The 35 Greatest Video Game TV Ads

This commercial definitely has that '90s weirdness to it, but it also demonstrates the futility of arguing tech specs with the general public. The classroom full of video game marketing reps might as well be full of gamers, and Atari's grinding its teeth trying to express why the Jaguar was the best system available. No wonder they lost in the console wars. Here's a tip for future marketing classes: don't make your audience feel stupid.

"Hey plumber boy! Mustache man! Your worst nightmare has arrived!" This isn't a bad ad. It's actually pretty funny. But the real joke is that the original Crash Bandicoot was released only a month or so before Super Mario 64—and while we like Crash Bandicoot well enough, the difference between the two is like night and day. It turns out that bandicoot was all talk after all.

Jonah Hill's come a long way since Superbad—not only did he drop all that weight, but he's gotten really good at Modern Warfare, or so this ad purports. Hill stars as "The n00b" alongside The Vet (Avatar's Sam Worthington) and, spoiler, another n00b (Orlando Magic's Dwight Howard). Star power doesn't usually woo us, but seeing Hill unload a clip and chuck a throwing knife just hits the spot for some reason.

Every Halo game has had amazing advertising, and Reach is no exception. The prequel story it tells is so important to the franchise's fiction that Bungie dedicated an entire game—their final Halo game, in fact—to telling it. This ad perfectly captures the tragedy of the fall of the planet Reach and begs us not to forget it. It also pumped us up like crazy to play Reach ("Holy crap, jetpacks!").

You'll quickly find that there are three types of trailers on this list: the moving, the intentionally funny, and the unintentionally funny. This is mostly the latter. When Mario was still associated with Atari and his only appearance anywhere, ever, was in Donkey Kong, a goofy song and a confused, mustachioed Italian man could still sell games. "Mario, where are you?" he plaintively wails, though he's clearly Mario. Wait—maybe this is deeper than we thought. On second though, no.

"Once upon a time, princesses were called to rescue two captured plumbers." There aren't a lot of games with similar plots, and Super Princess Peach on the DS was pretty enjoyable. In this ad, we're given a glimpse into princess boot camp, although they leave out the parts where the princesses-in-training are taught how to bake cakes, play tennis and drive go-karts.

The scariest thing about this old commercial for the Sega Dreamcast's Seganet (like Xbox Live, but a failure) is how close it is to today's reality. People across the country, young and old, united only by their love of gaming and their hatred of one another. All that's missing is a ten-year-old screaming homophobic slurs into a bluetooth headset.

This ad for Metroid Prime 2 is great because it manages to focus on both the Power Suit and the woman underneath it. Samus's strength is evident as she confidently struts on screen, yet all that stands between her and death is "a few inches of metal." She's vulnerable, as well, and therefore relatable. She's the perfect hero.

The bewilderment we felt before we realized that Kirby's BFF in this ad is in fact a finger and not what it initially looks like is only second to our confusion as to why they didn't just go with a giant stylus and avoid all the innuendo altogether. Too hard to fit a guy into a stylus suit, we guess.

Out of all the commercials on this list, this has got to be the actual worst. Obviously, that also makes it one of our favorites. We will never figure out what this guy running around in the dark has to do with Zelda, besides him yelling the names of random things from Zelda. As an ad, it fails. As a postmodern expression of Nintendo's dissatisfaction with traditional advertising (or, you know, whatever), it also fails. Its one redeeming quality is that he looks like that one bad guy from Ghostbusters 2. "PUH-PUH-PEAHAT!"

We will never, ever get tired of bad rap songs from the '80s and '90s. Whether they were meant to be educational, marketing or something else, what they inevitably are is hilarious. This one really captures the way Dr. Mario was sort of annoying. And we love the meta-ness of an ad ripping off an entire genre of music for a song about a game that ripped off Tetris.

Not that GTA IV needed a great ad to be successful, but this 60-second TV spot is really enticing. Protagonist and recent American emigrant Niko Bellic strolls through Liberty City like he already owns the place and steals a car (even though he clearly isn't in a hurry) while the scenery around him changes. The camera finally pans up to show the city skyline, and the drool starts to drip down onto our keyboards.

This one's part of a great series of ads for R&C: Size Matters on the PSP that show a lucky group of kids testing out a number of the game's new weapons. The moral grey area of handing some teenagers a bunch of wacky firearms and letting them go at it aside, it did make us want to play more Ratchet and Clank, so apparently it's a success.

This is one of those classic Nintendo commercials from the '90s, showing four iconic characters skipping through a meadow and then somehow beating the crap out of one another. Add in some footage of Pikachu spamming that down+B lightning attack for an entire round and this is pretty dang close to the actual game.

Sometimes all it takes to make a good trailer is a good song, and this Lost Odyssey ad definitely succeeds in that regard. We love the juxtaposition of the classic tune (it's Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" by the way) with the steampunk JRPG visuals, and the way the ad crescendos toward the end. Plus, any game montage-like video that doesn't have "Let the Bodies hit the Floor" in the background is fine by us.

As part ofthe buildup leading toward the culmination of the Halo trilogy, Microsoft created this interactive diorama and a series of ads to go with it (like this one). The campaign was like Memorial Day for Halo's Human-Covenant War, chronicling a documentary being made about its final conflicts, complete with interviews with veterans as they recounted past events. Since Microsoft was in charge of the ads, and they had no idea what Halo 3's plot would actually be, they just made it up, and the battle depicted here never actually happens. That doesn't stop it from being a fantastic campaign, though.

(Warning—video NSFW) Some hail these abstract PS3 ads as great art, while others realize that they have absolutely nothing to do with the PS3, or video games at all. Still, Sony was trying to prove a point—we think it's that owning a PS3 is an act of defiance, a luxury that puts the boot to the confines of our buttoned-down society's fear of gaming. They might have also been endorsing hallucinogenic drug use and / or copious masturbation.

Here's another ad where the song (Gary Jules's "Mad World") makes it, though the visuals are no slouch either. Considering the actual game had a bigger machismo complex than pro wrestling, this commercial is surprisingly heartfelt. We really felt a pang when Marcus picked up that half-destroyed statue's face. On the other hand, we're glad there's no actual level in Gears where you walk around picking up pieces of broken statues. We'd much rather blow shit up.

This series of ads for Mario Superstar Baseball on the N64 are funny in a very '90s way, though they do hold up well today. People dressed up in oversized video game character costumes will never get old, after all. By the way, watch until the end of this video—the best ad is the last one. Wait until you see whose car it is (poor guy's always getting screwed over by these people).

If you think the Battlefield 3 vs. Modern Warfare 3 battle going on is annoying, just be glad you weren't alive in 1992. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat—now that was a rivalry. Judging by Super Street Fighter IV's recent success, we'd say it's obvious who ultimately won, but how many lives were lost—how many bad commercials were made—to get them there?

Kevin Butler is the king of the PlayStation brand, and we love him even if he is "just an actor". His presence is overpowering; we literally can't blink when he's on the screen. The PS3 got off to a rough start, and its relative success over the last few years can probably be largely attributed to this ad campaign. He even makes us want to buy a Move, and that's saying something. There's another great Butler ad further down the list, so keep reading.

As far as strange retro ads go, this one is pretty great, but the real question is why it makes Nintendo seem like they're bent on world domination. Maybe they thought kids in the US would respond positively to the challenge, given this country's retaliatory militaristic history. Well, to be fair, they were probably right.

For a decades-old ad, this Super Mario Bros. 3 spot gets it surprisingly right. And they thought Mario was pervasive then. Also, the first guy's devil-may-care haircut and piercing gaze has inspired us to write a book of poetry.

This is from a series of ads that ran in New Zealand, since little kids acting like badasses would never fly in the US. The message is that playing Jam Sessions will make you into an instant rockstar. Oddly, this probably would have worked on us as kids, even if we didn't want to make out with our aunts.

The marketing for Bioshock perfectly expressed the simultaneous decadence and decay of the underwater city of Rapture, as well as the terrifying power of the Big Daddies and the eeriness of their Little Sister charges. It gets the atmosphere just right, gives us a nice preview of some of the powers in the game, and features a great song, as well.

The enigmatic Kevin Butler returns, at his least effusive, to promote God of War 3 by playing it and ignoring some guy's nagging girlfriend. It's a situation we can all relate to—though we've never had Butler backing us up when push came to shove. So our girlfriends left, but at least we still have video games.

We'd actually pay good money to watch an entire musical by whoever was behind this ad. Even in Japanese, its message is clear: A Link to the Past is the best game ever, and the '90s were an extremely magical time. The whole thing has a West Side Story-meets The Muppets vibe. We love the looming Ganon at the end, and we're even pretty sure Ripley from the Metroid series makes an appearance for some reason.

We love Super Bowl Commercials. Dante's Inferno was a pretty cool game, but just imagine if it had actually looked like this. Once again, the song ("Ain't no Sunshine" by Bill Withers) makes this ad work, and the gorgeous direction—from Beatrice's outstretched hand to the panoramic view of Dante descending into hell—is phenomenal.

Directed by Rupert Sanders, the man behind tons of amazing commercials as well as the upcoming Snow White and the Huntsman film, this ad embodies what it's like to be a gamer today. We only wish Modern Warfare's multiplayer was actually this exciting.

The budget for this Skyrim ad has got to be huge—a few years ago, it probably would have been reserved for Super Bowl time. Considering how many games came out this fall, though, Bethesda probably knew they had to pull out all the stops to help Skyrim stand out. And if we hadn't known better, we'd have guessed this was a teaser from A Game of Thrones season 2.

These poor women probably thought they were part of a focus group or something, not an ad campaign promoting the game that's got them so outraged. It was genius of EA to tap into the controversy that a game like Dead Space 2 is capable of stirring up, though. We wonder if reversing the idea (like "Your Dad Hates Final Fantasy XIII" or "Your Mom Loves Animal Crossing") would ever work.

As if watching a cardboard cutout of Mario getting thrown down a cliff and crashing through a stained glass window isn't meta enough, this ad also treats us to a kidnapped, two dimensional Peach suspended over a paper shredder like it's a vat of lava. We're not sure what the ram is about—do rams like eating paper or something? Either way, it's superb.

"I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" became the unofficial theme song for this game, largely due to this ad. It also became our favorite tune whenever it came on the in-game radio as we wandered the DC wasteland. The ad's slow zoom out from the decrepit bus to show the ruined city in all its glory, and a soldier of the Steel Brotherhood turning his head to look directly at you—followed by Ron Perlman's dark and buttery "War—war never changes"—get us every time.

The sheer cleverness of this ad sometimes overwhelms us, so instead of trying to write about it, we'll just attempt to list every franchise that makes a cameo: Uncharted, Final Fantasy XIII, Infamous, Twisted Metal, Hitman, Modern Warfare, Dead Space, MLB: The Show, Metal Gear Solid, Portal, God of War, Little Big Planet, Killzone, Tekken, NCAA Football, Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, Ratchet and Clank, Resistance. Did we get them all?