Anyone who follows the blog may know I collect large amounts of video game-related crap. (For those who are visiting the site for the first time: I collect large amounts of video game-related crap.) Most of the time, it’s video game trinkets and items from press events, magazines, and demo discs, among many other things. This time, I’m gonna look at a preview DVD.
It’s a Nintendo Preview disc from about mid-2002. Mostly an ad for the forthcoming Metroid Prime, it also features other flagship Nintendo GameCube games like Super Mario Sunshine, Mario Party 4, Animal Crossing, and Star Fox Adventures, along with some advertising for the Game Boy Advance, including the ill-fated e-Reader add-on. One of these days I’ll get around to covering that e-Reader, it’s a strange part of Nintendo history.
I remember this DVD being available at a Game Crazy (RIP), and took one home to watch at all the reasons for me to ask for a GameCube that Christmas. Nowadays the only reason I still have my GameCube is because my Wii doesn’t support the Game Boy Player add-on, one of the best damn hardware add-ons out there.
Each of the highlighted Nintendo games get a few trailers for the games, most with typical sizzle reel fare. One for Star Fox Adventures is voiced by freakin’ Don LaFontaine for crying out loud. There’s also bonus features for each of them. Super Mario Sunshine and Mario Party 4 have tips and tricks videos. Metroid Prime has a feature called “The Metroid Legacy” which covers the history of the franchise – weird, considering that Metroid had only three games by the time of this DVD’s release – and Animal Crossing comes with a special set of commercials that are parodies of The Real World.
Back then, these were slightly funny commercials, nowadays they’re pretty cringe-worthy. Keep in mind this was the era when Nintendo thought having Yoshi beating up Pikachu to the tune of The Turtles’ “Happy Together” was a great way to advertise Super Smash Bros.
In addition to the Nintendo games, it has a bunch of trailers of the GameCube’s third-party offerings, like 007: Nightfire, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Beach Spikers, Dragon’s Lair 3D and Vexx. As well as a bunch of sports games, because you might want to play sports games on the GameCube.
But wait, there’s more! This is a not only a regular DVD that you can watch, but it has DVD-ROM features! Which means if you had a computer with a DVD-ROM drive –- which was fairly rare at the time -– you could pop this into your PC and get free goodies, like wallpapers, icons, screen savers, even a freakin’ Metroid Prime web browser. Despite how tacky it’d be to use Metroid icons and the freakin’ BROWSER, someone took time to make some simple stuff to pack onto this disc to make them hyped for Metroid Prime, and I commend them for it.
There’s not much else to say about this disc. It’s an interesting time capsule of what Nintendo had in store back in 2002, and it was a very unusual time for Nintendo, mainly because Satoru Iwata took over that year. Then we’d see what Nintendo became over the next decade. I may not be into Nintendo as much as I was back then, but this brings warm nostalgic moments.
This would also not be the first time they’d make a promo disc…
They had this at Game Crazy?? That’s really weird! I remember that place.
You’re a collector after my own heart. I just went to New York Comic Con a few weeks ago and the only thing I purchased there was Phantasy Star 2 (and I squealed like a little girl when I found it). I am addicted to game collecting and continue to play all of the systems regularly. For example today I played Xbox 360, then switched over to a little Super Mario Kart on SNES before completing my evening by reorganizing my Atari games in my cabinet of wonders. Long term planning involves me painting said cabinet to resemble a Tardis.
I’m really, really not sure what Nintendo was thinking when they decided that Dragon’s Lair 3D was something that would make people WANT to buy a Gamecube. :V
[…] past that I collect a bunch of unusual things, such as demo discs and promotional DVDs. I covered a Nintendo Promo DVD from 2002 last year, and mentioned that I had other promo discs that I intend to write about. Well, […]