Nintendo 64 ad: Super Smash Bros in Nintendo Power
Honestly, who doesn’t love Super Smash Bros? I love the way it breaks off from a traditional fighting game style and instead tries to do its own thing by adding a hint of Mario-style platforming into the mix. Believe it or not, this was quite strange at the time so they released this ad for Super Smash Bros in Nintendo power to tell people what it was all about.
The Super Smash Bros in Nintendo Power ad
SUPER SMASH BROS
Can you imagine a grudge match between Donkey Kong and Mario, a pair that hasn’t duked it out for more than ten years? Is Link’s Master Sword any match for Samus’s Plasma Beam? And does relative newcomer Pikachu have what it takes to whup Kirby for the Cutest Character crown? There’s only one way to find out, and that’s by sliding Super Smash Bros. into your N64, grabbing a few friends and letting the good times roll with this fantastic multiplayer brawler.
Description & analysis
Now there’s plenty to love about this ad. The first thing I’d notice if I saw this in a magazine would be all the characters around the centre of the image. Now, if you take a step back and think back to all the Nintendo compilations that game before this one (namely Mario Party and Mario Kart), they tend to focus on only on the Mario universe. Yes, Donkey Kong is part of the Mario universe. This was the first game that united characters from pretty much every Nintendo franchise, so seeing this back in 1999 was completely new.
Next you have the two paragraphs above and below, which essentially say what I just talked about. The selling point of SSB was that you could finally fulfil those fantasies you had as a kid of ‘Who would win in a fight? ___ or ___?’ While in reality it depends on the skill of the player controlling the character.
The last thing to note is the screenshots to the left. If you’re familiar with the game, you’ll notice that this Super Smash Bros in Nintendo Power ad mostly shows screenshots from the opening cutscene except for two. Just something to point out.
Overall, I guess that this advertisement gets the point across quite well, but it doesn’t emphasise the awesomeness of the game itself.
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