Final Fantasy VII
Marketing when advertising a video game can be quite curious in many cases. Otherwise, that ask some Sony executives when, while going to play a game, they came across a stark reminder of the launch of the SEGA console. Directly and without any shame, some of the advertisements made some of the companies.
But maybe none of them was so blunt as it was in his time the announcement of Final Fantasy 7, that of 1997, not its remake. In fact, this announcement would show that companies were not shy about exposing their rivalry a bit more, attacking directly and revealing their intentions directly. If you don’t believe us, we’re going to show you one of the commercials that years later still made some companies blush in the Nintendo era.
A direct attack on Nintendo 64 without any kind of concealment
While all we fondly remember Final Fantasy VII and its history, it served in its time as a small attack for Nintendo. This is at least proven by a full-page ad for the game in which those who crafted the campaign didn’t have a single good word for Nintendo at the time, but were blunt. And it is that, at the top of the ad, it can be read clearly.
“Please, somebody give the cartridge makers a cigarette and a bandage.”
But if this first sentence can already be quite direct and somewhat striking, we can already indicate that it is not the only part of all that will surprise you. At the bottom of the same ad, you could read an even more direct attack related to the price of games.
“What is perhaps the best game of all time is only available on PlayStation. Good thing. If it were available in a cartridge, it would sell for around $ 1,200. “
Although this may leave us a little shocked, there is a compelling reason for this last comment. Indeed, at the time, Squaresoft (before becoming Square Enix) was a key developer for the NES and SNES, so it was a shock when they announced that they would only release the game for PlayStation and not for Nintendo 64. The reason was the format of the games. The Sony console used a CD while the second used the cartridges.
While cartridges have a shorter charge time, the CD had a lot more storage space. Therefore, a large number of cartridges were required, hence the price joke. Of course, the frankness of this announcement was powerful and brutal, making it clear that if you wanted to profit from this job, the Nintendo 64 was not for you.
