According to series creator Shu Takumi in a 2017 interview, Capcom executives issued two mandates affecting the writing of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. The first mandate was that the game had to include Phoenix Wright in the story, which went against Takumi's original idea for a soft reset of the series. The second mandate was to incorporate the Lay Judge system, a real-life judicial system, into the story, resulting in the creation of Spoiler:the MASON System game program and the trial run of a new Jurist System in the game's last case "Turnabout Succession". The Ace Attorney series began as a critique of how Japan's legal system handles criminal offenses, but around this time, that system was changing. While Japan previously suspended an older jurist system in 1943, their legislative body, the National Diet, gradually implemented a new lay judge system (裁判員, or "Saiban-in") from 2004 to 2009. This system, resembling more democratic systems in North American and European countries, calls upon six random common citizens to serve in serious criminal trials as inquisitorial judges sitting alongside three professional judges. Together they make up the judicial panel and actively analyze and investigate evidence presented to them throughout the trial before ruling on guilt and sentencing. Reflecting this, Spoiler:the Jurist System seen at the end of Turnabout Succession is made up of six random jurors guided by Phoenix Wright, where the player from the sixth juror's perspective has to rule the defendant Guilty or Not Guilty.
Takumi revealed that as part of the game’s promotion, Capcom collaborated with the Japanese Ministry of Justice and even gave a presentation of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney at the ministry's head office, implying that the system's mandated inclusion in the game was political propaganda. Despite Capcom cooperating in the Japanese government's push for this new system and despite participation experiences being reported as positive and easy to understand, the reception to other aspects of the system were largely negative. Complaints included gradually more severe sentencing since its implementation, the risk of criminal penalties for lay judges publicly discussing confidential deliberation room details after trials come to an end, and most starkly, calling upon Japanese citizens to put aside time to participate in the system, who have been increasingly unwilling to do so. This decline in interest has been attributed to the length of both lay judge trials and pre-trial proceedings increasing significantly over the next decade, and due to aging populations and people simply not being able to make these commitments, more citizens refused to serve or even show up to be vetted for serving, making it harder to fill out the jury.
As a result of this reception, the Ace Attorney series has not used Spoiler:the MASON System and the Jurist System since, sticking with the series' traditional Initial Trial system in future games.
In a sponsorship segment for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl produced by comedy group Dude Perfect, a flat, horizontal variant of the game's logo is used on a banner. This is the only known use of this logo during the game's promotion.
Two of the first direct-feed pieces of gameplay released for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl were a 1v1 between Nigel Thornberry and April O'Niel, and a 1v1 between CatDog and Lucy Loud. Both of these battles were wildly one-sided in favor of April and CatDog respectively. In the battle against April, Nigel was controlled by a playtester who had never actually used Nigel before; while in the battle against Lucy, CatDog was controlled by Mattias Hakulinen, who - while not a competitive player - was the best NASB player on its development team at the time. It is not known who was playing as April and Lucy.
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When Hogs of War released, advertisements were printed in the restrooms of British pubs, bearing the double-entendre "It's all about who's got the biggest weapon". This advert was kept in at least two pubs for decades following the game's release, with the ad having been sighted at the North Star in London in 2010 and at the Park Tavern in Stroud Green Road in 2024.
Despite appearing in the Japanese version of the "World Detective Organization Character Trailer Pt. 2" video released to promote the game, the character Yakou Furio is absent from the English version, despite both trailers being near-identical otherwise.
In a rough time span from 1987 to 1988, a commercial for the Nintendo Entertainment System - often colloquially referred to as either "Scary Nintendo Commercial" or "We Are Nintendo, You Cannot Beat Us" - was aired on Australian television by Mattel, the region's Nintendo distributor at the time. The commercial featured primitive CGI renditions of antagonists from different NES games (Smick from Gyromite, Bowser and Lakitu from Super Mario Bros., and the laughing scent hound from Duck Hunt, led by an original character resembling Max Headroom, a dystopian TV character who was being used to market Coca-Cola at the time) mocking the viewer with the phrase "you cannot beat us", set to the ominous castle music from Super Mario Bros.
This commercial has sustained a decent viral popularity, often being featured on listicles and review videos related to bizarre 1980s or Nintendo commercials, but it is not as well known that the advert was part of a larger Nintendo campaign, and that "you cannot beat us" is a variation on another, more frequently-used Nintendo slogan from the country - "it can't be beaten!" This phrase was used in a series of significantly less frightening live-action commercials showing children playing the games while doing imitations of the voice from the CGI commercial, winning, shouting "Beat 'cha!", and then having a hazard from the game enter their room (a tennis ball while playing Tennis, a martial artist while playing Kung Fu, and a generic effect where their chair blasts into the sky for Super Mario Bros.) while a filtered voice announces "We are Nintendo, we do not like losing!"
On June 23, 2016, Sega released a YouTube video titled "25 Years of Sonic the Hedgehog!", a video going through an abridged timeline of the Sonic franchise's games on the anniversary of the first game's North American release. Strangely and controversially for a celebratory video, the video makes multiple snide remarks towards the games featured, some that are innocent in nature (such as Sonic the Hedgehog 3's description mentioning the "Knuckle Chuckle" meme and Sonic Heroes' description referencing the infamous "Look at all those Eggman's Robots!" translation error) while others very directly mock flaws and criticised elements of the games, such as Sonic 3's referencing the "barrel of doom", Sonic 3D Blast's description poking fun at how the Flicky AI would run away from Sonic, 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog not even receiving a description and simply showing its loading graphic, and Sonic Colors' description stating that it is where "Sonic in 3D finally finds its footing", a statement that is technically true when looking at critical reception, but tends to aggravate fans of 2000s-era Sonic games.
At one point, the official Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube releases of the song "Bone Yard" from Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy opened with a GEICO insurance commercial as part of the song. This seemed to have not been part of its initial upload in 2017, and has since been fixed.
In the early 2010s, Pop, a British TV channel that syndicated DIC's Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons, had the fanmade game Sonic on Clouds avaliable on its website.
The character of Penny Crygor was almost completely absent from pre-release material for WarioWare: Get It Together! - with the only instance of her that managed to slip through the cracks being a silhouetted version of her on the title for the Frenemy Frenzy mode - leading some Wario fans to believe she would be absent, much like Dribble & Spitz were in WarioWare: Touched!. When the game released, she would appear in a major role: as a deus-ex machina character in the penultimate level, complete with her own theme song.
Since the game is set between 1930 and 1938, the game features advertisements for alcohol, but only at points in the story where the United States was no longer under prohibition.
Despite Haruka Sawamura being the only Yakuza playable protagonist who never fights (with her fight sections being replaced by dance battles) and showing no prowess in martial arts, a trailer for Yakuza Online shows her beating generic enemies on a street alongside the other protagonists of the series.
In 2019, UK bargain store Aldi attempted a publicity stunt known as the "Teatime Takedown", where parents would send Aldi their childrens' usernames on gaming platforms (with the service being provided for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles, and unusually the streaming platform Twitch) and the supermarket would send professional gamers to defeat the child in-game so they would eat their food, though Aldi claimed that the effectiveness of the program may vary. Despite a released commercial for the campaign showing children "rage quitting" FPS games, the hired eSports teams, originating from Veloce, specialized in racing games. This sparked massive backlash within the UK eSports community, to the point where Resolve eSports offered to send its players to help kids fight back against the bullies. Aldi would eventually cancel the campaign and send coupons to those who complained as a form of apology. Print adverts were made, but are not known to have been printed in any magazines or catalogues, and radio and till reciept ads were planned.
Simon Belmont was originally slated to be revealed for Super Smash Flash 2 on August 10th, 2018 during that year's Super Smash Con event. Coincidentially, Simon would be announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate two days later in an August 8th Nintendo Direct. The trailer for Super Smash Flash 2 would poke fun at the timing of the two announcements.
Joker from Persona 5 was announced as the first Fighter's Pass DLC character for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at The Game Awards 2018 on December 6th, 2018. This means that while he was technically the only Fighter's Pass DLC character to be announced before the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it was only a few hours before December 7th when the game was released.
The Japanese release of Yakuza 0 had a purchasable DLC pack that would give both Kiryu and Majima access to Walkmans that could play classic songs from Japan associated with the 1980s, or songs from past entries in the series.
In 2023, the Japanese noodle brand Cup Noodle used footage from the beginning of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain with Konami's permission to advertise their premium seafood cup noodles. The commercial features a scene where Big Boss Spoiler:(actually Venom Snake in disguise) wakes up from a coma and a doctor tells him how long he was out, with the dialogue changed to have the doctor inform Big Boss that while the seafood flavored cup noodles feature no shrimp, the new premium sea food flavor does have shrimp. This scene in general is a meme in the Japanese-speaking Internet, hence why it was used.
On December 23, 2022, Cam Clarke, the voice actor for Liquid Snake in the English language version of Metal Gear Solid, uploaded a video entitled “Cam Clarke & David Hayter "Liquid Grinch" Parody - Metal Gear Solid”. In the video, he and David Hayter, the English language voice of Solid Snake, sing a parody of the Christmas song “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” by Thurl Ravenscroft in the personas of their respective characters from the Metal Gear series.
Prior to a 2020 Nintendo Treehouse presentation, primarily intended to show off Paper Mario: The Origami King, it was announced that a new game from developer WayForward would be shown off in the presentation. Due to WayForward's reputation for platformer titles such as the Shantae series and the recent release of Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer Featuring the Legend of Zelda seemingly signifying an interest from Nintendo in indie collaborations, many fans expected the showcase to present a revival of a dormant Nintendo platforming IP such as Kid Icarus or Wario Land. In a futile attempt to temper expectations, Nintendo would vaguely clarify that the game was based on a "third party IP", redirecting speculation towards other companies' gaming IPs. When the presentation came, the game was revealed to be Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia, one of the licensed children's games that make up the vast majority of WayForward's gamography, which disappointed many, causing the Bakugan toyline to trend on Twitter and gaining the reveal trailer 3,500 dislikes against 1,500 likes on YouTube.