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Companies are always trying to sneak advertisements into our daily lives. Not surprisingly, advertising based games (or advergames) have been around almost as long as the video games themselves. Here are some of the more notable examples.
1. Cool Spot
This game, based on 7-Up, was praised for its smooth graphics and challenging levels, despite the fact that the main character was the then-mascot for the company in a Sonic the Hedgehog-style environment. The sequel, Spot Goes to Hollywood, went flat pretty quickly, and Spot was retired as the company mascot shortly after. But he still hangs out between the 7 and U on the soda label.
2. Yo! Noid!
Though the 1989 DOS and Commodore 64 game Avoid The Noid had players delivering pizzas and dodging the annoying Domino’s Pizza mascot, this 1990 game for NES let the player act as the monstrosity. Noid traversed through New York using a yo-yo to battle his evil duplicate, Mr. Green. Yo! Noid was essentially a modified duplication of another Capcom game from Japan called Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru; the game play remain unchanged, but different facades were applied to the locations.
In case the pizza eating contests at the end of the levels didn’t make the player hungry, the game came with a whopping dollar-off coupon for Domino’s Pizza. But back in the early 90’s that was, like, a dollar fifty.
3. Kool Aid Man
This game, for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision, had very little to do with busting through walls and disturbingly revolved around drinking from a swimming pool full of Kool Aid that also served as Sir Punch’s life bar. The object of the game was to quench the thirst of thirty “Thirsties” using the pool of life matter. Confused? So was everyone who ever played it.
4. Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool and Wild Wild Quest
The Joe Camel of the snack food world received not one, but two of his own video games for SNES and Genesis, respectively. Neither game was well received; the game play was considered complicated and boring, and the instruction manuals contained bad rhymes that were very poorly translated from Japanese, such as “As is Chester Cheetah way, is one-person play.”
5. The King Games
That creepy King starred in three economically priced video games for X-Box in 2006: Pocketbike Racer, Big Bumpin’ and Sneak King. The games were extremely popular due to their low price and high fun content. Burger King and its marketing company won several advertising awards for the campaign.
6. Chase the Chuck Wagon
Another low-fi Atari 2600 adventure, this game was a maze-based and required the player to guide a dog to attain the glorious chuck wagon. The game was only available through proofs of purchase on the dog food bags. Only a handful of customers took Purina up on their promotion. Because very few copies made it into the hands of the public, the game is a prized collectors item.
7. M.C. Kids
Of course the marketing masters for McDonalds had to get involved in the video game world. In this game, two teenage players enter the McDonalds Fantasy Land to chase after Ronald McDonald’s “fun bag” which has been stolen by Hamburglar. McDonalds was not pleased with the final product, so they refused to promote the game. The game was too difficult for most younger players, and older players thought that it was a ripoff of other popular games, like Super Mario Brothers 3.
Caroline Donnelly is an occasional contributor to mentalfloss.com.
Comments (44)
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I still have that cool spot video game for sega
posted by Ian on 1-17-2008 at 4:58 pm
The Noid gave me nightmares as a child. And apparently I’m not the only one:
“Kenneth Lamar Noid
In 1989, Kenneth Lamar Noid, a mentally ill customer who thought the ads were a personal attack on him, held two employees of an Atlanta, Georgia, Domino’s restaurant hostage for over five hours. After forcing them to make him a pizza and making demands for $100,000, getaway transportation and a copy of The Widow’s Son, Noid surrendered to the police.[2] Noid was charged with kidnapping, aggravated assault, extortion and possession of a firearm during a crime. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity.”
Now THERE’s a Noid to avoid!
posted by Tom on 1-17-2008 at 5:04 pm
o-line,
congrats on the article, funny stuff. can’t wait for the next offerings.
ct
posted by Chris Thomas on 1-17-2008 at 5:23 pm
Great article! I still have my Atari and would love to get my hands on that Kool Aid Man game. It looks like alot of laughs.
posted by Kyle on 1-17-2008 at 6:06 pm
Blatant advertisement or not, Cool Spot was possibly the best side-scrolling game on Sega Genesis. I could play it for hours. I still have it in the closet, but sadly I don’t have the right hook-ups for the Genesis anymore.
posted by Sara on 1-17-2008 at 6:31 pm
Add my name to the list of kids who played that Cool Spot game for the Genesis. I still have it buried in a box somewhere (as well as other shameful titles, like Echo the Dolphin…yawn…). I also found it to be quite entertaining at the time, however it did not make me want to run out and grab a 7-Up. Ick.
posted by Erin S. on 1-17-2008 at 8:57 pm
I actually had the Kool-Aid Man video game as a kid. We got it for nearly nothing when we sent in a whole mess of Kool-Aid points from the back of the packages. It was more fun than you might think, at least to an eight-year old!
posted by John Robison on 1-17-2008 at 9:31 pm
Cool Spot, what a great game! Awesome soundtrack, good gameplay, fun graphics. They didn’t cheese it up. Never played the sequel though.
They also made a 7up version of the Ford Mustang. It was bviously green in color.
And there was a California Raisins NES game called “The Grape Escape” by Capcom. It was never released but there’s a great article with the story of how a copy was actually discovered on a site called NESPlayer.
posted by Peter on 1-18-2008 at 1:46 am
Oh the nostalgia. Nice article. I’m trying to think of some new (and funny) ideas for the next generation of advergames, but I never watch TV. I’m totally out of the loop! NNNNOOOOOOO!!! Wait … okay … breathe … does Bill Cosby still have those Jell-O commercials? That’d be a cool game for sure. And although I don’t morally advise it, a Victoria Secret videogame would sell like beer at a baseball game. You know what I mean?
posted by Greg F. on 1-18-2008 at 6:53 am
My mom gave my brother and I the Kool Aid game A(atari version)one year at Christmas. Even as a young kid I could only play for a few minutes at a time without boredom setting in.
I think that you played as kool aid man. The “thirsties” were circles (Atari pacman-like characters) that had long long straws, you had to run over them while avioiding these things (other thirsties maybe?) flying around. If you got hit by a flying thirsty you bounched all around the screen.
I can still remember the sound effects (”boing boing boing” and a strange sucking noise- not sure of that was the thirsties or the game itself))
posted by Brad on 1-18-2008 at 8:34 am
McKids was a lot of fun and was ahead of its time on some features, like real-time variable gravity.
posted by Ira on 1-18-2008 at 8:49 am
I had Cool Spot as a child (still have it)
Loved that game!!
posted by Diane on 1-18-2008 at 9:27 am
Awesome Article, as someone who has a degree in Marketing I can totally appreciate the value of those horrid advergames…
Keep up the writing, Im glad to see something with a bit of a “business flair” to it!!!
posted by Hannah on 1-18-2008 at 9:55 am
Thirsties tournament at my place tonight! Free Kool-aid and pizza. Be there or be THIRSTY!!!!!!
posted by Greg F. on 1-18-2008 at 11:12 am
where is pepsi-man???
posted by bla on 1-18-2008 at 12:57 pm
I was just telling people the Kenneth Noid story a few days ago. I thought maybe it was just local news cuz I lived near that Domino’s when I was a kid. That’s when I first learned what the word “hostage” meant.
posted by Nat X on 1-18-2008 at 5:04 pm
I also had the Kool-Aid man game as a child. I was pretty young, so my memory may be skewed, but it seemed like there was no point to it – you just kept sucking. Incidentally, so did the game.
The chuck wagon game seems familiar. I think my aunt might have had it – which would make sense as she seemed to collect every promotional toy/game ever released. Sadly, she passed away 8 years ago, so I’m sure the game is long gone by now.
posted by Jill on 1-18-2008 at 6:34 pm
I found that to interesting, but one tiny mistake. Those Burger King games were for the Xbox 360. X box is the X Box 360’s predecessor
posted by John P on 1-18-2008 at 7:07 pm
Mr. Pibb marketers also licensed a Doom-like game (on 3.5″ diskette) when they tried to revitalize the brand in the 1990s. The game wasn’t terribly long, but it was as entertaining as any in the genre.
Coca-Cola (who made Mr. Pibb) even got into the arcade video gameroom too — I remember a Q*bert machine that promoted Mello Yello (Coke’s version of Mountain Dew). Was that really 25 years ago? Wow.
posted by Sandy on 1-19-2008 at 9:49 am
where the hell is chex quest?
posted by drg on 1-19-2008 at 9:23 pm
Actually, John P, the Burger king games were for both XBox and XBox 360. but you’re right, the 360 part should have been mentioned.
posted by Caroline on 1-20-2008 at 11:59 am
Yeah Chex Quest PC game came in the cereal box and my brothers loved it at least for awhile.
posted by Megan on 1-20-2008 at 3:24 pm
yeah, where IS pepsi man? i remember trying to control the silver running man through a path with obstacles. when you reached the end, he’d get a pepsi from the machine, crack it open, and quench his thirst. it was ridiculously fun.
posted by aileen on 1-21-2008 at 8:40 pm
How about Global Gladiators for the Mega Drive another one from MCDonalds which was, correct me if I’m wrong, the sequel to MC Kids. It starts with two kids in a McDonalds reading a comic called Global Gladiators and suddenly Ronald McDonald appears and sucks them into the comic!! Scary! All in all it really wasn’t that bad a game though.
posted by Modesty on 1-22-2008 at 12:08 pm
how about an Al Gore videogame? that guy loves to advertise himself.
posted by Greg F. on 1-23-2008 at 10:19 am
Interesting stuff, Caroline! (And a little scary, too.)
By the way, I would so drink Kool-Aid from a pool. I hope I get rich one day.
Hmm, I wonder what was inside Ronald McDonald’s fun bag…Hmmm…
posted by Katie on 1-23-2008 at 11:33 am
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned America’s Army. I was shocked not to see it included in this list.
posted by damian on 2-20-2008 at 3:59 am
I loved MC kids! But it was too difficult for me back in the day. I’ve played it on my NES Emulator on my computer and it’s far easier….up to a point. It’s still pretty darn hard!
posted by Jenni Robinson on 3-13-2008 at 8:10 pm
I can see at least one glaring omission. What about the oft-overlooked gem for the Gamecube? Darkened Sky – the Skittles game.
posted by Leeshka on 4-16-2008 at 9:33 pm
Great list!
Don’t forget Tapper. It was a big ad for Budweiser — then later it was changed to Root Beer Tapper for the home game.
(No links allowed! Look up Tapper on wikipedia.)
posted by Tom C on 4-25-2008 at 10:47 am
I’m glad I’m not the only one that remembers Cool Spot. I still have it for Sega Genesis and actually played a few months ago – it’s a good game!
Also in my box of old Sega games I have McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure, where you play as Ronald McDonald and go on quirky adventures.
posted by Jodi on 5-15-2008 at 12:08 pm
no chex quest?
posted by sage on 5-16-2008 at 9:07 pm
What about that Taco Bell one? I remember getting the little diskette from one of their kids meals or something. My brothers LOVED that game. You had to run through this ancient temple and find a chalupa or taco or something. We never solved it but mostly we played it only to be scared by the monsters. My brothers broke several joy sticks literally jumping away from the scorpions that would suddenly appear from behind doors.
posted by Liz on 6-27-2008 at 2:00 pm
cool spot was also available on Super Nintendo – I loved that game!
posted by tiffany on 8-4-2008 at 4:39 pm
you forgot chex quest
posted by alex on 8-9-2008 at 8:18 pm
Wow! I’d completely forgotten about Chex Quest until someone mentioned it! I think my sisters and I begged my parents to get the box with the game in it. For off-brand buyers, that was a big request.
posted by Chelle on 10-17-2008 at 11:43 am
Chex quest was pretty fun for a DOOM rip off, There was what, 2 or 3 versions of the game total?
posted by Joseph on 11-12-2008 at 7:04 am
Chex Quest was the highest quality game for the price, even if you count the price of the cereal; it was cool enough for a kid just tryin’ to get some cereal.
But by far the most fun game is the brilliant Budweiser Ad, Tapper. Sure, no one could get past the 3rd level but who cares… once you beat the first level and get to play the slight of hand game- tracking which beer the villain Didn’t shake… AWE YEAH!
“This Bud’s for you” indeed.
Totally worth the quarters
posted by Awe Yeah... on 11-13-2008 at 7:27 am
Did anyone else play the life savers gummies game? you were a gummy and you had to bounce over obstacles
posted by brentx31 on 3-30-2009 at 7:00 pm
Darkened Skye was a horrible video game about skittles. It didn’t say anywhere on the package it was about skittles, but the cut scenes were definitely old “Taste the Rainbow” commercials. Good thing the game came out before that singing rabbit commercial.
posted by Marcus on 3-30-2009 at 11:40 pm
regarding cool spot:
when i was married, we had a game system and some games for our two children. when my husband and i split, he and our son got “custody” of the games, (one of which was cool spot), and my daughter and i got the apartment and the stereo system. about three months ago i found a used version of spot for PS1, and bought it for her, but she said something was wrong with the disc. ten years later, and she still hasn’t forgiven me for letting that game go!
posted by frostedflake on 6-17-2009 at 1:21 am
Like Modesty, I remember playing Global Gladiators… a strange McDonald’s tie-in game for the Sega Genesis. It was actually a pretty fun platform adventure game, though a bit odd.
The Wikipedia page on the game is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Gladiators
I also actually really enjoyed the Cool Spot game as a child. Genesis had some strange games..
posted by TheFontBandit on 8-18-2009 at 1:05 pm
My brother and I LOVED that Cool Spot game! We played the crap out of it!
posted by Lisa on 8-29-2009 at 9:04 pm
Yeah, Darkened Skye. Man, that game had the cruddiest game controls. It would have been a really good game if it had been designed better.
posted by Elizabeth II on 9-1-2009 at 4:11 am