Nintendo has had a lot of really bizarre identity crises. While their reputation is of a really safe, family-friendly video game company, their marketing efforts have aimed to break some of that stereotype. And with that really ambitious effort to break away from that image, Nintendo has put out some controversial advertisements that have sparked some interesting conversation.
In the mid 2000’s, the company was successful in utilizing big popular culture icons to broaden their consumer base to sell their best-selling consoles, the Nintendo DS (154 million units sold) and the Nintendo Wii (101 million units sold). But before Nintendo was airing television advertisements of Beyonce playing a rhythm game (the kind of advertisements that helped bring both teens and female gamers to their products), the company was running really odd magazine ads for their line of Game Boys.
Here are eight of the strangest and most controversial advertisement’s from Nintendo:
