 Ssssssssssssssss We've all been there or at least those of you that grew up with the 8 and 16 bit eras like I did Everything good at the rental store is checked out, so now we gotta roll the dice on something new And it's at that point that many publishers tried to win us over either through an all out advertising Blitz Through gaming magazines, comic books and TV commercials Or just by making some weird ass cover art The mid-to-late 90's in particular were kind of a strange time for this kind of thing we'd reached a point where not only certain game series and characters were well-established, like Mega Man, Castlevania, Sonic, or Mario, or whatever, but even certain licenses and developers were starting to catch on as a sign of quality. You could usually count on Capcom, Konami, and Squaresoft to create something good, but even stuff like Ninja Turtles and Batman usually made for good game fodder. So, the many publishers that wanted to create hype around something new, they were left with the aforementioned advertising onslaught and or bizarre cover art. One of the best examples of this is the game ZOOP. Publisher Viacom was used to putting out games based on well-established properties, everything from Ren and Stimpy, to Rocco's Modern Life, to Beavis and Butthead. Really, you didn't need much to promote games like that, you just say, hey, this exists. ZOOP, on the other hand, is the only quote-unquote original game Viacom published on the Super Nintendo anyway, so they had to come up with a strategy to get people into this game. The resulting bombardment of ads led to stuff like this. This looks pretty weird now, but hey, if you weren't there, this is just what the 90s looked like, kids. This fit right in with everything else. I'm sure there are at least a couple of you watching that see this ZOOP logo and say to yourself, hey, it's that! Or maybe you never played this at all, and your mind's eye only recognizes it subconsciously, thanks to the inherently insidious nature of marketing. So what the heck is ZOOP? It's a single-screen puzzle game where you play as an arrow that moves around in a 4x4 square, while a bunch of shapes made up of different colors start popping up from all sides, and you gotta clear them up before they reach your square. The thing is, you can only get rid of stuff the same color as your shooter arrow thing. If you fire at something that's a different color, you switch colors with it, so in order to get rid of stuff as it comes, you gotta be constantly flipping colors to destroy what's coming at you. It's actually not that bad. Music is okay, and the gameplay is simple enough, although yeah, it is pretty distractingly ugly at times. Since this is a puzzle game, this ended up being one of those games that was absolutely friggin' everywhere. DOS, Mac, Game Boy, Game Gear, Jaguar, the friggin' Saturn got a port for some reason, and while it's not exactly worth going out of your way to play, it's not that bad either. For some reason, the N64 has a bunch of titles where all most people know is the cover. The best example of this is Forsaken, otherwise known as this game. I covered this one in its own video a while back, but it's worth mentioning here, because this is a classic case where I think the advertising Blitz actually did this game a disservice. I mean, the cover has nothing to do with the game for one thing, and Forsaken, as it turns out, is actually halfway decent. Yeah, it's a total descent clone, and yeah, you get a fair share of awkward camera angles where you can't see where you are or who's shooting you, but it has a fairly solid single-player campaign, and hey, if you manage to get at least one other person to play with, it's got a multiplayer mode that's pretty dang fun, and it's up to four-player compatible. You gotta love that. So yeah, the cover here is actually a model named Dana Deciani, and what she has to do with the game, I have no idea, but she appears to be confused about whether or not your future is Forsaken and whether she should repeat that about 700 times. Another N64 game is Shadow Man. I swear I saw this cover everywhere. I even had a friend in high school that thought this game had something to do with Mortal Kombat for some reason just based on the skull, and the guy looking like he might be Dalsam's nephew's cousin's former roommate. I always thought he kind of looked like Byron Allen. And hey, what do you know? This game is actually cool as hell. You play as Michael, who's the latest in a long line of voodoo warriors assigned to protect the world of the living from stuff that wants to come over from the world of the dead, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Jack the Ripper is involved, there's jumping between worlds, but the point is, as you can see, is that this game is dark as hell for an N64 game, both figuratively and literally. Yeah, I know this game was also released for PlayStation, Dreamcast and Windows, but it's a bit jarring to see on N64, and it plays reasonably well too, I mean for games of this era. There's plenty of moments where you wonder where the heck you're supposed to go, but this game at best is reminiscent of something like Tomb Raider. So yeah, if you're into mixing real-life serial killers with supernatural stuff, you'll dig Shadow Man. I was actually pretty surprised how much I liked this one, and hey, what do you know? This game recently got a remaster for PC, so check that one out if you can. Body Harvest was another game that was all over the place, to the point that my jaded high school ass completely dismissed it in favor of first-person shooters on PC. Plus, I saw this ad, in particular, every friggin' where I went, and I always hated it because it was usually printed on cheap, crappy newspaper or comic-quick paper, and I couldn't even make out what it said. I mean, geez, this font is overdosing on 90s. Dial it back a bit. Meanwhile, the cover looked like this, which is fine, but it gave me a completely different vibe than the ad, so I just straight-up ignored the game. It turns out, this game was developed by DMA Design, otherwise known as the folks that would eventually become Rockstar North. And I mean, hey, you're driving around, shooting aliens, making tons of stuff go boom, harvesting some bodies. The point I'm trying to make is, I totally missed out on this game back in the day because of my own pointless stubborn, willful ignorance. Body Harvest is actually pretty dang fun, it's worth checking out. So if you have your own personal body harvest that you can remember, you should go back and give it a chance. And I mean, like, the game, not actually procuring organs. You get what I mean. Don't steal people's kidneys. Moving on, let's bounce back to the Super Nintendo, and it's everyone's favorite crazy grandpa. Everyone's seen this cover for the game Phalanx, easily the most what in the hell is that supposed to be game box art of the 16-bit era, or maybe ever? Yeah, I know it says the hyperspeed shoot out in space, but I mean, that doesn't exactly narrow it down. Do you play as the old guy in space? Is it a game like Cotton? Only instead of riding a broom, you're riding a banjo? If anyone wants to steal that idea for a sprite swap, please do so. So what's the deal with this box art? Well, Destructoid actually had an interview with one of the guys that worked with the ad agency for Phalanx publisher Chemco, and the answer is pretty much exactly what you'd think it would be. The game needed to stand out from other space shoot-em-ups, so they went in hard on the what the hell is that factor, and got the now famous banjo player, who had worked previously in advertising as Santa Claus. If you want to read the article yourself, there's a link in the description. And by the way, I wouldn't be doing my due diligence if I didn't come to bat for Phalanx. It's a perfectly decent horizontal shoot-em-up, and it's pretty newcomer-friendly too since you don't die in one hit. Hell, I bet even old grandpa banjo would have been able to get at least past the first couple levels. Next, there's Brutal Paws of Fury. Now, to me, this game is the biggest reason why a huge multifaceted ad campaign signaled a major red flag. It's like they're wildly overcompensating for how mediocre the game is. I remember walking into Funko Land one day and seeing this huge cardboard cutout for this advertisement. It made the game look really cool. Variations of this ad were all over the place, but when Brutal Paws of Fury finally arrived, it looked like this. Just another painfully generic one-on-one fighting game to get lost in a freaking sea of them. This fierce looking hair ready to kick your ass here on the poster actually looks like this in the game. What is this Eastern European Looney Tunes? This badass looking lion back here? Yeah, he's this guy in the game. Come on, that's not even remotely close. You wonder why kids are in such a hurry to get cynical? It's because of bait-and-switch crap like this game. Of course, I also have to talk about Tough Enough, also known as the game that was responsible for this cover. Yeah, this looks awesome. We got some Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld-style art here. We got some generic version of All Might from My Hero Academia or Dollar Store Sabertooth, if you're looking at this back when it was released. Master the moves to Master Me? Uh-oh, that's not good. And yeah, this game is just kind of there. It's not as egregiously bad as Brutal Paws of Fury. I mean, this was at least made by Jailaco, so it's competent. It's just aggressively generic. Like, this game is going door to door to tell everyone how freaking regular and ordinary it is. It wears white polo shirts with beige pleated dockers. It drives a tan Toyota Corolla where it listens to Kings of Leon. It's go-to Beerus Miller Lite and it eats its steak with ketchup. Well, okay, it's not that offensive. This game is competent and that's about it, despite what that cover would tell you. Last but not least, let's take a look at this cover for Dino City, where we've got Poochy the Dinosaur, wearing super cool sunglasses and a leather jacket, over here hanging out with Lieutenant Tasha Yar's head on a child's body. Three things were certain in life when this game was around in rental stores. Death, taxes, and, like, three copies of Dino City being available for rent while everything else was checked out. The thing is, though, this game is actually pretty good. No, really, you ride around on this dinosaur-punching stuff or slinging projectiles with the ability to actually jump off to trigger platforms or dodge damage or grab stuff above you. This game is cleverly laid out. The level design does a nice job working with your character's abilities, plus the controls are fine, the music is nice, and the art style here is sharp-looking. It reminds me of a faster-paced Joe and Mack. Okay, that's being a bit generous. It's not that great, but still, when I sat down to play Dino City way back when, I remember thinking, where the heck has this game been? And then I remembered, oh yeah, it's been right in front of me for decades. It's just that awful cover art chased me away. Don't let the same happen to you. Give this one a chance. All right, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.