Sell it to Me: A Brief History of Nintendo Adverts

Kyle takes a look at Nintendo’s adverts from NES to now!

By Kyle England. Posted 11/19/2012 13:30 1 Comment     ShareThis

Wii U Advert Still

Now You’re Playing with Power!

Nintendo kicked off its earliest ad campaigns with a promise that the Nintendo Entertainment System would blow players away with its amazing graphics, accurate controls, and innovative games. Witness the very first television commercial for NES:

Will you be the one to experience the Nintendo Entertainment System? You can tell this was a very early ad due to the lack of Super Mario. At the time, R.O.B. and the Zapper were supposed to be the main draws of the NES. They don’t say the words “video game” because that phrase was a bad word after the terrible game crash of the early 1980s.

Nintendo quickly became the coolest thing to play, and any kid worth his lunch money would keep up to date on the latest NES happenings. In fact, many youngsters were so invigorated by Nintendo that they burst into song like these two fellows:

I can safely say that those kids are the coolest people I’ve ever seen in my life. Who are we to deny that The Legend of Zelda is really rad?

Nintendo expanded into the portable market with the Game Boy system, and with it came an incredibly diverse set of marketing. Here are a couple of commercials that really show the spectrum of Nintendo’s advertising:

The first commercial is your standard terrible early 90s jingle, but the second commercial offers us an inkling of Nintendo’s intent to market towards non-traditional gamers. It seems the Game Boy marketing tactics work, because the Game Boy line of systems went on to sell over 200 million units.

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