"Arch Rivals", NES, 1990.

As I mentioned before, my minimal interest in actual sports was reflected in disinterest at best in sports video games. But there were some titans of their field that were inescapable even before EA's (local) campus redefined their annual formula with major league franchising -- Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Blades of Steel, Jordan vs. Bird (Erving's earlier show-down with him was a more obscure B-side, practice for the main attraction), and this one.

ARCH RIVALS,
IT'S A REAL BASKETBRAWL!
THE ARCADE SMASH FOR YOUR NES(r)
Get ready for an outrageous basket_brawl_. It's slam dunkin' full court action with a twist. If you can't block your opponent's shot -- knock his block off. But with Arch Rivals you still need real B-ball skills to win -- like passing, shooting and sinking those 3-point shots.
So if you're ready for some "in your face" head-to-head arcade action, get Arch Rivals... where breaking the rules is the rule!

Retrospect has it that this was itself just a warm-up for the fun that NBA Jam would deliver a few years later. The promotional artwork hits all the right Mad Magazine notes -- mohawks, big grins, the notorious pantsing, and I don't know what is going on over at the basket there. The art suggests perhaps a more Harlem Globetrotters madcap and zany slapstick game while its central premise was more one of constant fouls being perpetrated with no refs to call them -- strangely an extreme, unruly idea that would become a much stronger selling point in the decade following. They still had to sell it as offbeat rather than the curb-stomp that would set the tone to follow. But the '90s had just begun, and we hadn't all gotten the "grim and gritty" talking points. (Midway would later synthesize these perspectives with Mortal Kombat cameos in NBA Jam, including a hidden Kourt. But was ever there a basketball game with Fatality moves?)

"Splatterhouse", TurboGrafx-16, 1990.

Resolving this little spree, why not fulfil the trend you've been observing this week and indeed end where we began? Now I need to wrap up this blog by next October, since I just exhausted all of my ads for disturbing games. That or get more comics and scan them! Not much more to say about this title, but to note that it has one of the greatest warnings of all time: "The horrifying theme of this game may be inappropriate for young children...and cowards."

It was the mansion of Dr. West...
but those who knew it better called it the...

SPLATTERHOUSE

Jennifer: "West may have been the best parapsychologist in our field.
... but do we have to visit his old home? It gives me the creeps!"
Rick : "Think of it as a school research project! Besides, the house is empty... what can happen?"
Jennifer: "EEEEEEEEE"
Rick : "Jennifer! What -- what is it?"
GRRROWWWE!
After a fight in the dark...
Rick: "What... what happened to me? What happened to Jennifer?
My head... something's wrong... Can't see straight! What's the matter...
ARRGGGHH
My face! It's covered with... the terror mask!"
The terror mask... legend tells that the wearer is granted vast power... but can't remove it!
Rick: "If I take it off, I may never get Jennifer back!
Rest in pieces, you ugly slimeballs! Nothing can keep me from getting Jennifer back!"
Monster: "Oh... yeah?"
Jennifer: "I'm as good as dead... unless you can help Rick rescue me... in the all-new --
TurboGrafx-16
Splatterhouse"

There's something about double-spread centrefold mini-comic ads -- specifically, that both of them that I've found so far have been for the TurboGrafx-16 platform! We know that the venture was a failure, but why, when this advertising technique is clearly such a winner?

"Beetlejuice", Game Boy, 1992.

Beetlejuice was a not a great candidate for conversion into a cartoon series; the kiddies watching on Saturday morning would only get a superficial understanding of its indictment of the nouveau riche and their abhorrent avant-garde tastes. But that's okay, what remains after you throw that all in the waste bin is still a rich vein of glorious weirdness. All we have to do is throw out the nice dead couple and make the sole remaining human, Lydia the goth, forget that Beetlejuice ever tried to marry her by force. Done! Now let's enjoy the cartoon and its video game.

WANT TO PLAY A GREAT GAME, BOY?
It's your pal Beetlejuice, here to bamboozle those bewitchers from the Netherworld vacationing at lovely Lydia's place. This house is HAUNTED!
Flying cups and saucers and clothes that spring to life cause quite a panic...especially when they're coming for you! It's a horrific 5 level challenge to spook attic ghastlies, rattle angry skeletons and scare ghostly bats. Vampires may even join you for a "bite" to eat. Hmm...maybe we should skip lunch today.
These Netherworld ghoul-o-ramas are no match for us. Has the "ghost with the most" ever let you down?!!
Check out the "GHOST WITH THE MOST" for your NES too!

(What kind of egotist hangs around playing a game based on himself?)

The movie's premise was straightforward; stage hauntings to frighten away humans. This game is a bit more muddled; save human from being haunted, with the help of the film's primary haunter. (Or in other words: now the haunter is haunted!)

That "ghost with the most" phrase is punchier if it's not used in two consecutive sentences. (I do appreciate the wordplay in the opening quip, analogous to the console being called out explicitly in the film's game's ad cited at the end here also.)

Compelling Beetlejuice-eese is hard to write; the opening alliteration grows wearying quckly (bamboozle bewitchers, lovely Lydia, house haunted) and is just as quickly abandoned. Classic lines like "It's showtime!" don't just write themselves! That must have been the fruit of five crumpled pages of first-draft patter. ("The people have spooken!")

"Alien3", SNES, 1993.

Another day, another Alien3 conversion, this one for the Super Nintendo. The aspects of the game the ad stresses bear only a casual, passing resemblance to the movie being licensed.

EGG-LAYING
EXTERMINATE DEADLY FACE-HUGGERS! RED-HOT ALIEN ACTION!
CHEST-BURSTING
CHEST BURSTING EXCITEMENT! SCRAMBLE ALIEN EGGS!
ACID-SPITTING
FLESH-RIPPING EXOSKELETONS OVERHEAD! ACID-SPITTING ALIEN INVASION!
GET ALIEN3 ON SNES!
DEADLY ALIENS ARE EVERYWHERE!
EXPLOSIVE FIREPOWER!
FEEL THE TERROR!

This angle is pretty wrong-headed, though of course what works (arguably, in this controversial film's case) on-screen doesn't necessarily make for a great game. Let's break it down. "EGG-LAYING." No eggs laid in Alien3. "Red-hot Alien action!" Only in a literal sense, and can we get a spoiler warning please? "Scramble Alien eggs!" Have you even seen any of these movies? "ACID-SPITTING" But only in the sense that you're blood-spitting. "Flesh-ripping exoekeletons overhead!" Yeah, I don't know what they're talking about either. The powered loaders from the previous movie? "Deadly Aliens are everywhere!" Sounds scarier than "a single Alien is in one location"... admittedly that would be more of a "Hunt the Wumpus"-type game. Hmm, actually, that's an intriguing prospect! "Explosive firepower!" To quote from the movie's screenplay, "This is a maximum security prison and you're telling me that you have no weapons of any kind?" In conclusion, another case of "We licensed Alien3 to make the Aliens game we wanted to."

"Alien3", 1992.

1992 was a year of numerous blockbuster (or at least, perceived-to-be-blockbuster) franchises hitting the theatres, many of which received numerous and disparate unrelated licensed video games on different platforms. This is one of four strains of Alien3 games, also ultimately ported to the Sega Master System and the Amiga (and... Commorore 64?!)

CAN YOU TAKE THE TERROR? SHE'S BACK!
FEEL THE SUSPENSE!
FEEL THE DANGER!
FEEL THE TERROR!
ALIEN 3
ON GENESIS AND GAME GEAR !
The Xenomorph are fast, spit acid and are right behind YOU! The motion tracker is your only warning. No time to think, no time to catch your breath... RUN!
Can't see very far ahead in these air ducts. Hard to breathe. Face-huggers can be anywhere. Must find a Queen Alien. The closer you get, the more Aliens you find... better not have them find you first!
Just keep telling yourself, "THIS ISN'T REALLY HAPPENING... IT'S ONLY A GAME.

The only Alien movie that really lent itself well to standard video game conversion was Aliens, and I suspect that licensors of Alien3 and Alien Resurrection really just used the license as an excuse to make the Aliens game they always wanted to -- motion tracker, face-huggers, air ducts... Alien3 does have an Alien Queen, but it's never hard to find. (You ask me, Konami's arcade Aliens game left no face unhugged. Maybe James Cameron should try making video games directly?) Alien3 was primarily a movie about weaponless humans being picked off, one by one, by a single biological killing machine. And yet ever since Space Invaders, killing aliens has been practically synonymous with video gaming! How do we reconcile these polar opposites? Well, the game is primarily concerned with rescuing Alien victims -- presumably prior to their faces being hugged.
The ad wants to stress the following qualities: TERROR, SUSPENSE (more associated with the first Alien film), DANGER, and TERROR, again! I believe that Xenomorph does pluralise with an S, and it's not entirely consistent with film canon to describe them as spitting acid. Mostly the ad copy tries to instill the sense of persecution an Alien's prey would feel, an interesting tack. And that's it for Alien 3! (Or is it?)

"Warlock", 1994.

Though I ran up against a "what do I do next?" wall relatively quickly, I admired this game and its lush production values, figuring it must have been a tie-in to some huge movie I'd just somehow managed to miss hearing about. Well, I did miss hearing about it, but thanks to this ad campaign, it may in fact be a case of a video game being better-known than the movie it licensed. (The filmmakers should have paid them for the favour, but things working out that way would be ... highly unorthodox.

"Magical pick-ups and ancestral spells unleash chaotic fury!"

ONE MUST BE OF PURE MIND AND HEART TO VANQUISH THE WARLOCK'S EVIL MASTER!
DEFEAT THE UNDEAD AND YE SHALL BE ALLOWED TO PASS!
BEWARE DEMONS DEEP WITHIN THE DUNGEON'S BOWELS!
SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON MASTERING MANY SPELLS!
"Part strategy, part action! Warlock conjures an unbeatable spell!!!"

ENTER THE ARENA AND DO BATTLE AS A FIERCE MINOTAUR!
HAUNTING MELODIES STIR UNHOLY APPARITIONS!

"Bored of just playing roles... Warlock delivers horrific action!"

AVOID THE WINGED DRAGON'S FIERY BREATH!

BEWARE THE ULTIMATE EVIL!
WARLOCK

BASED ON THE HIT MOVIE!

The once in a millennium confrontation is upon you! Using the powerful spells and potions entrusted to you by your Druid ancestors, battle gargoyles, the Undead, fire-breathing dragons... and if you survive, the all-powerful Warlock! Combining strategy, intuition, and sorcery, you must be the first to locate six ancient runestones - and save all creation from unraveling! Afraid? He already knows that.

The evil unfolds... (516) 624-9300
Please get permission from whoever pays the phone bill before calling the above number

CompuServe
(GO WARLOCK)

GET TO KNOW YOUR ENEMY THROUGH GAME CLIPS, SOUND BYTES, SCREEN SHOTS AND MORE IN THE WARLOCK: EVIL ON-LINE PROMOTION!

Who do you think the quotes are from? No review source given to, uh, qualify them, so we must assume they're straight from the mouth of the game's producer. "Unmitigated genius!" -- my mom. Next... you just don't get to command me to be of PURE MIND and then talk about the DUNGEON'S BOWELS immediately after. I like the RPG slam of "just playing roles" when everyone knows platform games offer much deeper gameplay, right? Then the well must have been starting to run dry for the exhaustively redundant "WINGED DRAGON'S FIERY BREATH". Dragons are assumed to have wings, and their breath is assumed to be fiery... and it's common sense that both should be avoided. "THIS GAME CONTAINS A DRAGON" isn't as punchy, admittedly. (Then they go back and revisit this territory, naming "fire-breathing dragons" among the game's enemies. From the people who brought you "blood-sucking vampires", "flesh-petrifying gorgons" and "uncultured barbarians"!)

Apparently the Warlock peered into his scrying pool and divined that this movie would be a hit... then this ad campaign fell through a portal into an alternate dimension, ours. If the confrontation is once in a millennium then we could be hit with a sequel at any time.

I must confess to being more than a little curious regarding what sounds could be heard on the other end of the apparently-pricey hotline. How does an expensive phone conversation convince someone to shell out further for a game? Hint lines are where most of the telephonic money was made at this time.

It's hard to imagine a time when the Web was considered less worthy a staging ground for an online (or OK, their stodgy "on-line") presence than CompuServe, but that's why history, especially tech history, is so interesting... it's so mercurial! (Also: "sound bytes"? I saw what you're trying to do there...)

Curiously, this game had another print ad that was virtually identical to it, but varied in a couple of unimportant regards.

Here the bottom blurb now reads

JUDGE DREDD THE VIDEO GAME JUNE '95

... since I suppose there's nothing quite like chasing a blockbuster failure with some hair of the dog. Also you can see that though all of the advertising copy reads identically, some of its margins have been shuffled slightly, leading to line-breaks in new places for reasons that are difficult to hypothesize. "OK, our last ad wasn't successful, but we all agree the text was gold. The thing keeping us from moving units must be a subtle layout problem that we can overcome with a minor tweak..."

Sometimes I come across as harder than I mean to in order to come up with commentary -- the meat of my own blog. I must confess that, had I owned a SNES, and were I the type to purchase new games solely based on advertising (rather than a shrewd and patient consumer who pores over reviews and waits for diminishing-demand price drops), these ads may have convinced me to pick up the cartridge.

"Destroy All Humans", 2005.

This was a great idea, an Invader Zim-style alien coming from outer space to Body Snatchers-era repressive '50s middle America to, er, mutilate cattle and probe hobos. Gameplay didn't quite scale at the correct pace, but it was a curious diversion.

DESTROY ALL HUMANS!

ONE GIANT STEP ON MANKIND

IN STORES NOW

destroyallhumansgame.com
HYPNOTIZE!
VAPORIZE!
TERRORIZE!

It's a bit offputting just how often the "Sexual Themes" warning label is slapped on apparently sexuality-unrelated games in the 2000s. And is that really the punchiest URL they could come up with? Were they stung by a cybersquatter?