The 7 Dumbest Attempts To Cram Ads Into Video Games

7

Dead Rising 2 Featured Playboy Ads All Over The Apocalypse

Dead Rising 2 is an action game wherein you battle zombies and crazed psychopaths while desperately trying to keep your young daughter from turning into a zombie herself. If that sounds like the perfect medium to advertise porn, congratulations, you'd see eye-to-eye with Capcom's licensing executives.

Capcom

CapcomIt took the world going to hell to convince people to pay for porn again.

As part of a deal with Playboy, the game features a variety of posters featuring scantily clad models scattered about. And honestly, that's fair enough. Sometimes you really do need a bit of titillation after a long tiring day of shredding zombies with chainsaw-wielding motorcycles. We've all been there. But this product integration was not merely limited to the background. If you rescue a female survivor while holding an in-game Playboy magazine, you'll get bonus experience points. Creeping out the people you save is a plus, apparently.

Capcom"Your PP has grown by 10%."

To put the final cherry on this cheesecake, one of the in-game survivors comes with an appropriate outfit for a world-ending apocalypse: a Playboy bunny suit. She also happens to be the only survivor who cannot die before the finale ... because that would be removing promotional content from the game. The power of advertising (and boners) is stronger than death itself.

6

Drive A Mercedes-Benz In ... Super Mario Maker?

Putting real-world car companies in games about cars makes sense. Putting them in games about superpowered plumbers fighting turtle monsters to save mushroom people? Not so much. Mercedes-Benz was already pushing it when they paid Nintendo to put their vehicles in Mario Kart 8, which is pretty far from a racing simulator.

NintendoThis is as close to real racing as Mario's body is to real human proportions.

5

Ariana Grande Was A Playable Character In Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy series is rich with unforgettable characters, like Cloud, Ramza, Terra, Squall, and Ariana Grande. Yep, Grande recently became playable in the mobile game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius to promote her Dangerous Woman Tour. Because nothing says "danger" like playing dorky RPGs on your phone.

After completing an event quest named after the tour, players unlocked a character named "Dangerous Ariana," featuring a pixel-perfect rendition of her costume from the Dangerous Woman album. To be fair, she basically looked like an RPG character already.

Square EnixThat's the third-sexiest donkey outfit we've ever seen.

4

Yakuza 5 Has A Mission About How Stylish And Sexy GaGa Milano Watches Are

In Yakuza 5, you're a club owner trying to both solve a murder and retrieve your stolen fortune. That is, until you stop all of that to try to fix the love life of a man standing in the middle of the street. Being so very un-stylish and out of fashion, this man finds himself being stood up by the girl of his dreams and passed over for promotion for younger, hipper men. Somehow, this doesn't end up being about needing to get him some cheap boner pills. (Missed a golden product placement opportunity there, Cialis.)

4

CSI: Fatal Conspiracy Characters Announce That They're Using Trend Micro Internet Security Pro

Telltale Games' CSI: Fatal Conspiracy follows the members of the CSI Las Vegas team as they investigate the mysterious case of what the hell happened to Telltale Games. There's also something about some murders or whatever. They carry out their investigation through state-of-the-art forensic equipment -- and more importantly, Trend Micro Internet Security Pro.

Every single time you make a trip to the lab to check a piece of digital evidence on a person of interest's phone or laptop, you have to sit through a long animation of Trend Micro running a virus scan. Yes, this game is set in some sort of bizarre parallel reality where people responsibly run virus scans multiple times a day instead of frantically clicking "Not now" twice a year.

Telltale GamesWhat's next? Showing your character doing his taxes, like some sort of crazy person?

That's annoying enough, but then the game has a character announce that she's using the program out loud, even though she's in a room all by herself.

Telltale GamesYou know, like when you're looking at porn and go, "Nice, Internet Explorer has found a porno I like."

3

Metal Gear Solid 3 Extols The Virtues Of A Japanese Snack (That Didn't Exist Yet)

In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, you heal with food you find in the jungle, like frogs, mushrooms, snakes (hence the name), or something called "CalorieMate." If you don't know what CalorieMate is, don't worry. We could hardly expect you to, since it's a Japanese snack that debuted in the '80s. Your character, Snake, also hasn't heard of it, since he's an American in a remote jungle ... in 1964. Deliciousness transcends time and space, it seems.

Luckily, your partner on the radio is more than willing to explain CalorieMate to you.

2

Oddworld, A Game About The Evils Of Consumerism, Now Has Product Placement

In Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee for the PS1, the titular Abe is a worker at an alien abattoir when he learns his race is going to be turned into a delicious dessert, so he sets about freeing his people. As such, the entirety of the game takes place in an intentionally disgusting meat factory, which is also full of ads for the fictitious products the abattoir sells.

GT Interactive Software

GT Interactive SoftwareAnd we thought it was the Xbox 360 that popularized the "nothing but brown and greys" color palette.

1

Street Fighter V Plastered Logos All Over The Characters

In late 2018, a major update introduced a new "feature" to Street Fighter V, in much the same way a scummy sexual partner might introduce a fascinating new venereal disease to your system. Suddenly, advertising for the Capcom Pro Tour was inserted everywhere in the game. And we mean everywhere.

Capcom

CapcomGotta reach that all-important "bloodthirsty psychotic hermit" demographic.