10 Awesome Video Games Betrayed By Terrible Marketing

Today, EarthBound is among the most celebrated RPGs of all time, and its bizarre sense of humor is often seen as a fundamental and alluring feature. Therefore, Nintendo’s decision to devote a large amount of its roughly $2 million marketing budget to crass comedy wasn’t necessarily bad in theory. In execution, however, it failed miserably.

As part of their American “Play It Loud!” strategy – which capitalized on ‘90s edginess as much as possible – Nintendo chose to satirically advertise Earthbound in gaming magazines and player guides by declaring: “[T]his game stinks” (or a variation of that) in big, bold letters. 

They didn’t stop there, though, as those spreads went full pun by including scratch and sniff sections that made the publications smell rotten.

Understandably, and despite it being a somewhat clever bit of self-referential cheekiness, countless complaints were made. Likewise, readers who were casually flipping through the magazine and didn’t even comprehend the joke/stench were undoubtedly confused by why Nintendo would outright tell them that their latest product “stinks.”

Taking all of that into consideration – as well as how costly the campaign must’ve been – it’s not shocking to learn that EarthBound’s sales in the West were less than impressive.