Advertisement Video Games - The Lost Era

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to bring you… Video Games! But not your regular old fashioned ones, I’m talking about Adver-Games, Advertisement Video Games! Because walking around outside and seeing billboards wasn’t enough, NOW we’re gonna be playing entire products that may or may not exist due to the inclusion of advertising. This can go all sorts of ways, some shameless, others blatant and most of the times the final product is terrible. It’s also been going on forever, one of

the first examples is 280 ZZZAP, an arcade racer co-branded alongside the Nissan Datsun 280Z and this was in 1977… One look at this cabinet and you know. Though I dunno who this would convince to buy an entire car. Advertising and video games have been walking hand in hand prior to Mario being a twinkle in Nintendo’s eyes and well, I guess that explains The Game Awards. The first widespread release and well known case of an Advergame was with Tapper, a classic arcade title about sliding glasses

filled with various substances down the bartop in order to appease customers. Oh also there’s a massive logo hogging the top of the screen, HELLO THERE. But this is just an ad INSIDE the thing… We’ve gotta go deeper, to the kids meals and store shelf products of yesterday. I hope you like mascots. So YO, it’s Austin and welcome to The Lost Era of Advertisement Video Games! Except it’s not totally lost because these things are STILL coming out today. Only a few years ago we had that one Colonel

Sanders dating simulator pop out when every brand was going hard on social media. The irony of that developer being named “Psyop” is not lost on me. What was the first instance of an “Advergame” you remember? For me it was definitely the time i poured a big bowl of chex and saw a CD-ROM come out of it. Chex Quest, a Doom Clone that we’ll be getting into later. BUT, before we get started… We interrupt this video about AdverGames to talk about today’s sponsor, Pixel Starships! Do ya like space? We

ll recently I came across this game called Pixel Starships. It’s a sci-Fi MMO where you take control and manage yourself a massive starship flying across the galaxy and doing SPACE things. You can customize the layout of your ship, you can engage in battles with other players and explore individual starsystems. It’s got this addictive strategic gameplay where you’ll be managing your crew while engaging in battles which’ll mean targeting individual parts and really thinking about your layout. Pix

el Starships is really simple to pick up and play in spurts. Since it’s got a PC and mobile release I’ve been kicking back after work and managing my little dudes on the go. There’s a lot of strategy and programmable AI so you can really get this vessel operating at MAX power. I like that PvP is easy to access at any time so I can beat other captains online. Or you know, get totally destroyed. I’M WORKIN ON IT OKAY? Pixel Starships is regularly updated with new content, it’s not pay to win and t

he developer is always listening close to the community, they’ve even made it possible for you to create cute character skins to share with others! SO if you wanna take flight, download Pixel Starships with my link below and if you do you’ll be receiving $100 Starbux on arrival! PLUS use my code AUSTINERUPTION that’s one word in game to get yourself an additional 125 Starbux! Check out Pixel Starships today! Thanks for the sponsor, but for now we un-interrupt your sponsor to re-interrupt your re

gularly scheduled program… With Advergames. This could mean anything though, I mean technically Max Steel on the dreamcast is an “advertisement” for a dead toy brand. All I know is that when you see one in the wild, YOU KNOW. So for starters… I want a game that exists PURELY because of the brand. I’m not talking about turning the corner in Homefront and seeing the ruins of a White Castle, I’m talking about going to the store, looking my mother directly in her eyes and crying out to the world “MA

H, CAN WE GET MCDONALD'S TREASURE LAND ADVENTURE?”. Not because I knew it was developed by the people who made Gunstar Heroes… but because I recognized the funny little clown on the box. Ronald here has a lot of games we’ll be getting into today, but there’s so many so strap in. What better way to get this train rolling than with video games based on some of our most basic needs? No not basic shelter or “Companionship The Video Game”, I’m talking about food. If it goes in your mouth and it had a

funky mascot, it probably got a game. I actually wrote in my script “Games Based on Eating Stuff”. Original, I know. No matter the generation, for better or worse you’ll be able to find yourself a few food tie-in games. I can’t even call it a bygone era cause you’ve got stuff coming out as recently as June this year with Grimace’s Birthday, a real brand new Game Boy Color release. This is… TOO good though, AND too new! The first time a fast food chain would have itself a video game would be sev

eral tuesdays ago with a brand that’s not even in the states anymore, Wimpy! Yeah I’m sure all the kids know this one. Well, this Popeye character’s name, J. Wellington Wimpy inspired a branch of restaurants in the 30’s simply called Wimpy. Burgers, obviously. At a certain point Wimpy ran out of business in America but was still knocking it out of the park in the United Kingdom! Wimpy needed itself a mascot and they didn’t just use the Popeye character so they created Mr Wimpy and I kind of hate

looking at him. What are these medals on his jacket honoring? Is he in the secret service? WELL, in 1984 Ocean Software would help produce a promotional tie-in that was a total clone of BurgerTime and that’s it. Walk over meat and cheese, dodge… THINGS and reconsider playing anything else on your ZX Spectrum. Mr. Wimpy isn’t very spectacular… BUT IT WAS THE BEGINNING. Fast forward to the late 80s and this is where things get wacky. I think when it comes to “Advertisement” Video Games, one of th

e first things people think of IS McDonalds, SPECIFICALLY, McDonaldLand. McDonaldland… is a ridiculous concept. Sometime in the 60s a bunch of suits were like “How do we get the children interested in forcing their parents to go to our mid tier restaurant?” and APPARENTLY the answer was by creating a bunch of OC’s, a whole universe with fantasy elements and teaming up with every company under the sun to flood the market with STUFF. We got cartoons, we got Little Golden Books, we got commercials

that were essentially shorts of these characters… just doing stuff. I guess as a kid seeing the Hamburglar snatch burgers was going to make me want to crawl around disease riddled play places and try the latest Nintendo 64 games, each of which rocking some mad stick drift. But jokes on them, I preferred the Burger King crown. More on them later. So WITH McDonaldland would come a grand total of 4 full video games. Not kids meal toys, things you had to buy at the store. We got 3 of them stateside,

you just might not have heard of the Japanese exclusive Donald Land. Developed by Data East, this Famicom platformer is about one thing and one thing only. Scaring children. Not just in the way it looks, which is a little bit unnerving. I mean the trees stare up at you anytime you jump on them, but also it’s got NES Difficulty stemming purely from the jank. Every level has instant de*th pits that’ll restart the stage, and for some reason attack and run are the same button so you’ll be slip slid

ing and trying to throw bombs at enemies. Also why does Ronald use bombs? I’m… I’m just gonna accept this one. Despite the borderline nightmarish representation OF McDonaldLand, this one aint half bad. It’s a shelf above a lot of licensed stuff from the era, although those games didn’t take me to a McDonald’s order counter inbetween stages. They also didn’t have enemies that look like this. I dunno why we didn’t get Donald Land, but we DID get the other NES release. Coming out in 1992, Virgin Ga

mes’s M.C. Kids is easily the most famous of the bunch. At least in part due to it’s banging soundtrack. You don’t play as Ronald this time around, instead you pick between one of two… uh, McKids I guess. Burgers stolen by the Hamburglar, yadda yadda, go save the McDonaldLand and be wary of Ronald’s immense back problems. Rather than being a straight platformer, this ones got more of your typical 80s puzzle elements with hidden objects in each stage. You need these to make it to the next world t

o hang out with Grimace or whoever, so get searching. WHICH IN LIES THE PROBLEM, by the time this actually came out you could (and should) be playing things like Sonic 2, Mortal Kombat, heck Super Mario World had been out for well over a year. SO go buy a Sega Genesis and Boot up Global Gladiators instead, the supposed “Spiritual Successor” that came out in the same year. One look at the box and… I don’t see anything that says McDonalds. Even the back has… oh wait THERE it is. Global Gladiators

did NOT want you to know what you were about to do. The first part was bad enough but now we’re being sonically bombarded by Tommy Tallarico saying “Are you Ready” and “YEAH” over the McDonald’s Golden Arch. I was NOT ready. Within seconds of turning on Global Gladiators it becomes evident that you just got tricked into playing a Mickey Dees co-branded pro environmental video game because YES, APPARENTLY THIS NEEDED TO EXIST. The McKids are now McPreTeens running around with Mustard guns squirti

ng at big globs of goo as they gladiate the globe all while Ronald pretends like he isn’t a part of the problem. WERIDLY this thing got pretty decent reviews and there’s some neat stuff here. The animations are pretty top notch for the time, the levels are colorful and the music’s alright. I DUNNO IF THE GAMEPLAY HOLDS UP considering each level is “collect a certain amount of golden arches and reach the end, NO we aren’t telling you how many” There’s also a weird momentum building to movement so

you’ll be sure to fall into pits and die thinking you’ve got enough speed. I also love how it abruptly ends without any mention of McDonalds at all, almost as if the entire team hated it. Anyways, I think global Gladiators is kinda stinky, but don’t tell reviewers from the 90s I said that. You know who ISN’T? Treasure! This Japanese developer has made some of my favorite games of all time like Guardian Heroes, Astro Boy: Omega Factor, Gunstar, you name it. But their sophomore release just happe

ned to be a promotional tie-in game with the fast food giant, and the one game that went full ham on the LAND part of McdonaldLand, McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure. 9 syllables of synergetic POWER. It’s also.. Actually good. Like, REALLY good. Developed alongside Gunstar, initially because the devs needed money and a proven track record, McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure feels like they had something to prove. One look at this box and you’d be forgiven in assuming that this is meant only for

kids 5 and younger, but inside is a super solid platformer with multiple movement mechanics, and banging music. The story doesn’t matter, it’s something something McDonalds, the characters are whatever. It just Ronald with a comically long chin, except this time he can shoot sparkles out of his fingers. What MATTERS, is that it got that Treasure level of care put into it. Every stage has multiple moving elements, sometimes rhythm based other times totally level warping. There’s a stage where yo

u’ll walk past mirrors and see your reflection, other times an enemy will pop out. Sumo wrestlers can completely change the way a stage looks causing you to have to think on your toes. You use a freakin.. I dunno, scarf in order to do vertical platforming. Boss fights are more than just slapping and running and BOY the music goes unbelievably hard. THIS STUPID LOOKING GAME IS LITERALLY A STUPID FOOD ADVERTISEMENT, AND I BEAT THE WHOLE DANG THING FOR THIS VIDEO. Which is really just a testament t

o how good Treasure is. If you can comes to terms with playing this, I think it’s a good time. Just try to keep that one to yourself. I already failed. McDonaldland and Ronald McDonald have faded away in recent times due in part to that killer clown scare in 2016 but I guess there’s technically one more, Adventures Through McDonaldland. It’s just a point and click adventure with lots of minigames… one with horrifying 3D visuals and maps that look like Planet Namek did meth. All you really need t

o know about this one, is that it was made by McDonald’s Australia. And you can immediately tell. Treasure Land is hands down the best one of these so far. So let’s go ahead and put that right at the top of the list. Can ye be beaten? Let’s find out with a DIFFERENT Fast Food company. Or in my case, walk across the street and get yourself the most Americanized version of tacos out there. Rather than spending money at a store, for a product what if you could get yourself a game bundled with a kid

s meal? WELL if you did you might have played Taco Bell: Tasty Temple Challenge. Look you tell a 10 year old they can get a free game instead of some crappy Nintendo 64 plastic nonsense, they’re taking the real game. Taco Bell: Tasty Temple Challenge is, simply, a Doom Clone. But instead of shooting the minions of hell with various weapons of minor and mass destruction, you’re squirting snakes with hot sauce packets. WHICH IS APPARENTLY HOT ENOUGH TO BURN ANIMALS ALIVE. Maybe we need a recall? T

his was a cross promotion for their long lost “Wild” Sauce as well as a way to bring children and manchildren into the store in droves. It’s just also about 25 minutes long and has less content than a shareware version of Duke Nukem 3D. It runs like crap, it looks the same the entire time, the jpegs of tacos look TOO crunchy and it DEFINITELY sucks… But they sure don’t make em like this anymore. Instead you just get, you know, fully fledged dating simulators where they turn Colonel Sanders into

a sex symbol. Just… DON’T. But the most famous of the fast food drive thru video games has GOT to be the Burger King trilogy. Back in 2006, BK went full crazy with their marketing and turned their “King” mascot into this creepy guy who well, I guess NEEDED you to eat. People all over the states know the King, we get it. Well they’d team up with developer Blitz Games in order to make a trio of products that you could buy at 4 bucks a pop which is just a smidge more than the Oblivion Horse Armor,

you could take a physical disc home and enjoy a brand new seventh generation video game. PocketBike Racer, Sneak King, Big Bumpin’... And most of em SUCK. PocketBike Racer is aggressively mid. It’s a generic kart racer with minimum mechanics disguised as a motorcycle racer. It’s… largely forgettable. Sneak King is the most famous and ALSO the worst by far. Imagine Metal Gear Solid, except not at all where the only goal is to sneak up on people and force them to eat Burger King. I’d rather get sp

linter celled in real life. The “best” in quotations of the bunch is Big Bumpin which is just a top down bumper cars game where you wanna smack a puck into a goal. Like Rocket League, it even predates Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle-Cars, Psyonix eat your heart out. All three of these are ESSENTIALLY the type of things you’d see on Xbox Live Arcade for like 3-5 dollars so they’re pretty bare bones but it definitely beats your average kids meal toy. Shout out to the guy with nearly 300

0 copies of Sneak King. I uh… I hope you’re doing alright. If you want a game that’ll make ya feel just about NOTHING, The King Trilogy is for you. Sneak King was so hyped as a notable “bad” game but it’s not even fun to talk about. It’s just kinda… there. There’s more food video games to talk about but I’m full for now so LET’S keep this ball rolling with the SECOND most common type of Advergame… SPORTS. RACING’. Cars, skateboards, EXTREME SPORTS AND TOYS. If I could do a sick trick on top of y

ou, I could also probably play a video game about ya. Speaking of… are Razor Scooters still a thing? I sure hope so. Growing up just wouldn’t be the same without random children slamming into the sides of parked cars on the side of the road. In the year 2000 this WAS the hottest new thing and any kid with a Razor Scooter was the coolest on the block. Just not if it was the video games. Razor Freestyle Scooter AND Razor Racing for the everything at the time were shameless Advergames AND Clones. T

he cover kinda looks like a young Tony Hawk about to totally beef it, and when you boot the thing up you’re greeted with the most 2000s art you’ve ever seen. Do you pick Chad? How about Ami with her blue hair streak? Neither strike your fancy? No worries, just go and unlock UFC fighter Tito Ortiz. Yeah sure, this makes sense. At it’s core, Razor Freestyle Scooter is just a low tier version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and I don’t think anyone expected anything else. Get the thing cause it’s a chea

p sports game, then maybe convince your parents to spend 100 dollars on something that’ll end up with you having stitches. There’s a Game Boy Color port which feels like a discount version of Paper Boy with a single button to do tricks. Also a Game Boy Advance attempt that WANTED to be the GBA version of Tony Hawks but totally fails. THEN you’ve got an entirely other game that has next to no information out there. Razor Racing! Yo did they… give up animating and decide to swap to static pictures

in the middle? Razor Racing is essentially a palette swap. The Majoras Mask of Razor Freestyle Racing. But instead of centering the gameplay around doing tricks, it’s instead around racing. Which… I dunno if you can tell, has practically no depth. You just kinda GO and continue to clap occasionally for points on time trial mode. At the very least the original as trying to be something else, Razor Racing is confused, ugly, without any licensed music and resembles a tech demo more than an actual

game. THIS is what I expect from my Advergames. 10/10 If going outside and hanging with the cool kids wasn’t an option OR if you only had 10 dollars to spend you could also invest in some Tech Decks! Who needs full sized parks when you can fingerboard over the ENTIRE WORLD. You aren’t seeing Razor Scooter competitions these days, take me down to the Fingerboarding Championship so I can watch some Finger Masters at work. They DEFINITELY trained on Tech Deck Skateboarding for the Game Boy Color! 7

.5/10 from GameSpot LETS GO. What you see on the screen is all there is to see. You don’t actually do points for tricks, you just collect other Tech Decks which are tiny on your poorly lit Game Boy Color in the first place. When even Nintendo Power says ehhhhhh, you know there’s not much here. But that’s not all! Screw just the BOARD, we gotta focus on the DUDES with Tech Deck Dude Bare Knuckle Grind! NO that’s not a Streets of Rage reference, it’s instead a barely functioning Tony Hawk Clone! W

ho’da thought. This was actually sold piecemeal as four different discs that you would install on your computer in order to unlock more levels and characters. Unfortunately they didn’t account for Windows 11 being a thing so uh… I couldn’t get it to properly work. They ALSO canceled an Xbox port of Bare Knuckle Grind so I SUPPOSE the world wasn’t meant to see you. Which is fine because honestly they all just kinda look like wieners. I hate TECH DECK DUDES. Tech Deck Snowboarding is also a thing.

I found this box on ebay and could not find ANY information on the internet regarding it… But that’s because it’s not a real video game. While looking in the files I found a launcher for one Snow Wave: Avalanche which is an unrelated PC snowboarding game. They just brought this over to the states, swapped the name out and didn’t even put the little weiner dudes in.The back of it’s box shows screenshots that are all dudeless. Which is just what I expect from something as bottom tier as an Adverg

ame. HOW ABOUT ADVER-CARS? Most vehicle and racing games are walking advertisements anyways, you can’t boot up a Forza or Gran Turismo without being bombarded with corporate logos every which way you look. SO how about racers and car sims that are SPECIFICALLY Advertisements? Games designed to showcase one specific vehicle or Make have been floating around since the 70s as we’ve learned, and the quality usually isn’t there. Lest we forget the entire Ford Racing series. YOU WEREN’T DRIVING AROUND

BUGATTIS IN THAT I’LL TELL YOU WHAT. If you wanted to take say, a Volkswagen Beetle on the road, you’d have to pick up Beetle Adventure Racing for the Nintendo 64! Swinging in with ridiculously good reviews everywhere but Famitsu, clear Volkwagen haters, Beetle Adventure Racing was one of the best N64 racers on a platform that had a LOT of fantastic ones. Sure these days it might feel a little barebones, but it embraced it’s silliness. I mean there’s one car to play as, and your stats change wi

th the paintjob. I like that the speedometer moves on the top left and there’s enough arcade racing fun here to be had for anyone. On the flip side… there’s Yaris. 17. A 17. You gotta WORK for that. Look I’m more of a Mazda guy myself so count me in on the Yaris haters club. Delisted cause it sucks probably I’m not sure. Look you could peek at any era of gaming and find yourself some sort of Advergame based on whatever vehicle at the time. Automobili Lamborghini, Volvo THE GAME, freakin’ F355 Ch

allenge: Passione Rossa. Some are whatever, others are ok and even more are flat out bad. Anyone wanna throw down on some Chrysler Classic Racing? A game where according to the back of the box, you play as “a nerdy wallflower” and attempt to become the coolest cat alive. Time to pull up in my PT Cruiser and ask the cool kids what they think about Return to Dark Tower. And promptly get shoved in a locker. *show of a kid getting shoved in a locker but its a copy of chrysler for the face idk it pro

bably exists* BUT AT LEAST I’LL STILL HAVE MY COPY OF JEEP THRILLS. YES. I BOUGHT THIS. FOR REAL. Made by Game Sauce, the people behind My First Dollhouse and Little Britain: The Video Game, Jeep Thrills REALLY wants to be Beetle Adventure Racing. HECK, it even takes a lil inspiration from Cruis’n USA. But as a reminder, you are looking at a Playstation 2 video game released in 2008. The next generation was already two years old and you had better looking PS2 launch titles. Jeep Thrills is CHEAP

, the controls are stiff and I guess they realized it because this here’s an arcade racer. You’ve got a boost meter filling up on the side at all times and I’m just sitting here wondering who is this for? The cover might be one of the worst I’ve ever seen, the words aren’t centered, they’re in different fonts and… I just realized no one is driving any of the jeeps. W-What? Jeep Thrills is 100% prime Kusoge material and the best thing going here is that there’s actually car- er, jeep destruction

and that’s pretty neat. But yeah, to put things into perspective, you could have already been playing Forza Mortosport 2 for a whole year by the time Jeep Thrills came out, HECK Gran Turismo 4 for SEVERAL. This is the game your parents bought you at the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid when they went to Vegas and saw The Police on their final reunion tour without ya. One more stop on the “Extreme Sports” train and I think it’s something that every generation since the 80s has had. This is definitely the mo

st american thing possible, but EVERYONE wanted to get a Nerf G*n. I dunno about everyone else, but my childhood was filled with hurting myself on corners, edges, and all sorts of playground equipment. So it kinda goes without mention that I’d find someway to get smacked around with a Nerf Gun or two. There was always that kid who had the comically large blaster who’d hide ontop the slide and while I WASN’T him, I sure loved me some foam darts. Hasbro’s toy line is still immensely popular so it

shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s gotten a few video games too. You just might be surprised to know that one of them is an Unreal Tournament clone? Nerf Arena Blast! I’m not really sure why these little darts are making big explosion noises and causing mass amounts of AOE damage, but I’ll take it! Arena Blast is exactly what it looks like. It’s a late 90s twitch shooter with obnoxiously bright visuals and character designs that scream EXTREME. The intro here was thrown together by Mondo Med

ia who would later go onto make Happy Tree Friends which is totally random but true! I’d be lying if I said this was bad by the way. Considering it pulls a lot from the boomer shooters of the time, Nerf Arena Blast has you duck diving around corners and trying to aim shots in a way only that era had. Every nerf dart has travel time so you can just hitscan things, you gotta account for distance and moving, it’s a pretty involved game! Considering I was 9 and sheltered when this came out, had I kn

ow about it’s existence I would have hopped online and played against other cool tweens until someone needed to use the phone. This things got better reviews than Starfield! Arena Blast is one heck of an Advergame, especially considering most of what we’ve talked about so far… Which makes the next Nerf titles all the more disappointing. Nerf N-Strike and Nerf N-Strike Elite two rail shooters that came with a big ol plastic attachment with dual functionality. You want a Wii Blaster? You wanna Dar

t Blaster WITH 3 Whistling Sonic Micro Darts! Sure! After the fast paced action and silliness of the previous game, both of these come off… poorly. They’re 4 player rail shooters where you don’t have any control over movement, just aim at the screen and shoot. It’s like Time Crisis except without the fancy guncon kickback or uh… much personality. I DO like that darts fill up the stages as you blast away but truly these are two of the games of all time. Barely above shovelware. Recently there was

Nerf Legends ALLLL the way in 2021 on the Playstation 5! THAT’S RIGHT, we’ve been getting Nerf or NOTHING games for well over 20 years. I actually covered this one in my worst of the year 2021 video though so uh… well that kinda gives it away. I’m trying to write ANYTHING about it from memory, but like most GameMill products it went in one ear and out the other. Most likely some kind of tax break, Nerf Legends looks like Overwatch, plays like discount Overwatch and has shooting that feels worse

than a PS1 title. Avoid. There was actually ONE MORE that unfortunately shut down already. Nerf Ultimate Championship was an Oculus Quest VR shooter that was delisted half a year after release. Online VR games are a gamble already, but I don’t know what they were thinking with this. Look the idea of playing with Nerf guns in a situation that ISN'T WITH REAL NERF GUNS OUTSIDE doesn’t make sense in my brain. If we want a kid friendly sh**ter we got Fortnite for that. Also I’m an adult, I’m gonna

move onto Paintball if anything. I can see why someone would want to make a Nerf or McDonalds cross promotional game. So what if we take things a bit deeper to a MUCH weirder level? For instance… who in the right mind wants a Gap Kids video game? Snow Day: The GapKids Quest. WHY? The answer is no one, which is probably why these were given away for free. I’m actually surprised there’s not MORE of these, but I guess making video games takes time and resources, even if it goes to this. Snow Day is

a collection of minigames, 2 of which according to the cover are hidden unlockables. The thing would tell you “Check Your Computer Every Week” so you could figure out how to GAME. Which sounds like a trojan to me. You got a Pac-Man Clone, match the picture, the worst ski-free ripoff you’ve ever played and… whatever this is? Gap Kids Quest is basically one of those terrible flash games on the internet, except you needed to slap a disc in your computer to play. Speakin’ of flash games, there’s a

metric brick ton of these floating around that may have actually been lost to time. Back in 2001 sugar water giant Capri-Sun launched this game called Planet Juice and there’s practically a single screenshot out there. Beyond that there’s a neat article on Wired talkin’ about this virtual world that in the year 2023 MAYBE 5 people know of. Sugary Drinks, Soda and junk food have a TON of Advergames. What better way to sell yourself to kids than to entice them with one of them fancy vidya games? Y

ou got M&Ms, Pepsi, Coke, 7-Up, even Red Bull Break Dancing on the DS! All I want for christmas… is a brand new copy of Red Bull BC One… said no one. I’ll come back to the sugary stuff another day because there’s literally another video worth here and I HAD TO SWING THE AXE TO GET THIS THING OUT ON TIME… So instead, let’s talk about Hooters Road Trip. Guess what? It happened again. ANOTHER day, ANOTHER palette swap. Hooters Road Trip is a conversion of a PC title called Free Wheelin’ USA. Except

this time it’s not difficult to find and was instead published by Ubisoft! Released at a respectable $9.99 in 2002, Hooters here is corny cheesecake at it’s finest. It’s technically a racer, just the whole concept is about going on a road trip. I guess in Free Wheeling you’d just be driving town to town doing road tripping things.. In Hooters Road Trip you’re driving city to city from Hooters to Hooters. Is Hooters the only restaurant in this world? Is this post apocalyptic? You can tell they s

lapped the theme ontop of the original cause there’s absolutely no chicken wing presence in the actual gameplay at all. Instead it’s just slippery driving across the countryside as a red truck barrels through traffic, HE’S GOTTA GET TO HOOTERS FIRST. Wait no… I-I literally didn't? Similarly to Jeep Thrills, I feel like this one could have benefitted from going full Crus’n USA. I’m surprised there’s no hooters girls on the side of the road, or even like a billboard! You can trick people into thin

king you’re not playing a schlocky Hooters game for several minutes at a time and LET’S BE REAL, that’s a failed Advergame. Anyways the worst thing about this is that the music defaults to this one butt rock track playing over and over, you have to manually change it to random. IF YOU DON’T… BUCKLE UP, WE’RE GONNA GET SOME WINGS. Just make sure to put on some Axe Body spray so the waitresses don’t run away. BY THAT I mean going to mojomastergame.com and playing Mojo Master. A game about picking

up a date with the power of Axe Unlimited. HAS THIS WORKED FOR ANYONE. Yeah this is… pretty much exactly what I expected. Also PAUSE, computer ENHANCE, that is definitely the same people over and over. Mojo Master is lost media at this point and that’s PROBABLY ok? I do find it strange that the girls are all elemental based and that this was developed by the people who brought us kid friendly diablo clone Fate. But F**K them kids, grab your Atari Lynx and head out to the corner store. It’s time

to play the canceled Marlboro Go! Move over Pokemon Go! It’s time for a NEW outdoor activity! This never came out obviously, but the fact that this was being considered and developed by not just one, but teams of people in multiple companies REALLY shows how different the 90s were. They even made this big ugly Lynx handheld to promote it! Also nearly 5 years no sm*king for me now, no big deal nbd. ANYWAYS let’s make our way to the happiest place on earth… in the form of a disc you’d grab from st

aples. The Walt Disney World Explorer. If there ever was an advergame that would work, it’d be Disney World Explorer. It’s uh… literally in the name. You click around the park that you’re not currently at, looking at pictures of various attractions you’re not attending and learning a self serving history lesson! There’s little trivia bits for each little attraction and I guess that’s fun for a very specific type of kid in the 90s. They even made a second edition and presumably wanted to keep thi

s thing going but that never happened. Less of a GAME and more of an application, but there seems to be a LOT of nostalgia for those who piped this in their computers. Which ones better, this or Universal Studios Theme Park Adventure for the Gamecube? P-probably the one with actual gameplay huh? So far we’ve talked about mostly American chains but OBVIOUSLY there’s gonna be more Advergames outside the states. That includes some that are decent too. Yoshinoya is the Japanese Gyudon equivalent of

McDonalds and somehow they got an Advergame on the Playstation 2 made by the same people who designed Operation Darkness and the Cotton series. It’s called uh, just Yoshinoya and the entire experience is a fast paced diner service sim. You run, you press the button on the screen, you deal with patrons before they rage. Basically the same thing as Diner Dash but with a cuter style and crappy customer boss fights. Or PERHAPS you want to be on the OTHER side of customer service. UK retailer Game pr

esents Christmas Shopper Simulator. Just typing the name in brings up a million memey let's plays so you know exactly what this is. NONSENSE. Which is also how I feel about “The Mission”. Does ANYONE know this? In the year 2000 Nike ran this ad campaign starring a bunch of famous Socce- err, Football players. They’re set on a mission to retrieve a ball, but not just ANY ball, it’s the Nike Geo Merlin. Apparently the “roundest” ball ever made. So in this commercial they break into a museum, they

avoid motion detection lasers until they uh… don’t, THEN get attacked by a bunch of ninjas. They’re like, dribble fighting dudes in kendo suits with a soccer ball, then there’s robots, then a robot gets destroyed by an elevator, NIKE. Apparently publisher Microids who have been around that long decided this needed to become a video game and what they made is one of the worst things I’ve ever played. The Mission has some of the most terrible controls I’ve ever used. It’s a hybrid of a soccer vide

o game AND a 3rd person… uh, platformer? You have to hit enemies with balls and when you don’t have it you can’t do any attacks. They just hold onto it until you steal it back. I was stuck trying to disarm this fuse box for a solid 20 minutes until I found out the only way to properly lob the ball is to fill your meter up halfway, release and then immediately press down on the d-pad. THERES NO MANUAL RIP ANYWHERE so I tracked down a review on mobygames. THIS WAS IT. The Mission… is TERRIBLE. And

if they were trying to sell me on the Nike Geo Merlin you can barely see the thing. WOAH IS THAT THE WORLD FAMOUS ROUNDEST BALL EVER? Needless to say, I think they failed…. Their mission. Alrighty y’all, one more for today and I think we all know what’s coming. When you think of an “Advergame”, there’s most likely a single game that comes to mind. It’s gotten sequels, it’s even gotten an HD remake, but there’s only one Chex Quest. I… LOVED Chex Quest. I also don’t have too much to say that hasn

’t already been said. Chex cereal needed an ad campaign so General Mills threw some money at a smaller game developer, Digital Cafe to create an Advergame. It wasn’t uncommon for kids cereal boxes to have “prizes” in them, Kellogs and other companies have been doing that since the early 1900s. Chex Quest would be the first video game to become that free prize, but it’s funny when you realize it was a straight up Doom Clone, NO, a Doom total conversion. One of the most controversial and violent g

ames from the early 90s into this kid friendly cereal man blasting away green aliens called Flemoids. It also has the best CG intro. Chex Quest isn’t amazing, it’s also not that long of a title, the whole thing clocks in at less than an hour and you’ll be donezo. But it’s definitely the highest quality Advergame we had seen at this point. Considering it IS essentially an easier version of Doom, an already fantastic release, it was hard to go wrong. I played the crap out of this thing, as a kid w

hen you got a new video game for FREE it was a treasure trove you exploited until the disc stopped working. Whenever you beat the thing you were greeted with a message saying that the “Mission Continues at chexquest.com, but unfortunately that websites been dead for so long even the wayback machine can’t pull it up. However that doesn’t stop me from talking about Chex Quest 2: Flemoids Take Chextropolis! General Mills realized they had a cult hit on their hands and RUSHED out a sequel. In an int

erview with LevelSave ,developer Charles Jacobi suggested they wanted it out QUICK, and considering it was available for download less than a year after the original, you can REALLY tell in the level design. Chex Quest 2 feels like it was made on a strict timeline and the final product reflects that. Then, radio silence. This is when the cult hit status started to grow. More and more people would release fan made chex games until finally in 2008 a real Chex Quest 3 would be released. While techn

ically not official at the time, it was still a new game in a series that had a wild following online. It’s the beefiest of the bunch, has a lot of care put into the levels and even has a proper “The End” screen where ChexMan gives us one heck of a dreamwork smirk and we ride off into the sunset. A happy end for all, right? NOT IF CAPITALISM HAS ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT. CHEX QUEST HD. This is… uh, a little loud. I guess enough time had passed that General Mills was wanting to re-create their ow

n Advergame so in 2020 they’d release Chex Quest HD once again for free! But this time with multiple characters and co-op because instead of cereal, this would be an Advergame for Chex Mix! The bane of anyone sitting at their desk at 1am wanting a snack. HD here has a lot of the original developers, it has a lot of love by big fans of the trilogy and well, it’s hard to judge anything that’s totally free. But unfortunately by taking the “Doom” away from Chex Quest,we’ve instead got a relatively r

un of the general mills shooter which made me want to boot up that old CD-ROM instead. Or uh, launch ZDoom. A cute thing to exist for sure but it pails in comparison. The field of view is obscured by the Chex Armor, most of the levels are really dark and some of the sounds are messed up. Didn’t get a chance to try out the multiplayer but hey, I’m glad it exists! If anything it’ll make people wanna try out the original and I think that’s totally worth it. At the very least, it gives us an HD vers

ion of Chex Warrior deboarding his space ship. My dreams into nightmares. So there ya have it, a bunch of Advertisement Video Games… and if Chex Quest HD is anything to go by I think we’ll keep seeing these things every few years. I didn’t even TOUCH mobile which is where a vast majority of these go. I mean that’s basically what the official Jeremy Renner app is! What’s your favorite Advergame? Is that a sentence anyone has ever said? Mine’s probably unironically that Treasure game from earlier

even if all it really does is make me wanna play Dynamite Headdy again. If you liked today’s video make sure to check out today’s sponsor Pixel Starship! You can click the link down in the description and use the code AUSTINERUPTION in order to get yourself started flying around the galaxy today! It all goes into helping the channel out. If you want to support us directly you can become a patreon support over at Patreon or buy a t-shirt over at The Pixel Empire. This here’s the last video before

Christmas so Happy holidays my friends! BUT stay tuned cause we’re not done yet. I’ve been Austin and catch me next time when we partake in our annual tradition… terrible games.