/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8622945]

>Yes, this will sell our game.

[Anonymous No.8622961]

It was honest marketing at least.

[Anonymous No.8622975]

>>8622945
There's nothing to sell the game with. It's an ugly boring "lol random" Dragon Quest clone that barely looks beyond an NES game. When it came out the biggest push was for hot graphics and hotter action.

[Anonymous No.8622979]

>>8622975
Mericans gotta Merican.

[Anonymous No.8622984]

>>8622979
americans are the biggest mother 2 fanboys on the planet

[Anonymous No.8623015]

>>8622984
I was surprised when I found out that Japs aren't that fond of Mother, many fans even called 3 a pretentious game cuz the story telling.

[Anonymous No.8623019]

>>8623015
i think their favorite one is supposedly the original, probably because it's literally just a dragon quest game

[Anonymous No.8623053]

>>8623015
Don't know about that. I do know Undertale is more recognizable than EB/Mother to zoomies. Damn I'm fucking old.

[Anonymous No.8623067]

>>8623053
isn't undertale still universally known as the "game inspired by earthbound"?
even zoombos would know about mother inherently, unless they're like gen alpha and 11 years old

[Anonymous No.8623103]

>>8623067
It's alien to us because we're fuckold but these people weren't even born when mother 3 was released. I don't agree with any of the shit 5ch thinks anyway so who gives a fuck about 3DS era zoomies.

[Anonymous No.8623238]

EarthBound is the most overrated SNES game on the planet. What >>8622975 says is true.

Every time I say this the cultist freak the fuck out on you. It's all so tiresome.

[Anonymous No.8623259]

>>8623238
You need to have sex.

[Anonymous No.8623260]

>>8622975
Sell it on the basis that it's a quirky game about Charlie Brown kids fighting aliens. Come on. Do some 1950's B-movie style advertising, which was a thing that was kind of "in" around that time, with games like Zombies ate my Neighbors taking advantage of it. This shouldn't be hard to figure out.

[Anonymous No.8623286]

>>8623238
Lol it's probably the most overrated game period.
>it's so QUIRKY, ZANY, RANDOM XD
Notice that all the fans are manchildren.

[Anonymous No.8623303]

>>8623286
It's a basic JRPG, which is a thing you either like or you don't, but this one stands apart by having a pretty unique setting.

[Anonymous No.8623351]

People who hate Earthbound have a sickness of the soul.
>le hipsters, le normies
Your life is going to be needlessly tiresome if you hate things just because people you dislike like it.
>FUCK EATING AND BREATHING, FUGGIN REBBIT RIGHT?
Earthbound's aesthetics and music are fantastic, and yes le dragon quest clone but field visible enemies and rolling HP give it lots of QOL over that. Not everything has to be hardcore visually or mechanically. It even has a christfag waifu, so it's "based" too. I dunno. People who hate this game just tend to be assholes I've find. How can you not be charmed by it?

[Anonymous No.8623367]

>>8622975
>Dragon Quest clone
You can see enemies on the map on Dragon Quest?

[Anonymous No.8623378]

>>8623351
>How can you not be charmed by it?
I actually played it.

[Anonymous No.8623965]

Saw something interesting in an old issue of Game Players... apparently they had rated Earthbound as a mediocre game and got a flood of letters asking them to give it another chance. They just brushed it off but makes you think maybe it just appeals to kids more or for that matter childish people.

[Anonymous No.8624089]

Earthbound's fandom is bizarre. The game is...okay. But that's neither here or there because the fandom will keep telling you how deep and emotional it is while meanwhile the game itself is like "Make the pencil disappear with the eraser! herpderp!"

[Anonymous No.8624101]

It's just ok and gets overhyped because of scammers selling the cartridge for prices only Jeff Bezos can afford.

[Anonymous No.8624139]

>>8622975
Earthbound was set in a modern American town instead of fantasy, that alone was enough to distinguish it from the rest.

[Anonymous No.8624145]

>Yes, this will sell our game
Your point

[Anonymous No.8624160]

>“Our game is fucking garbage and you’ll hate it”
>game sells poorly
Based nintendo

[Anonymous No.8624185]

>>8624160
>This is Howlin' Wolf's new album. He doesn't like it. He didn't like his guitar at first, either.

[Anonymous No.8624213]

The first game on the Famicom didn't get released here because it would have been expensive (large ROM+battery save+needing to pay a translation team) and maybe timing issues--probably by the time they could have gotten it to North America it would have conflicted with the SNES's international launch.

[Anonymous No.8624232]

>>8623015
[citation needed]
Itoi's currently making a fuck ton of money off of Mother merch that gets sold out often in Japan. They don't think 3 is pretentious the game just didn't sell well because it came out when the fucking DS was already out.

[Anonymous No.8624239]

>>8624213
they translated it, but NOA didn't release it because they didn't think it would sell enough copies to make back its costs (yes it was an expensive cartridge to produce)

[Anonymous No.8624251]

>>8624239
As was the case with Mother 3. They claimed it had offensive content and they didn't want to get lynched by SJWs but really it was just because they didn't think it would sell if its poor Japanese performance was any indication.

[Anonymous No.8624286]

>>8622945
I'll take it over current era >Yes, this will sell our console

[Anonymous No.8624296]

>>8623351
>Christianity
>based
Another false assumption.

[Anonymous No.8624310]

>>8623351
>Earthbound's aesthetics and music are fantastic
Cool but you still have to play it, not just watch the story on youtube or whatever. It's just a boring menu simulator, doesn't even have cool animations during battle or anything.

[Anonymous No.8624321]

>>8623238
>EarthBound is the most overrated SNES game on the planet
Earthbound is overrated because retarded hipsters think it's literally the greatest game ever made. In reality it's merely excellent.

[Anonymous No.8624361]

>>8623351
video games are never based regardless of the content, anon

[Anonymous No.8624372]

>>8624361
the things you consider based aren't based. you're not intelligent, anon.

[Anonymous No.8624376]

if the game didn't had this front view system in combat, it would have been 2x better

[Anonymous No.8624380]

>>8624372
in what world is having a virtual "christian waifu" based, anon? it's all a trick to stop you from breeding irl

[Anonymous No.8624434]

>>8624380
I'm not the anon you quoted originally, I hate earthbound. I just hate pretentious posts even more.

[Anonymous No.8624456]

>>8623238
Preach
I like the game, it's amusing and has so many story beats

But people are obsessive over it
Just like with Undertale and Helltaker these days
It's like one big giant validation for people who need validation
>It is a VIDEO GAME in AMERICA with CHEESBURGERS and TELEPHONES as items and it is ART because *posts a blogpost from 2007*

I really hate to hate on it but like, the fever needed to calm the fuck down 15 years ago

[Anonymous No.8624509]

>>8623351
the sickness is called "contrarianism"
it's natural to this site

[Anonymous No.8624531]

>>8624434
>pretentious
>pointing out that it's not based to be sexually attracted to fictional characters

[Anonymous No.8624542]

>>8623260
This would have been the correct approach. Nintendo gave Yoshi's Cookie of all games a B-movie styled marketing campaign, so it's odd that they didn't see that as the way to go for Earthbound. The print ads could have looked like old movie posters or at the very least, like a Weekly World News styled tabloid.

>>8623238
Stop being a faggot that gets upset over what other people think. The Earthbound fandom is irredeemably obnoxious but it's your own fault for engaging with them. They've been like that for 20 years now, you should know better. I'm not going to enter a conversation about Sonic and be surprised by the parade of autism. Like or hate a game based on its own qualities and quit putting stock in what a bunch of retards think.

>>8624361
>video games are never based regardless of the content, anon
I don't know, man. Rocky Rodent's pretty based.

[Anonymous No.8624602]

Stop spamming these threads

[Anonymous No.8624752]

>>8623367
>Names one difference
Yep, not similar at all.

[Anonymous No.8624798]

>>8624542
wtf is this real?

[Anonymous No.8624842]

>>8623260
I mean, it was literally already in the game.

[Anonymous No.8624861]

>Earthbound thread
>lots of deleted replies
Why does this happen every time?

[Anonymous No.8624886]

>>8624861
because this board became garbage when it was opened up to PS2 and gamecube kids. It's just slow /v/

[Anonymous No.8625959]

>>8623260
Secret of Evermore was the better quirky B-movie SNES game. Sadly nobody cares about that one though.

[Anonymous No.8625987]

>>8624160
Nintendo was doing this all the time during it's Play It Loud era. They tried to counter Sega's confrontational marketing by adopting the kind of attitude that was made popular in the 90s by Bart Simpson and Nickelodeon. That "your mom would not approve of this" gimmick caused their ads to take a hard turn toward the bizarre and gross. But they ended up taking it too far into straight up Ren & Stimpy territory. It's actually a surprise that ONLY Earthbound suffered from it.

https://youtu.be/Z0E2lmgLF_k

[Anonymous No.8626047]

>>8625959
I don't see how that's B-movie style. That just looks like 90's "attitude" marketing.

[Anonymous No.8626060]

>>8625987
Is it supposed to look like there's shit smeared on the walls?

[Anonymous No.8626154]

>>8624139
>Earthbound was set in a modern American town instead of fantasy,
This is not that unique. Megami Tensei II took place in a destroyed modern day Tokyo.

[Anonymous No.8626221]

>>8626154
I don't think those games even came out outside of Japan for a while though.

[Anonymous No.8626232]

>>8625959
Being a PALfag, Evermore is what I actually played at the time (and I loved it, along with Illusion of Time and FF2(FFIV)), only enoying EB on ZSNES in 2000, and I really enjoyed it. If EB had been released here, I definitely wouldn've been turned off by the marketing as a kid. I despised and cringed at gross-out humour, and still do

[Anonymous No.8626240]

>>8624232
Itoi makes a fuck ton of money from heading a worldwide-renowned stationary company.

[Anonymous No.8626265]

>>8626232
Does anyone really like grossout humour? I feel like it naturally went away, because it's mostly just gross and not funny

[Anonymous No.8626271]

>>8626265
I always saw it as a quintessential dumb american kid thing

[Anonymous No.8626317]

>>8626265
>>8626271
It was a consequence of the kid-power media of the era. Nickelodeon was really the originator. In it's early days of the 1980s it had no money so filled it's program schedule with cheap Canadian TV shows from the 70s and Japanese anime. One of those shows was a kid-centric variety show called You Can't Do That On Television. One of the show's gimmicks was that whenever a character said "I don't know" they'd have green slime dumped on their heads. It was a nonsensical gag but the show was such a hit for the fledgling network that it co-opted it as the central personality of the whole channel. The idea that being sloppy and messy was a kid's right and they were in charge here, not the disapproving parents, became a cultural touchstone of the then young millennials. Bart Simpson's antics, Will Smith's "Parents Just Don't Understand" and a handful of other media all came together and created the idea that being a gross little prick was cool as opposed to a finger-wagging adult. Then 9/11 happened.

[Anonymous No.8626359]

>>8626317
Anarchic comedy is one thing, and that goes back. Monty Python was doing that kind of thing in the 70's. it's more specifically the bodily functions related comedy that I never got much out of.

[Anonymous No.8626395]

>>8626359
Ren & Stimpy probably is the single reason behind that. And as one of the three original Nicktoons it was a giant influence on anyone looking to market something to kids. Rocko's Modern Life also somewhat followed suit to a less extreme degree.

[Anonymous No.8626396]

>>8623238
Why was this post deleted? Because of a wojak? The dude was discussing the topic.

[Anonymous No.8626502]

>>8626396
He had the wrong opinion.

[Anonymous No.8626540]

>>8625987
What the fuck?

[Anonymous No.8626543]

>>8626502
janny is VERY sensitive to people criticizing his favourite game!

[Anonymous No.8626601]

>>8626396
/vr/ has basically become le reddit after the last round of janny recruitment

[Anonymous No.8626973]

>>8623351
lol this post was deleted too, what the fuck

[Anonymous No.8626975]

>>8626973
dissent is no longer allowed

all discussion related to dissent will be deleted

we love video games now

[Anonymous No.8626989]

>>8622945
NYEEHHH DAT SHTINKS

[Anonymous No.8627150]

>>8625959
This game had potential but fuck me the stupid trading sequence and series of god awful mazes that follow just gives the impression they ran out of steam half way and just threw in a bunch of filler content to make it seem longer.

[Anonymous No.8627159]

>>8625959
Secret of Evermore was based. Square really missed an opportunity to include it in the Mana collection and give it a Japanese localization, even if it isn't "technically" a Mana game.

[Anonymous No.8627175]

>Yes, this will sell our game.

[Anonymous No.8627184]

>>8622945
Blame the localization. It erased all ties to the NES prequel America never got and doubled-down on the fart jokes.

[Anonymous No.8627213]

>>8622945
Yeah I also saw that AVGN video as well, OP. I also like to regurgitate his opinions and views as my own, too.

[Anonymous No.8627241]

>>8627175
Tits and ass do sell games, Anon.

[Anonymous No.8629625]

is there a way to preproduce the scratch and sniff odors?

[Anonymous No.8629626]

is there a way to reproduce the scratch and sniff odors?

[Anonymous No.8630112]

>>8629626
Take a whiff of the bottom of a dumpster

[Anonymous No.8630117]

>>8629626
Smell yo momma's vag

[Anonymous No.8630151]

>>8626317
You’re a decent writer, anon.

[Anonymous No.8630158]

>>8624542
I miss the Weekly World News (and tabloids in general, but especially WWN). Always high quality entertainment for literally pocket change.

[Anonymous No.8630193]

>>8625959
One of the most atmospheric SNES games ever.

[Anonymous No.8630204]

>>8629626
It's very likely just a faint trace of butyric acid, which is harmless in concentrations this low but it still smells like puke.

[Anonymous No.8630209]

>>8622945
It's funny how they fixated on the vomit monsters, when that's a very small part of the game.

[Anonymous No.8631682]

>>8627213
Obsessed.

[Anonymous No.8631795]

God... Zoomers are uneducated beyond belief. They're so fucked, their parents left them completely unequipped to handle life and they will suffer tremendously for it down the road. You'd have to go back before the renaissance to find a common group of people with less knowledge about the world and its history.

Let me redditspace for you since you are more familiar with that space wasting practice. It will also make you more comfortable since proper paragraphs are frightening to you.

This was a 90s thing. Gross out humor. Edgy humor. Ironic humor. These guys only had a few ways to market their game. They couldn't make it edgy and 90s cool because the game looks "kiddie" taken at face value.

Here's a new zoomerline for you, to make you more comfortable, even though there was no reason not to continue the previous paragraph. >>>>>> Punctuation to keep you interested )))))))))

Ironic humor? Well, it's a rather honest game, that's its whole schtick, so that wouldn't work. So the marketers chose what they incorrectly thought to be the best option: Gross out humor.

New reddit line for your comfort, wouldn't want to make you feel threatened or you might just go back to your little phone.

This wasn't as bad an idea as our contemporary clean, orderly and submissive-to-authority culture would have you believe. Many movies, in particular lower budget movies, had gross out humor used to advertise it. While this was a bad move and disrespectful to the quality put into the game, it is completely understandable why this method was chosen.

[Anonymous No.8631818]

>>8622945
I got it (asked for it) day one.

[Anonymous No.8631845]

>>8631795
>This wasn't as bad an idea as our contemporary clean, orderly and submissive-to-authority culture would have you believe
hey it was like that in the 50s but the dam burst eventually. it will happen again too.

[Anonymous No.8631865]

>>8631845
These are very different times, my friend. It doesn't have to burst. Whether you like it or not the Cold War is still raging on in the coke addled "minds" of our dear leaders. We now have Emperor Putin and Wardog Biden to contend with, and now The People's Emperor Pooh over in Cuckna thinks he's some kind of Stalin protégé. No, friend, things do not have to improve. Things can in fact get far, far worse.

[Anonymous No.8631882]

>>8626060
it's torn wallpaper

[Anonymous No.8631959]

>>8631882
But there are brown streaks on the dresser too

[Anonymous No.8632337]

>>8631959
It's not just brown and it's supposed to be paint, which the "out of control" baby has evidently hurled around the room

[Anonymous No.8632472]

>>8631795
>complaining about "reddit spacing"
I automatically disregard anyone who cries about "reddit spacing" as an irrational clown.

[Anonymous No.8632480]

>>8623015
>many fans even called 3 a pretentious game cuz the story tellin
They're not wrong though. The game's about as subtle and nuanced as getting clubbed over the head by a baseball bat

[Anonymous No.8633442]

>>8624861
Faggot janny who happens to like EarthBound.

>>8624886
Your faggot elitist jannies are the problem, literally nothing rule infringing was posted, just the usual vitriol you find on /v/. This upsets the average discord /vr/ janny, because they have this sick mentality that they think this board should be high brow or some shit. Get over yourselves. Literally half this thread is fucking gone, and the board is slow enough as it is with you retards going around deleting any dissenting opinions or inflammatory remarks? Take a deep look inside yourselves.

[Anonymous No.8633461]

undertale was better

[Anonymous No.8633468]

>>8631795
I was alive, and even then I would have passed over a game that advertised itself with "this game stinks" as the big selling point. They're barely even showing the game, or giving you an indication of what it is, which is the bigger problem.

[Anonymous No.8633474]

>>8631882
I see that, but it does seem to be presented in such a way that your initial impression is smears of brown shit on the wall. They probably knew they couldn't actually do that.

[Anonymous No.8634812]

>>8632472
Didn't ask.
>>8633468
Same here. It's a terrible ad by all accounts.

[Anonymous No.8636112]

>>8633468
Yup. For me and the other kids in my circle, Earthbound was one of those games everyone "knew about." You casually recognized it with the giant box and Charlie Brown characters but nobody gave a shit because there were so many other games that were better at getting your attention.

[Anonymous No.8636120]

>>8622975
They should have use the great Japanese taglines like "Try not to cry before the ending" or "A game even your sister will enjoy"! Those would have made the game fly off the shelves.

[Anonymous No.8636125]

>>8624089
maybe it's artstyle attracting schizos
like sonic for example

[Anonymous No.8636167]

>>8636120
Playing to the more stand by me-esque angle (you're a young American boy about to go on a grand adventure with some friends) probably would've been their best bet

[Anonymous No.8636179]

>>8633468
>>8636112
RPGs had a tough time with advertising because companies couldn't show their simplistic graphics as some sort of huge visual selling point. You can see an Earthbound "commercial" on youtube but the way it's framed it's clearly a snippet from a promo real and not something that aired during Nintendo's actual TV slots. FF6 had a similar problem and that DID have a televised commercial: since Square couldn't show the thrilling gameplay of "push buttons" they just had a claymation commercial of Mog one shotting random monsters with force lightning from his fingers. Tells you nothing. Chrono Trigger's manages to be even more bizarre: it's the Japanese commercial, with voice over and all but with gag subtitles.

People mock the FF7 ads for "not showing the game" but at least it showed something you'd experience while you played and conveyed the proper tone.

[Anonymous No.8636919]

>>8625987
>[YouTube] Super Mario World 2 Yoshi's Island SNES Commercial - Retro Game Trailers (embed)

[Anonymous No.8637272]

>>8623015
>Japs aren't that fond of Mother
bullshit, you're making shit up.
unless your "source" is a few random 2ch posts, the same way someone could say "yeah 4chan hates Metal Gear because I saw a couple posts on /v/ that said Kojima is a hack"

[Anonymous No.8637984]

>>8626060
I think the stuff on the drawers is supposed to be shit

[Anonymous No.8638040]

>>8636120
>great Japanese taglines like "Try not to cry before the ending"
They would cry, all right, once they saw that they beat Mother 1 for absolutely no ending at all.

[Anonymous No.8638212]

>>8633468
Unless you're severely autistic and take everything at face value, the average kid can look at the deodorant, slime enemy, and green noxious gas, and decipher quickly that the "This Game Stinks" is referring to foul smells and not the quality of the game. Kids love stupid puns and word play.

>They're barely even showing the game
That's par for the course for most print ads for any product, especially in the 90s. The way of doing things was having a large eye-catching image, a write up, and a smaller picture of the product in the bottom corner. Where this ad fails is that the big can of deodorant isn't that eye catching. They should have focused more on the barf enemy and made him bigger.

> or giving you an indication of what it is
I dunno, man, it gives you a pretty spot on description. It tells you right up front that it's an RPG about an alien invasion where the streets are filled with gross monsters. It tells you that you have special powers and you learn more when you survive battles. It then explains that you travel to neighboring towns and recruit new friends, and gives you a brief rundown of their special abilities. It then goes on to sell itself as a role-playing game so tough that they had to include a player's guide, and tells you what kind of content is in the guide. It closes with a quick recap of the plot and who the protagonist and antagonist are.

All things considered, it's a solid write up and the best you could hope for from a magazine spread. You can absolutely make the argument that the pictures fail to draw your attention and make you want to read the text, but the ad itself does give you everything you need to know about the game.

At the end of the day though, Earthbound could have had the best marketing campaign in the world, and still wouldn't have done much better. It was more expensive than other games, and a kid asking for a $90 game is a tough sell, even with the coupon.

[Anonymous No.8638234]

>>8637272
The series has only three games. If it were even marginally popular there would be more.

[Anonymous No.8638257]

>>8638212
I think the critical difference, and what Nintendo failed to realize, is that Kirby and Mario were already established by the time this brand of marketing started appearing. Kirby could be rebranded as a pissed off badass because everyone already knew what the games were generally about. It also is character-focused, which helps a ton. Earthbound was a brand new game and the first thing you see is a giant can of "Stink Away." Even games that were all about gross out humor like Boogerman had an actual protagonist put front and center.

[Anonymous No.8638543]

>>8626317
I doubt 9/11 played a role. Besides, being a disgusting little shit stain on society didn't start in the 90s. The hippies pioneered that back in the 60s and just passed the lifestyle onto their kids.

[Anonymous No.8638557]

>>8638543
Boomers didn't stay hippies when they had kids. They all became Reaganites after Jimmy Carter committed the unforgivable sin of telling them to put on a sweater.

[Anonymous No.8638579]

>>8637272
Personally I'm a fan of the Oreteki Kusoge Shokei blog. He liked the first two ones and hated the third one.
https://ameblo.jp/kusowii/entry-11528765191.html

[Anonymous No.8638593]

>>8622961
Kek

[Anonymous No.8638613]

I dont like earthbound please dont ban me jannies.