The Invasion of Nintendo: Now You're Playing With Torture

Nintendo's run through the mid-90's was an interesting one to be sure. After their kid-friendly attempts blew up in their faces in 1993 due to their lackluster port of Mortal Kombat, Nintendo felt the need to put on their big boy pants and introduce the "Play it Loud" ad campaign. This led to Nintendo easing up on their content restrictions in games (Mortal Kombat II was unscathed for its SNES port), and most importantly a focus more on the in-your-face style of advertising that had succeeded for Sega. From ads with music by the Butthole Surfers to bizarre ads like the gross Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island commercial, Nintendo's edgelord status was definitely a sight to behold. And one of the best examples of this was a video cassette called "The Invasion of Nintendo".

Released in 1995, The Invasion of Nintendo focused on previewing and giving tips to several of the hot Nintendo titles of the time as well as a preview of the upcoming Nintendo "Ultra" 64, which was still in development hell at the time. So, without further ado, let's take a look at this video and see how well it does in hyping you for these upcoming titles.

We open the video with men in suits staring at a video screen as a man tells him their mission. To infiltrate Nintendo's research and development laboratories for critical information. He wants info on Yoshi's Island, Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country 2. He says that if they fail, he'll be forced to remove a vital appendage. So, yeah. We got a weird premise for this preview video, mainly with a guy a bit too fixated on torture. This is getting fifty shades of Mario up in here.

Their first victim is product evaluator Henry Sierchi, who is playing Yoshi's Island. The man asks Henry if he "really needs those thumbs" as he seeks top secret info on the game. This leads us to some basic game info like Yoshi's ground pound ability (which is something you could learn from like a minute of gameplay), and that you can get a bonus level by earning 100 percent in each stage in an entire world. These tips don't please the man enough, so he forces his goons to pressure some real tips from Henry.

This is how fetishes start.

He spills the beans on a hidden area in one of the levels of the first world which honestly, is kind of tough to find on your own without dumb luck. And to add to the 90's-ness of this moment, it's accompanied by a clear instrumental of Bush's Machinehead. The man thanks Henry for his info before telling him that next time he might just rip every hair off his... well, you get the idea.

Heading in to tips for Killer Instinct next as we learn from a doctor about the damaging effects of Jago's wind kick and how it can essentially mess up your face. He recommends playing practice mode as to avoid such damage.

Ken Lobb is the next victim as the man wants inside info for winning the next KI tournament. Ken refuses, much like Henry, so his torture is...

Being pestered by his mother, the literal embodiment of Sheila Broflovski from South Park. This is enough to get Mr. Lobb to talk about Killer Instinct. These tips I'm sure are helpful for those who know how to play, but for a certified scrub like myself, hearing things like slappy combos and open auto combo special medium fierce combo breaker fierce dash...

Armond Williams is the next target for his DKC 2 knowledge. He refuses to talk, but it turns out that the man and his suits have ways of making him talk.

Well that was easy enough

His tips are pretty basic fare, look for hidden hooks and that your animal buddies can help you out in finding bonus areas.

We then see a preview for Super Mario RPG as we cut to two female janitors talking about how they can't wait to see a Goomba in ACM and how Square developed it. They made Final Fantasy, you know. These are hilarious mainly because you can tell these two have no idea what they're even talking about. I don't even think they know what a Mario or an RPG is. Though one seems very interested in getting a Luigi tattoo on her left butt cheek. Oh god the 90's really haven't aged well.

Next is Ken Griffey Jr's Winning Run. The Rare developed Griffey game that seems to not be as well remembered as the other Griffey game for SNES. All interspliced with a guy bragging about how he's greater than Griffey. He promises that he'll have his own game "Super NES baseball starring Rodney Kagiyama!" Well good luck with that.

We wrap up the video with footage from Shoshinkai from Japan, focusing on the N64. Mostly just really bad dubbing as we get this skit of these guys trying to find a mysterious tape with footage of the N64. You do get to see some of the big wigs of Nintendo at the time like Gunpei Yokoi and you also get what I believe were some of the earliest shots of the N64 and Super Mario 64. So, for this era when the Internet was in its infancy and you couldn't get up to the minute info so easily, this was at least useful for what it represented. So for all the nonsense this video provided, this was at least worth it. The man thanks his men for a job well done and we end the tape.

A bizarre video that remains one of my favorite little pieces of 90's oddness. I don't think it helps that much with the tips it provides as they're all pretty basic, it doesn't give too many previews, relies heavily on very odd skit humor instead of letting the games speak for themselves but does give the skinny on the first shots of the N64, which is at least a plus. In the end, it doesn't really do much for the games it represents, but if you have a torture fetish, this might be up your alley.