Here we are, the very first episode of Commercial Break in a brand new year. There is no better way to start the new year than a brand new episode of everybody's favorite show, the one that makes fun of terrible advertising. And guess what? We have some seriously bad advertising. Including this old commercial for NARC, the arcade smash that was ported to the NES for no good reason at all. At first glance this may look like a perfectly fine commercial, but upon closer inspection you will see that it is in fact very, very bad.

When your slogan is "No One Had the Guts ... Until Now" you sure as hell be ready to show that you have guts. Unfortunately Acclaim doesn't have any guts, when it comes to video game advertising they are little girls! You heard me; they are weak little girls afraid of their own shadow. Don't like that? Well, what are you going to do about it, Acclaim? You see, in the arcades the NARC logo was blood soaked, the entire middle part was red. Apparently that was just too controversial for Acclaim, because they changed the blood from red to ... yellow?? If that's not the kind of thing a weak, scared little company does then I don't know what is.

Perhaps my favorite part of this entire advertisement is the logo at the bottom that states: "Just Say No." It doesn't specify what you should just say no to, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that they are talking about this video game. Considering that they inaccurately suggest that the police are there to "punish the guilty" maybe it's for the best that nobody actually plays this game. Just say no, indeed!

FROM: The Knights of Bad Advertising