If it wasn't for the Neo Geo I'm not sure there would be a Defunct Games. Even though we cover a dozen other systems, it's the life and death of the Neo Geo that gave me the inspiration to start this website. Thankfully five years ago I didn't remember advertisements like this, as it would have certainly made me think twice about putting the time and effort into a project like Defunct Games. But it's five years later and I'm a different person, these days I am more willing to accept the faults of video game advertising ... and make fun of it.

As bad advertisements go this SNK spot is pretty tame, it doesn't feature any of the clich?s I rally against each and every episode. Instead we have a game system being thrown into what appears to be the world's tackiest front door. How else do you explain that tragic tile and the cactus? Seriously, this advertisement has a cactus! And even though that system was durable (with controls build to withstand a bullet), it still shouldn't be thrown through an open door only to land on a hard floor. That just seems like a bad idea, no matter what system it is.

And what's up with that logo? That dog sure does look angry, but what does it have to do with the Neo Geo? And then there's a half page of text, most of which is technical information dumbed down for the layman. One thing does trouble me, though. This advertisement claims, "Neo Geo is the only video game imachine in the world capable of the processing 330 megs of sheer undaunted power." The figure they are talking about is the amount of memory is capable of being on the cartridge, yet they must be forgetting that the TurboGrafx-CD features a lot more than just 330 megs of information. And the "7 tracks devoted to REAL VOICE speech allow you to listen in on "live" play by play action" seems like a load of crap, too. Just thought I'd be the one that mentions it.

FROM: Bad Advertising and DynaGirl