January 21st, 2009 | EarthBound, Images, Videos

I plan to do a detailed analysis of EarthBound’s marketing and market circumstances and all that in a few months, but for now I thought I’d post a bunch of the things that were used to market the game back in 1995. A lot of people talk about these things but then have trouble finding a good place to link people. So if you see someone talking about EB’s weird marketing, send ’em here 😉

Anyway, a lot of the ads featured scratch-n-sniff stuff. In general, it sounds like people weren’t fond of them, though I thought they were pretty cool. Except maybe the gross smells. They definitely did stink up whatever magazines they were included in. I know Nintendo had some in Nintendo Power and I think EGM or some other major magazine. They also mailed some ads to NP subscribers and probably people who had sent in their warranty cards for Nintendo products.

Nintendo basically decided to go for the “gross-out” angle with EarthBound. And reverse psychology and the “boys love smelly gross stuff” idea. Above are a few scans of the ads. It’s probably not all of them, so if anyone has any others, please let me know!

And here is the promo video they played in stores like Toy R Us and K-Mart. If anyone remembers seeing this in other stores, let me know that too! People often claim this was a television commercial, but it wasn’t. It was only shown in stores. They could’ve put a little more work into it though…

POLL: What do you think of EarthBound's marketing? It was good

It was okay I guess

Oh god what were they thinking View Results