Nintendo Entertainment System "You Cannot Beat Us" Commercial
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| Nintendo Entertainment System "You Cannot Beat Us" Commercial | ||||||
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 WE ARE NINTENDO.
WE CHALLENGE ALL PLAYERS. YOU CANNOT BEAT US. | ||||||
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"You Cannot Beat Us" is a circa 1987 Australian commercial promoting multiple games like Duck Hunt, Gyromite, and Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It has gained infamy for a number of reasons, and has since been widely regarded as the absolute worst Nintendo commercial of all time.
Why It Failed At Challenging All Players
- The main problem is that this commercial uses CGI models to display its characters. While the CGI isn't inherently bad for its time, it has not aged well in the slightest and looks very geometric and crude. It even looks like it was done by some 3D modelling beginner.
- Due to the blocky CGI, the character designs are really horrible and ugly (as they tried replicating the NES sprites of the games featured in 3D. Unfortunately, the sprites can't be translated well in 3D, similar to BQ#2A in this wiki's article of Fanboy & Chum Chum.) with the worst offender being Bowser who looks like a demonic low poly version of Godzilla. The designs are so bad that they can be comparable to the designs for the "Money for Nothing" music video.
- The voice used for every single character is really disturbing; every single line is delivered in a monotone gurgling voice that sounds similar to the Daleks in Doctor Who or some kind of an evil robot.
- Rarely any actual gameplay footage is shown for any of the games; for each of the games in question, the "narrator" simply spouts a random quip while another actor is seen playing the game followed by a "character" from the said game appearing to say "YOU CANNOT BEAT US".
- Baffling soundtrack choices; excluding the beginning and end with the beginning playing the start of the original Super Mario Bros. main theme, and the end plays the original Super Mario Bros. game over theme. Almost the entire commercial plays the original Super Mario Bros. castle theme while the whole audio is PAL-pitched for the television standards. It can be NTSC-pitched due to the common YouTube rip being (supposedly) a conversion between 25fps (which the UK, Europe and Australia use) to 24fps/30fps (which the US, Canada, Mexico and Japan use), making the video slower and the audio lower-pitched than usual.
- There was another commercial that was like a sequel to this and it was no better than this. A Japanese boy recites the lines of the commercial while the same music plays, and basically it’s all what it is.
- It almost ruined Nintendo Australia's reputation due to the infamy of this commercial.
- This commercial was as infamous for Australia as the Sonic McDonald's Happy Meal commercial was for Pakistan.
- At the end of the commercial, the "characters" (most likely The Dog from Duck Hunt, Smick from Gyromite, Lakitu and Bowser from Super Mario Bros., and the unnamed man in the beginning) look somewhat off-model.
- It secretly gives out a rancid moral. It could have made a moral like: "Video games are not possible to beat" since this moral can manipulate anyone into not playing any video games.
The Only Redeeming Quality
- The Nintendo logo at the beginning and the end looks kinda cool, plus its CGI aged better compared to the rest of the commercial.
Videos
The Commercial
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