10 Most Offensive Video Game Advertisements of All Time
Video game ads today are tame compared to these gems.
Published 4 years ago in Facepalm
1
Sega Wank-stick Sega has a well-deserved reputation for “adult” advertisements, including ads about the 32x having sex with the Sega Genesis. But this ad (intended only for audiences of the British magazine Viz) takes the cake by describing the Sega experience as nothing short of vigorous masturbation. What’s the refractory period between games, anyway?
2
Virgin Gamers The war between console fans and the “PC Master Race” is pretty intense. But it doesn’t get more bitter than this old 3DFX ad that makes it clear that console players are total virgins and PC players are total Chads. Which is why “I play PC games” remains the ultimate pickup line...right?
3
Dirty Talk We could have gone our whole lives without knowing what John Romero’s dirty talk was like. Here, he promises to make us “his bitch.” That’s offensive enough on its own, but this was an ad for Daiktatana, one of the worst games ever made. At this point, Romero was just adding insult to injury.
4
Unholy Cringe Playing video games is fun, but is it a really religious experience? This Playstation ad, designed for Italian audiences, openly mocks Jesus Christ while making comparisons to Passion of the Christ. It’s in bad taste no matter what, but the fact that Sony released these ads where the Pope was most likely to see them feels like a “shots fired” moment.
5
Rayman's Big Crank The Rayman games, featuring colorful characters and fun platforming, are very family-friendly. But this bizarre Rayman 3 ad only has one mission: to convince you the little cartoon character has a huge penis. And the side text (talking about how the game lets you “WHIP OUT” new powers) makes it sound like Rayman will spend the game flashing players. Is it too late for some very weird DLC?
6
Murder Porn Sometimes too much honesty in an advertisement is weird. For example, Hitman: Blood Money is all about killing people. To emphasize this, there was a series of ads featuring dead bodies in different poses. This included multiple images of sexy and scantily-clad women, with the apparent goal to get players sexually aroused by the sight of dead bodies. Even in a game about murder, the necrophilia-bait marketing is pretty insane.
7
Nintendo’s Pullout Game As a family-friendly company, Nintendo’s ads are usually pretty tame. But this old Gameboy Pocket ad compared their new product to the player’s penis, encouraging gamers to “keep it in your pants.” If that’s not bad enough, the ad reassures players that “you’ll look cool when you pull it out.” Did they let Wario write these ads or something?
8
Pushing Buttons “Sex sells” is classic advertising advice, but Sony lost all subtlety and let their freak flag fly with this one. In the ad, the Playstation controller buttons have come to life and started having sex with a woman who looks worried about getting caught. While every gamer feels like they’ve been screwed by their controller from time to time, this is just downright creepy.
9
Feeling Cheeky Speaking of creepy, this Davis Cup World Tour advertisement is wrong on so many levels. Trying to draw our attention with a woman’s bare ass is already crude and cringey. But the tag line encouraging us to “take advantage” seems to imply we should take advantage of women. Tennis is already bad enough, so we really didn’t need to add sexual assault to the mix.
10
Straight Up Racism All of these ads are awful, but the companies stuck by them at the time. However, this racist ad for the Sony PSP (which was limited to the Netherlands) was so bad that Sony yanked it down, and for good reason. The “white is coming” paired with a white woman subduing a black victim looks like it could be an ad for Racism: The Game. It’s possible they wanted to imply sexual tension rather than white supremacy. If that’s the case, the “white is coming” tagline becomes weird for entirely different reasons.
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