Back in 2000, N64 games – especially N64 games that required the ill-advised expansion pack – didn't exactly have much street cred. Aware of this, the Big N and Rare decided it was time to enter into some risqué business advertising. On paper, it made good business sense. After all, Sony had opened games up to a whole new audience thanks to their edgy PlayStation ads.

What better way to sell a sexy, female-lead, sci-fi FPS than some of this…

While we’ve got no problems with bumpy parts of the girly variety, the whole concept of selling Perfect Dark on the back of sex appeal is truly bewildering. Especially when this is your lead character…

With the Dreamcast and Sonic’s sexy, next-gen curves already available to gamers, Joanna Dark’s pixelated mess of a face and blocky 64 bit-sponsored textures hardly said ‘Sex on a cartridge’. Misleading, then. Not that we mind too much, of course. The final game was ace and deserved to sell as many copies as possible.

The first MotorStorm was undeniably exciting. Probably the only game worth owning at the PS3’s launch, it combined break neck speed with sickening break your neck physics and vehicle argy-bargy. And what could possibly go wrong with the sequel when it looks like the video below?

Exciting, no? Well, it would be if half of the death-defying footage shown in the ad held the merest glimmer of truth. Hurtling hundreds of feet from the back of a biplane to meet the starting line-up below? Awesome! Pity the actual game always starts like this…

Above: Not a death-baiting plane jump in sight

The last 20 seconds of gameplay may also look exciting, but are pretty misleading compared with our experiences of the game. We’d say a more accurate trailer would take out all the explosions of bikers getting twatted and replace them with infuriating footage of drivers getting stuck behind tiny rocks and palm trees.

18 Mar, 2009