The Video Game Critic

Are there any video game ads or commercials that stick out to you as being notably good or exceptionally bad?

The best one I can think of was Dead Space's "Your Mom Hates It" commercial. It's so ridiculous, I still remember it nearly ten years later.
https://youtu.be/nKkPFDEiC6Q]

As for the worst...just about anything done by Acclaim. There are too many to list, so here's a video explaining some of their most idiotic ideas:
https://youtu.be/cPAOCnRiyOE

I remember liking the ad for Deathtrap Dungeon for some reason.

http://turnto400.blogspot.com/2011/04/6 ... stone.html

I actually just watched a trailer for a game called Carrion where the premise is reverse horror - you're basically the creature from The Thing loose in an underground lab. There are two ads - one is fully-animated and looks like some lost late-80s horror anime, the other is gameplay footage - and they're both amazing. NSFW for blood/gore:
Animated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTpaxtrf2Fs
Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrrpI5wdUgc

Zach Burner had a thread similar to this so I'll post a few others that I really liked from there:

The Mortal Kombat - Mortal Monday commercial was brilliant at getting a 10-year-old kid like me incredibly excited to play this crazy game, simply by showing countless other kids being hyped for it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8V7TwlYCt0

This Sega Genesis ad for Jurassic Park was the first time I ever bought a game solely based on a commercial. The raptor and T-Rex footage looked better than anything I'd ever seen before and the way it's edited to be this barrage of dinosaur carnage grabbed me by the throat - I taped the ad and would watch it 10 times in a row. Now I like it more for the paleontologist intro and the classic SEGA! at the end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4DEGrVbZIs

Alien vs Predator: Extinction for the XBox. Only ever seen this one time but I thought it was clever and funny and never forgot it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4t7S64c9Wk

I've never gotten into the Assassin's Creed games, but I used to see this AC2 commercial all the time back around 2009-2010 and I still think it's really cool, stylish and a bit on the creepy side:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhK47AA7LKc

Oh, here's another of mine. The Pagemaster's commercial made the game look WAY more fun than it actually was.
https://youtu.be/hIXe2VeZDrw

Not the type of game that really gets discussed around here but I vividly remember a great TV ad for the Championship Manager series (better known now as Football Manager) on PC/Mac. All reviews of the series, even user ones, would always mention how addictive it could be. And it was, there was always that 'just one more game' feel to it. It actually became a selling point.

I think it was back in like 2002, and the TV ad for the new game basically parodied purchasing cigarettes. A guy walks into a shop and sheepishly approaches the counter. The woman at the till has a wall stocked with loads of copies of the game behind her. He asks for a copy of the game and she looks at him with that shock/disappointment all people tend to give smokers when they find out they started smoking again after quitting.

She hands over a copy of the game, you see a close up of the cover which has a massive warning on the front similar to cigarette packets about how it's highly addictive (which didn't end up on the real cover) "I thought you'd given up, Dave!?" She exclaims. He gives that awkward smile/eye-roll/shrug smokers tend to do when they get 'found out' and leaves with his copy.

IIRC I think the ad was banned because of that connection to smoking, even though it was a parody. If they'd just said it was addictive it would have been fine.

I always really liked the 90s era TV ad for "Starfox"...the final shot of the fox in the space helmet has really stuck in my head all these years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FTZD-lljaU

Thanks for the mortal Kombat commercial. I completely forgot about that one but I remember it so well. Here's the one I remember so well about the Sega CD. https://youtu.be/HCQRcinZYH8

Well I do know one of the worst advertisements is this abomination. If you grew up in the 80's watch at your own risk, everyone else "enjoy".....heh heh heh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FybA0SaL0nI

The Super Metroid ad always sticks out in my mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxrACWQvzHw

My immediate reaction was the Yoshis Island one with the fat gt stuffing his face with food until he explodes. Disgusting.