Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island "Still the Big One" Commercial

"Still the Big One" is a circa 1995 commercial promoting Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. It has gained infamy for its depiction of obesity and has since been widely regarded as one of the worst Nintendo commercials of all time.

Why It Isn't The Big One

1. To address the elephant in the room, the stomach-bursting scene. It's not as disgusting as it is in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, but even so, no words can describe just how repulsive and grotesque it is.
2. The overweight man in the commercial (who is supposed to be an allegory of Yoshi, by the way) appears to be extremely naive, as he repeatedly chows down on various foods until his stomach swells up to maximum capacity, and he seems to only just notice that. When he says that his stomach is full, the narrator easily coaxes him into taking one more bite, which inevitably results in his stomach bursting.
3. When the man's stomach balloons to maximum capacity, it's abundantly clear that he's wearing an inflatable suit underneath his clothing.
4. As an ad for Yoshi's Island, it feels inappropriate since the game is mostly targeted towards a younger crowd and since this commercial is targeted towards adults, it comes off as ill-suited and depressing since many people back then would've been so repulsed by this advert that they might've never brought the game to their SNES library despite strong sales numbers, thus giving the game a bad look in the west at the time.
5. It's extremely disgusting whenever the man shoves all of the food in his mouth since he often crams so much food in his mouth that it causes him to become fat in the most barf-inducing way imaginable and can make the viewer uncomfortable as a result.
6. It tries way too hard to be edgy and cool but fails due to awful writing and trying to replicate the Sega Genesis ads, which is out of character for Nintendo to do something like that in the first place.
7. Despite being an ad for Yoshi's Island, it rarely says anything about the game aside from the amount of levels, graphics, main gimmick and also the bonus levels, that's it, which by the way is weak advertising and is a bad way of trying to market a video game to consumers, which could've badly affected sales for the title but it didn't thankfully.
   • Even to this day, this was not a good way of Nintendo trying to market Yoshi's Island in the US and since the game is apart of the Mario franchise, they could've at least made sure that it was given the same love as they did when marketing the other Mario-related game in the US at that time, which sadly didn't happen, which could've caused poor sales for Yoshi's Island in the US and would've hurt Nintendo's reputation at that time.
     • Thankfully, despite the commercial initially causing poor sales, the sales later picked up when the game was prominent in Wal-Mart bargain bins in the late 1990s after the launch of the Nintendo 64, along with the GBA port Super Mario Advance 3.
8. Shoddy camerawork and an ugly color-palette that makes the ad look like an eye-sore at worst, which wasn't a good look for this ad at the time it was made.
9. As per usual for most North American video game commercials, this ad does not convey the type of story and music involved in the actual game. Instead, it just shows an unfunny skit and the game title, with a few gameplay clips.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The narrator does a fairly decent job highlighting the game's high points, which wasn't common for American commercials for Nintendo products before the mid-2000s.
2. The other versions (e.g. the GBA port, New Zealand, UK, and/or Canadian version) didn't have stomach bursting.
   • The Japan version has better ads because it did have animation. So, why just dub from the Japanese version instead?
   • The other American ad with the female announcer showing the gameplay is also better than this one.

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