attack”. You’ll be on Naboo
before you know it!
(Disclaimer:
Please don’t actually do that)
C-3PO’s
Star Wars and cereal have gone hand in
hand since the 1980’s, and their first ever brand was C-3PO’s. While I’ve never
gotten to try it for myself, it basically looks like Cheerios except each bit
of cereal has two O’s fused together, which makes it futuristic…I guess.
This
is a fun little ad for them, where R2 and 3PO are lost on a planet populated by
what look like rock people. They demand food, and 3PO is happy to serve them
the cereal that has his face on it. We then cut to a suburban kitchen, where
C-3PO’s golden ghost creepily watches over a pair of kids eating the cereal.
I
said this ad was fun, not that it made sense.
While
C-3PO’s may have become a thing of the past, a new Star Wars cereal was introduced a few years back, and it looks…
…yeah.
Star Wars for Atari
Another
old favourite, this ad’s become practically infamous after somebody on the
internet stumbled upon it a few years ago. An unsuspecting young boy picks out
the new Star Wars game for Atari,
remarking that the arcade version is great. He then gets…a little overexcited.
I
especially love how barely any of the actual game is shown in this commercial.
We get a few shots of it here and there, but most of the time the camera is
focused awkwardly close to the face of our protagonist over here. Honestly, for
1983 the original Star Wars game was
a pretty darn impressive feat graphically, and I’m definitely going to talk
about it more in depth someday. But trust me, it’s nowhere near as exciting as
this commercial makes it out to be.
The
Atari has plenty of amazingly awful commercials for their games, with the Star Wars one being the most famous of
the lot. If you want to see more, I highly recommend the Spider-Man, Mario Bros. and
Atari classic E.T. commercials.
“SOOOOOOOOME
GAAAAAAAAAAAAME!!!”
Star Wars for NES
From
one game ad to another, this one’s definitely lesser known than the Atari one
but is still delightfully cheesy.
A
suburban home is suddenly overrun by Imperial forces, led by Darth Vader.
Upstairs, a pair of kids are playing Star
Wars for the NES, oblivious to the carnage going on in their living room.
Vader goes upstairs to get them, but their mom heroically throws herself in his
way. Before Vader can do what he does best, the kids beat the game and Vader is
vaporized. The mom stumbles in the room, and the kids chastise her for not
knocking.
I
love the plight the mom goes through in this commercial. She knows her life is
on the line when she throws herself in front of Vader, but she does it anyways.
Then, when he disappears and she opens the door to check on them, these
snot-nosed little brats don’t even thank her for throwing her life on the line for them! Look at her expression at the end. Those two definitely aren’t getting dinner.
I
also love the narration at the end of this one. “A force stronger than your
parents doesn’t want you playing.” Uh, okay. I guess I won’t buy it then if
someone really doesn’t want me playing. Knowing my gaming skills I probably
wouldn’t beat it in time to save my family.
Energizer
Energizer
has always had great commercials starring their trademark sunglass-wearing pink
bunny, and my favourites are the series from 1994. This set of ads saw
various classic cinema villains trying to take down the poor unsuspecting bunny
and take his battery. He went up against characters like Dracula and a generic Bond villain, but the best one
is the Star Wars one.
The
Emperor instructs Vader to get the bunny’s battery, and he confronts the pink
menace in the Cloud City carbon-freezing chamber. Unfortunately for poor Vader,
once he’s got the rabbit cornered his lightsaber runs out of power. He unscrews
the bottom and discovers that someone’s replaced his kyber crystal with drained
Supervolt batteries, allowing the bunny to keep going, and going, and going.
There’s
a lot of cool little details in this one, most noticeably that it uses Clive
Revell’s Palpatine from the original cut of Empire
Strikes Back before Lucas overdubbed him with Ian McDiarmid in the Special
Edition. I also like that the scream of fury Vader gives at the end of the
commercial is significantly better than the over-the-top “Nooooooooooo!” we get
from him in Revenge of the Sith. It’s kind of telling that Energizer did Vader
better than the prequels ever did.
Phantom Menace Pepsi
Even
now that the launch of Force Awakens has
come and gone, it’s hard to deny that Phantom
Menace might be the most hyped up movie of all time. With Force Awakens everyone kind of had a bit
of dread that it would turn out disappointing, but with Phantom Menace few even considered it. The three Star Wars movies before it were all
amazing, so why wouldn’t this one be?
This
commercial might be the most 90’s thing you’ll see all day. An unsuspecting
couple climbs into a taxi (why do all the terrible things in these commercials
happen to poor innocent people?) and are confronted by a reject Ninja Turtle
who spoils the entire podracing scene for them.
His
taxi turns into a literal podracer, and the cruel slimy jerk ignores the poor
couple’s screams of terror and flies them willy nilly around New York, finally
stopping in front of a Pepsi machine. You don’t get a good shot of the couple
again so I just assume they died on the way there. Phantom Menace kills, kids.
I
especially like that they needed to give you incentive to buy the VHS. If you
buy Phantom Menace alongside some
Pepsi and tortilla chips you’ll get 3 bucks back. But honestly, I wouldn’t trust any Pepsi being given to me by this alien freak.
Spike TV
This
one is much more recent than the others on the list, but this one was a huge
favourite of mine as a kid and I couldn’t help but put it on the list.
Before
the Disney buyout Spike TV was able to get the rights to showing Star Wars movies, and this was their way
of telling it to the world. Vader is golfing with some friends, but upon using
the Force to cheat they chastise and then attack him.
Honestly,
while Vader’s a dirty rotten cheater here, I think he’s completely in the right
to get defensive with these guys. They were going to attack him with a golf
club for god sake! What would someone say if you swung a golf club at a
disabled man just because they got upset that your friend was unhappy with the
way they played golf?
So
those are ten of my favourite Star Wars commercials!
Are there any I missed? Feel free to leave a comment telling me your
favourites, and I’ll see you next time!
