Showing posts with label 2000s Video Game Print Ads. Show all posts
Original ad featured in the June 2003 issue of EGM (167).
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Vampire Hunter A+
A beautiful game with superb publicity material.
Aria of Sorrow stands alongside Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance as a fantastic trio of classic 2-D games. Aria was the last of the three, but all of them are uniformly excellent. And really difficult.
Fantastic artwork for a relic of the past
During the last days of Sony's original PlayStation, Japanese RPG giant Squaresoft published a series of Final Fantasy games on what was the world's most popular game console. Sadly, the games were not good at all.
Posted by EduPortas at 9:43 PM 1 comment:
Original ad featured in the April 2005 issue of EGM (no. 190).
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The best publicity is a good game
The original Greek mythology action game featured some very solid advertising. Equally as good as the game, actually.
Posted by EduPortas at 8:20 PM 131 comments:
Retro Atari Classics for Nintendo DS (2005)
Great artwork, terrible performance
It took me 13 years to pay attention to this advertisement, prominently featured in the inner part of the back-cover. It's incredibly gaudy, but someone at Atari thought it would be cool to display this type of artwork to the masses. The end result was unique but falls way short of the intended objetive.
Original ad featured in the December 2005 issue of EGM (no. 198).
An unrivaled masterpiece
To say Shadow of the Colossus changed the way adventure games are played would be a huger understatement. More than 10 years after its original release, there's still nothing that matches the sheer beauty of the 2005 product. Seeing that The Last Guardian (2016), the true spiritual successor of "Colossus", got mixed reviews from critics and fans alike, Sony decided to produce a remastered version of the now classic for the PS4 which will be launched sometime in 2018. So how does the artwork for the original stand up today?
Posted by EduPortas at 12:02 PM 76 comments:
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for GameCube (2005)
Original advertisement published in EGM no. 198 (December 2005)
A three-dimensional skin to a classic tactical RPG
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for GameCube was released to critican acclaim in North America back in 2005. It's a tactical RPG very much in the same style as the legendary Final Fantasy Tactics of the late 1990s. Solid game with equally solid artwork, as you can see above.
Posted by EduPortas at 2:25 PM No comments:
Stolen for PS2 (2005)
Original ad published in the April 2005 edition of EGM (no. 190)
Female objectification combined with a poor man's Metal Gear Solid
Riding high on the Metal Gear Solid/Splinter Cell wave that propelled those franchises through the better part of the new millennium, Stolen presented itself as a sexy clone of those games, as you can probably guess by the printed material shown above. Sadly, it was a mediocre effort.
Nano Breaker for PS2 (2005)
A sea of red for a Castlevania clone
The early to mid-2000s saw a new concept of video game previously controversial that now became commonplace. About this time we saw extremely violent games that reveled in their obscene depiction of human death, such as Manhunt, Hitman, Postal and of course The Grand Theft Auto series. This was a strong departure from the survival horror and fighting games games of yesteryear. Violence was now a complete game experience, not a highlight point or a cheap gimmick. Nano Breaker falls somewhere in this mix.
Xenosaga Episode II for PlayStation 2 (2005)
Beautiful artwork for an overly ambitious game
Long-time RPG fanatics hold the Xenosaga series in high esteem. The story was supposed to encompass an amazing six games, but ended up only crossing three. The second installment of the series is arguably the worst, but you can't blame Namco for not making the game an attractive proposition to gamers that got to know about it inside the magazines of the era.
Xenosaga Episode II Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil) was hammered for its repetitive gameplay, below average music and really unbalanced voice acting. It was a step back from those of us who played the first Xenosaga, which managed to capture sci-fi fanatics with its clunky graphics yet deep story, filled with interesting, complex, characters.
Posted by EduPortas at 11:31 AM No comments:
Original ad published in the June 2005 edition of EGM (no. 192)
An average fighting game with nice marketing
During the second half of the 00s, connectivity became a big thing in most media outlets. Games would derided or given high marks depending on their online capability, so it's no surprise that the Capcom offering you see here was strongly promoted on the back cover of most magazines of the era with that in mind.
Although Capcom Fighting Evolution was released for both the PS2 and Xbox, the printed material you see here is solely for the green beast by Microsoft. For retro gamers like myself this was no surprise. The Xbox had a huge advantage over Sony's machine in terms of connectivity.
Original ad published in the August 2005 edition of EGM (no. 194)
A beautifully hand-drawn advertisement that deepened the love for the series in America
Although it was a very old franchise by the time it was first released outside Japan, the Fire Emblem series has blossomed in one of the few Nintendo offerings that is not scared to cater to hard-core strategy-RPG fans and general gamer-masochists alike.
The game featured in this post was actually the second one released in America. The first one was called simply Fire Emblem (2003), but is better known as Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken by insiders since the series gained considerable traction after its original GBA released.
Resident Evil 4 for PlayStation 2 (2005)
Original ad published in the December 2005 edition of EGM (no. 198)
An absolute classic on the GameCube gets the triple A treatment for the PlayStation 2
The midpoint of the first decade of the new millennium was a fantastic year for gaming. Just of the the top of my head, avid gamers saw the release of the following games during 2005: Shadow of the Colossus, Psychonauts, Devil May Cry 3, The Warriors, We Love Katamari, God of War, Great Theft Auto: San Andreas, Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo 4, Fatal Frame III, Guitar Hero, Dragon Quest VIII, Jade Empire and Burnout Revenge.
And that was just on the console front. Handhelds by Nintendo received the high-ranking Mario Kart DS, Nintendogs, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, WarioWare: Twisted!, WarioWare: Touched!, Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, Advance Wars: Dual Stricke and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Die hard PC gamers were served Age of Empires III, Civilization IV and Quake 4, just to name a few.
Posted by EduPortas at 7:57 PM 21 comments:
Original ad published in the August 2005 edition of Electronic Gaming Monthly (no. 194)
Notable artwork for a mediocre game
Leave it to Capcom to produce a fantastic piece of artwork for a mediocre game. Darkwatch was basically a Call of Duty clone set in the Wild West with a gothic setting. You'll blast vampires, demons, skeletons and the like, in a mind-numbing and loud adventure.
Other than that. There is little to say about the game itself. It became very popular because of a particularly graphic sex scene between the protagonist and a lady vampire. Although not extreme by any measure, it was groundbreaking for the moment, but about 10 times less famous than the hot coffee scandal of Grand Theft Auto III: San Andreas. I don't remember a single magazine talking about Darkwatch's sex scene.
Devil May Cry 3 for PlayStation 2 (2005)
Original ad published in the April 2005 edition
of Electronic Gaming Monthly (no. 190).
Style and fury from the page to the screen
Back in the day, Devil May Cry was called the 3-D game series Castlevania should have been. Although that title has been supplanted by the Souls series, DMC still managed to capture casual and hardcore gamers alike with incredible production values and tight gameplay. Following that same tone, the printed advertisement campaign of the video game gave the reader a clear idea of the final product.
Dante, Capcom's coolest new franchise of the 2000s, achieved its coolness thanks to a snappy attitude, black humor, and creative writing embedded into the three games that appeared on the PlayStation 2. But that same attitude tended to grate a lot of players that found the games too hard. Repeating the same funny dialogue for ten times looses some of its luster. Still, Dante even managed to appear in his own anime series during the height of his popularity. You can watch the series on Netflix, but, in all honesty, they leave a lot to be desired in regards to character development and cohesiveness.
Original ad published in the June 2003 issue of EGM 2 (no. 167).
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Graphic survival horror literature
Clock Tower 3 holds a special place in old-school video game horror fanatics. Its roots go all the way back to the SNES. And although the series would later jump to the PS1 for its sequel, I believe it was finally given credit with its third itineration, a sort of cult hit for the PS2. Capcom didn't skimp on the advert, as you can see above. It gives the potential buyer a complete image of what to expect from this demented game.
The PS2 shroud be considered the best console for survival-horro games. There's the compelling Silente Hill series (2, 3 and 4, also called "The Room" ) and the likes of Haunting Ground and Rule of Rose. Clock Tower 3 is firmly in the latter group, where you are placed in the shoes of a defenseless teenage girl being persecuted by homicidal maniacs. Unlike Haunting Ground (another Capcom game, a sort of spin-off to Clock Tower) and Rule of Rose (Atlus) you actually have some sort of control over your character, even when entering "adrenaline mode". Other than that, the game features superb graphics and sound effects. The whole atmosphere of the game is well executed, just as you would expect from the same company that publishes the Resident Evil series.