Parasite Eve – Aya Brea

In a real ugly art phase

Final Fantasy VIII – Ultimecia

Friday (Least) Favorites #2: Worst Ads and PR Campaigns

Content Warning: This post describes and discusses vomit. So. Much. Vomit.

Ads. Just like death and taxes, they’re some of the annoyances that you have to deal with in life. But some ads go above (below?) the call of duty in making viewers glad that they didn’t click on them, or bolted from the couch to raid the fridge or go for a bathroom break, or put the magazine down to go do something else. This list is all about those.

“Masterclass.”

Mighty No. 9 was already burning through a lot of its initial goodwill by the time the “Masterclass” trailer dropped, with several notable delays, feature creep (which caused further delays), and a controversial Kickstarter for another project from Keiji Inafune (Red Ash, which already had a publisher, and was planned to come out no matter how much funding they raised, and stretch goals that the developers were unwilling to give details on, which actually breaches one of Kickstarter’s rules). But “Masterclass” may have been the final straw for many, or at least the reason for further resignation.

This trailer created by publisher Deep Silver is noted for its cheesy, middle-aged narrator (described as “dad-voiced” by Polygon) violating the rule of “show, don’t tell” to promote the game, which is a bold move considering how the game actually looked. The explosion effects were quickly compared to “extremely cheap-looking pizza”, for example. The script tries to sound too hip, with lines asking if the audience likes “awesome things that are awesome”.

But that wasn’t the worst line in the script.