I never thought I’d ever come back to this again. The last article I ever wrote about video game food and drink was 2016, covering the previous iteration of this specific drink. I mostly left these behind because I felt like I was being a dime store Dinosaur Dracula with these kind of articles, and decided to write things of more substance.
But if Mountain Dew – sorry, MTN Dew – is gonna go for a throwback, then I will too. Only because it was once a time-honored tradition on my blog. In 2023, as a throwback to slightly better times, Mtn Dew brought back Game Fuel as a proper soda.
After 2017, which featured promotional flavors to advertise Forza Motorsport 7 and Middle-earth: Shadow of War, they temporarily retired the Game Fuel soda flavors. Around 2018, PepsiCo tried a stab at the burgeoning energy drink market. The new Game Fuel, now under their AMP brand, kept the yearly game promotional tradition, but I didn’t really dabble with those as I’m not really an energy drink person, if the two times I tried both Monster Energy and Red Bull are any indication. Though admittedly, I was tempted to grab them a few times. These did keep things going with yearly promotions with games like Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 and the yearly Call of Duty installment, of which I really couldn’t tell you what they were like.
Presumably realizing the whole AMP Game Fuel thing was kind of a bust, Game Fuel returned as a special seasonal Mtn Dew flavor, much like LiveWire and WhiteOut before it. I was honestly surprised they were bringing it back, but with how the drink industry is, there’s always gonna be an audience who wants companies to bring back the Old Thing They Liked.
Now, the journey I went through to get these flavors was… quite an ordeal. While technology has gotten better in making it easier to find things like special flavors, getting both Game Fuel flavors was quite a challenge for me. After a thrift store trip earlier in the month, I waltzed into a 7-Eleven, expecting to grab the two flavors and be done with it. Sadly, the place only had one of the two flavors: The fan favorite Citrus Cherry. Using that fancy “Find your Dew” thing on the Mtn Dew website lead me to places pretty far away from where I lived.
Cut to a few days later. I check a local mom’n’pop convenience store and sure enough, they had both flavors. I grabbed a few bottles, of which the clerk had to use barcodes from Code Red to scan them in as Game Fuel wasn’t “in their system,” but it didn’t matter. I had finally grabbed the Game Fuel bottles for 2023, as you can see.
I’ve come back from the dead… and what timing, as it’s that time again…
For those who just couldn’t wait.
Mountain Dew Game Fuel at this point is a standard flavor in the soda’s arsenal, alongside favorites like Code Red and Whiteout. What was once an exotic rarity that I had to hunt at stores left and right to try, is now fairly common. Despite that, I do actually anticipate these “special flavors” each year and see which big corporation threw enough of their weight (in dollars) around to get on the bottles this year.
So who’s on tap this year? Call of Duty for the third year in a row? Battlefield? An unexpected contender like Gears of War 4? Nope, It’s one I never thought I’d see.
YO HE GOT THE MANGO SENTINEL
EA and Respawn’s Titanfall 2 is the candidate this year, and the special flavor is “a burst of Mango Heat.” Since Citrus Cherry is the de facto standard flavor that’s always available, I no longer need to cover it. But how about the special mango flavor? Does it hold up? (more…)
You know it’s time when you see the ol’ kitchen stove…
Mountain Dew gets buddy-buddy with major game developers and makes a fancy Game Fuel dedicated to a major game. This year, Activision gets the choice for the second year in a row, this time for Carl on Duty: Black Cops III – Revenge of the Urkel- er, Call of Duty: Black Ops III.
At this point, Mountain Dew has made the Citrus Cherry a standard flavor. No longer seasonal, you can get the stuff at any time anywhere. I noticed this as I found bottles of the normal Citrus Cherry at a Safeway, rather than the 7-Eleven like I usually do. Since this change, they’ve had various game-related promotions with Game Fuel this year, such as items for Batman: Arkham Knight and Warframe.
At first, I thought Mountain Dew retired the seasonal flavors, which would’ve meant an end to what has become a yearly tradition on my blog. But thankfully that wasn’t the case, as I found the new special flavor in the usual locations.
I’ve written about Citrus Cherry everysingleyear since I started this. It hasn’t changed in taste whatsoever. It’s got a cherry taste with a citrus-y tinge that reminds me of Squirt or similar citrus-heavy sodas. At this point, I’m not even gonna bother talking about that flavor, and skip ahead to the new special flavor for BLOPSIII.
Hey, it’s that time again. That time where a certain beverage advertises a certain video game. Just in time for it’s release…
Shamelessly stolen from a Mountain Dew Wiki. Because of course that exists.
Yep, Mountain Dew Game Fuel makes its return. I’ve written about these in years past (here are my reviews of the 2012 and 2013 flavors), and I had totally forgotten that they were doing it again until very recently. Reviewing Game Fuel has become a tradition on this site, and I would be remiss if I forgot to cover this year’s model.
This year, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is our big sponsor, after Microsoft got dibs last year, forcing Activision to settle with Monster Energy cans with Call of Duty: Ghostbusters instead. You can read about that, and my virgin experience with Monster Energy here.
Something old, something new. It seems to be Mountain Dew’s MO these days.
So we have two flavors this time round: Citrus Cherry and Lemonade. I’ll make it quick on the Citrus Cherry, since it’s the same flavor as previous years: It tastes like Mountain Dew mixed in with a cherry tinge and gives an unexpected citrus aftertaste. I used to drink Squirt religiously, but I can barely tolerate drinking a glass of Citrus Cherry because of the excess citrus kick.
Guess what’s back? I’ll give you three guesses, first two don’t count.
This time we’re doubling up on the special promotions!
Yes, returning for the fifth time, Mountain Dew and Doritos collaborate with a video game company for a limited edition soda. This time around, Microsoft comes back to the well for the third time, advertising the forthcoming Xbox One with Mountain Dew Game Fuel. This time, we’re given not one, but two flavors of the wonderful special edition drink. This is the third year in a row that the specialty drink has been available, which quashes my previous theory that they’d only push this out every other year, as they did in the past. Looks like this might be a yearly thing now.
While I was at PAX, Mountain Dew was fairly prominent at the show. Spread around the convention hall were QR codes that you could scan in to redeem points, either for small prizes like Game Fuel or to win a chance to get an Xbox One early. Alas, while I did scan codes like a goof, I did not redeem a single point, which probably screwed me out of getting Game Fuel three months early. So I got this stuff at a 7-Eleven like an ordinary person who buys promotional drinks advertising video games.
The two flavors are both infused with Dew, one with a burst of Citrus Cherry, the other with a charge of Electrifying Berry. These nicknames are so extreme that I wonder if I’ve jumped back into the ’90s. On each bottle is a promotion for a forthcoming Xbox One game (Forza Motorsport 5 on the Citrus Cherry, Kinect Sports Rivals on the Electrifying Berry), and have codes to enter at every2minutes.com for a chance to win various Mountain Dew and Xbox One prizes. Including a tacky-looking Mountain Dew-branded One.
Citrus Cherry is a repeat of last year’s flavor, so I didn’t do a taste test this time. For those who are curious how I thought about it, here’s the link to last year’s entry. The short version is that it tasted like Mountain Dew with a tinge of cherry and a punchy citrus aftertaste that I wasn’t expecting. So this time around we’re just gonna try the new Electrifying Berry flavor.
This looks like the kind of stuff you would mix cough syrup in to make purple drank.
Ah, the Spike Video Game Awards. Advertised as a legitimate video game awards show — ignoring other, more professional award ceremonies — the VGAs are anything but, often being a corporate mess with an award show that makes the MTV Movie Awards seem dignified in comparison.
More like video LAME awards hahaha I slay me
The Video Game Awards celebrates their ninth year of being a hilarious trainwreck of TV executives trying to “understand” gamers combined with exclusive trailers for wonderful games like Command & Conquer Generals II. I personally haven’t watched the awards in years, opting to see the trailers on GameTrailers.com after the show is broadcast instead. (2019 edit: When they still existed in 2012, anyway. RIP GameTrailers. 🙁 )
Doesn’t mean I still can’t mock it endlessly every year. Unlike a certain person who has an “Angry” persona, at least I have tact and don’t give Geoff Keighley the third degree about this, I understand that this is strictly a corporate affair and not a genuine awards show.
To commemorate the ninth anniversary of this wonderful award show, I thought I’d give you the highlights of the event so far. Note that this is not a complete list, anything prior to 2005 is pretty hard to find info on before the days of YouTube, and since I don’t actively watch the event, I have to go by hearsay and second-hand information. So let me know if I left anything out, or made any errors in this. But enough of that, let’s get started!
2005: The award goes to… a game that’s not even out yet!
I wonder if Jack Black still accepts awards in his underwear these days.
2005 was an interesting year. The Xbox 360 was new, the world wasn’t introduced to waggle motion controllers yet, and I had just graduated out of High School. The 2005 VGAs were mostly uneventful, except for two games getting a fair share of awards: The critically-panned 50 Cent: Bulletproof, and the licensed title Peter Jackson’s King Kong: This Game Should Win An Award for the Most Overwrought Game Title, I mean, Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie. Nothing wrong with that, right?
There’s one big problem: Both games weren’t out yet. Back then, this was recorded in advance rather than broadcast live, so they decided to hype up two yet-unreleased games for their award show. Really destroys the legitimacy of this awards show. It’d be like the Oscars giving an award to a movie that came out the day before, skipping the whole nomination process.
Following this fiasco, there was a time where they made awards specifically for games coming out during the holiday season in the interest of fairness, but they seemed to abandon this in later years, being totally okay to give the then-recently-released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 “Best Shooter” in 2011.
2007: Look at our sexy ladies! Oh and BioShock won an award or something.
I wonder if this model has any regrets for doing this. Probably not, considering she’s standing next to Dave Navarro.
2007 brought an… interesting approach to the awards. A fair share of the major video games had various models covered in body paint depicting the game’s name on them, which would be used to determine the winning game for each category.
Imagine the executive meeting where this took place.
Guy #1: “Hey, we’re a network for MEN, right? Us men like women, right? But how do we make women tie into this video games thing?”
Guy #2: “Get actual women game designers to present and accept the awards?”
Guy #1: “What are you talking about, women game designers don’t exist! You’re just making up shit, Steve.”
Guy #2: “But what if they do exist?”
Guy #1: “Even if they do, they’re likely all ugly and shit, we need beautiful women for this thing!”
Guy #3: “I KNOW! Let’s have models walk onto the stage covered in body paint with the games as we reveal the awards!”
Guy #1: “Genius, Dave! You get a pay raise! Now get out, I gotta call up the MANswers guys and order 100 new episodes!”
I swear that’s gotta be how it happened, because I can’t understand it otherwise. Yes, they did this for every major award. I feel sorry for the women who were subjected to this. At least I hope they got paid well.
2007: A bunch of Gamecocks crash Ken Levine’s victory party.
This guy said “Gamecock will rise some day” while Ken Levine looks on awkwardly. They certainly didn’t rise after this.
2007 brought us a bunch of amazing games, including BioShock, which won Game of the Year at the 2007 VGAs. Irrational Games co-founder Ken Levine gets up on stage, ready to do a speech to celebrate his team’s victory. Suddenly, a bunch of guys from Gamecock Media Group rushed the stage in dumb chicken hats, primarily to advertise Hail to the Chimp. After basically hijacking Levine’s moment in the TV spotlight, they leave shortly after realizing how ill timed this was, thus giving Levine and Greg Gobbi no time to give their speeches.
While Gamecock CEO Mike Wilson later apologized, it was a rather amusing highlight in the developer’s short history.
Where are they now, in 2012? Well, Irrational is still hard at work making BioShock Infinite. Gamecock, however, got bought by SouthPeak Interactive in 2008 and were never heard from again. Fortunately, they got better, reforming as a better studio with games more fondly remembered.
Yeah, you read that right. I’m going to review a soda on this blog. Why, you may ask? Well, because I can. But also because Halo 4 fever is slowly dying and being replaced by Call of Duty: Black Ops II fever, so I gotta squeeze this in now while it’s still relevant. No one’s gonna care about this in a month’s time.
I like to exaggerate the name of this stuff. Imagine if it was said by some obnoxious 90s announcer.
So, this is the fourth time that Mountain Dew has done the limited “Game Fuel” thing to advertise whatever hot new video game was on the market. The first time Game Fuel was introduced was in 2007 for Halo 3, then re-released in 2009 for a World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and most recently, last year for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. I honestly expected them to skip this year, judging by the “every other year” cycle, but since Halo started the unique limited flavor/marketing tie-in for Mountain Dew, they might as well do it again for the newest installment involving a Master Chief and some Halos.
I was never a big Halo guy. I played a leaked prototype of Gearbox Software’s PC port back in 2003, and eventually bought the game the following year. I thought it was interesting and kinda fun, but hardly the mind-blowing revelation that gamers were making it out to be. Halo 2 was a dull, monotonous corridor shooter I’d rather forget, and all I remember of Halo 3 was me and and a friend co-oping it in two long sessions one time. I even got the Anniversary edition of Halo: CE and only finished a level or two before moving on.
Still, I can’t say I hate Halo, it just never really grabbed me outside of the soundtrack and occasionally its multiplayer. Maybe it’s because I was anti-Xbox ’til about 2006. Forgive me, I was still an oblivious teenager.
