The Best Viral ad goes to – Wario Land: Shake it

Nintendo just released a new (viral) advertisement for its upcoming Wii game, Wario Land: Shake it. You can go watch the ad here on youtube right now.

Don’t read on if you don’t want to be spoiled

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In the beginning, you see the ESRB rating which shows up just like every other gaming advertisement. The traditional Youtube layout is there so Nintendo did not do any funky thing the layout to keep you interested. The interesting part though comes from what happens when you watch the ad. At first everything seems alright but then once you see Wario destroy a piece of the environment, something from the Youtube layout breaks and flies out. You think you just saw some weird thing and did not really catch it, so you try to rewind just to make sure that was not Youtube but it was the ad. Then you see Wario shake the bag of coins and with an expression of WTF on your face, the coins come out onto the Youtube page. Soon as the ad progresses, everything on Youtube just collapses and falls off the screen. Every type of destruction in the video advertisement corresponds to something on Youtube breaking away and falling off. Everything just falls off the page, the scroll bar, the words, the boxes, the comments, etc. In the end, even the video player falls off its hinges and becomes slanted. Playing the ad again causes even more rumble on the page and everything that is left from the Youtube layout jumps around everywhere and even more things come out from the video player.

This has to be, the best viral advertisement Nintendo has ever put out. This has topped almost every type of internet advertisement that has been produced. The use of youtube was so cool. It makes you think that it is a regular old Youtube page but in the end it actually isn’t and that entire page is just one big huge flash file.
Many people would have guessed that something was amiss when looking at the URL and not seeing the random Octa/hexa number that pops up at the end of the youtube.com part. Also, many would have noticed that the scroll bar for the other related videos did not work either and the commenting system is kind of broken.

This advertisement though is not enough to actually make me go and buy the game. I am not a fan of Wario and I do not have a Wii in the first place so, a lost sale right there. The ad is really cool and innovative though, I have never this type of thing before for advertisements. The only thing that comes close is or now was Net Disaster where you can choose whatever web page you want to be destroyed by a nuclear explosion, or an earthquake, or even asteroids.

Props to Nintendo for doing this.

E3 ‘08

E3 Launched today, July 15th 2008. Marking the enhancements in technology and gaming while showing the world how much a force the gaming industry has become.  It is amazing how mainstream video gaming became. From its roots in pong to parents telling kids that it is stupid to actual tournaments being played where the top seeds get a six-figure salary in earnings.  It is amazing how the industry has sky rocketed into stardom and has become the new powerhouse in entertainment.

With E3 starting today, Microsoft were the first to present their upcoming games for the later quarter of 2008 and upcoming 2009.  Demoes of highly anticipated games have already been shown like Fallout 3, and Gears of War 2.  Viewers were given a glimpse of Square Enix’s new game, Final Fantasy XIII and as well as Fable 2.  There’s new information on Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero, most noteably the downloadable/playable content for each game (WOOO METALLICA!).  Many new trailers were also shown at the conference: Rage, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, Too Human, Dragon Age, Mortal Combat Vs. DC Universe, and a whole lot more.

Tomorrow, will be Nintendo’s press conference and many are anticipating new game demoes coming out for the Wii and new weird, bright, and cooky ideas for the Wii, like Wii Motion.  Most likely they will be a blunder, but still there will be people buying it.

In the next few days, many of the Second Party game developers like Activision, Konami, and Ubisoft (They are Second Party I believe, or are they still considered third party?) will showcase their new games and show off the new visual enhancements and gameplay innovations like Farcry 2.  It will be amazing to see what these developers have in store for the rest of us.  This year’s E3 will be a blast – it better be, it can’t be the 2007 fiasco that the ESA did with the event.