In game product placement

The title is full of advertisements and products for familiar brands such as Billabong, DC, Quicksilver, and Vans. Sure, this might seem gaudy, but it was no worse than what a fan would see at any given skating circuit event. And in true gaming fashion, you need to constantly worry about finding batteries to keep the light alive. In a stroke of advertising genius, all of the batteries you find are Duracell batteries.

This makes the product placement logical, but the gameplay gives us mixed messages. After all, the in-game batteries die very quickly, and this may negatively impact how gamers view the brand. Kawasaki Jet Skis in Wave Race 64 As with movies, product placement in games works best if it feels pretty natural. And Nintendo found a simple way to do this in their N64 game Wave Race Some of the jet skis in the game were branded as Kawasaki vehicles.

Interestingly, this branding was removed when the game was brought to the Wii Virtual Console and then restored when it was brought to the Wii U Virtual Console. Mercedes-Benz in Mario Kart For such a family-friendly company, Nintendo rarely shies from manipulative product placement.

And this got pretty damn bad when Mario Kart 8 released on the Wii U. Interestingly, you can still see this branding on the Nintendo Switch port of the game. Pizza Hut in EverQuest II Sadly, there is a stereotype that gamers are overweight people that barely want to get up from their gaming. On one hand, including real-life products can make a fictional world feel slightly more immersive.

But, if handled improperly, the addition of actual consumer goods to a video game can come off as a distracting, shameless commercial. Where the first Pikmin has you gathering parts of your crashed ship strewn about the planet, Pikmin 2 offers a more financial angle.

Olimar and his co-worker, Louie , return to the Pikmin planet in the sequel for financial gain. And the treasures you dig up—presumably left behind after the extinction of humans—take the form of actual American products. For the American version of the game, nearly every Japanese product saw a fitting American replacement.

Like many games produced by Remedy Entertainment, Alan Wake saw its share of delays. So it surprised no one that the Finnish developer included some real-world items in their game, if only to recoup the costs of development.

In a pretty shameless move, you can earn an achievement by literally sitting through an entire Verizon commercial. He collects batteries to power his flashlight—which proves just as powerful as a gun—and said batteries come wrapped in Energizer packaging.

Believe or not, at least one video game out there bases its lore on the famous fruit-flavored candies known as Skittles. But, shockingly enough, protagonist Skye actually uses combinations of the fruity candies in order to cast any number of spells. But that particular candy has actual character mascots, while Skittles has… a rainbow?

With the Uncharted series, studio Naughty Dog crafted a classic action-adventure. It offered tremendous escapism, taking players to jungles, temples and other locales straight from Indiana Jones's and Lara Croft's escapades. Its settings felt every bit the titular uncharted, far removed from the minutiae of modern life. On occasion, though, that illusion came crashing down. When, for example, a promotion for the online multiplayer mode of Uncharted 3 saw Subway meals and staff uniforms appear in parts of the game's world.

The food chain's reach, it appears, goes far beyond the towns, cities and airports of the globe's well-mapped territories.

The Amiga home computer found its way into numerous bedrooms and living rooms through parents convinced it was a great platform for homework. The fact that they were right didn't matter. The computer thrived as a gaming machine, and Zool: Ninja from the Nth Dimension was one of a handful of the mascots it promoted as a rival to Mario and Sonic. The gremlin ninja of the title spent his time leaping between 2D platforms, where he was surrounded by Chupa Chups lollipops and branding.

The game was awash with the confectionary, which apparently sprouted as a sort of sugar crop throughout many levels, having taken the control of an invasive plant species. Like a sticky rash, they almost outshone the protagonist, such was the volume of their presence.

It can feel hard to leave. Indeed, it seemed the most devoted fans could find even the challenge of leaving their computer to order a takeaway too difficult to bear.

Fortunately for them, Pizza Hut spotted an unlikely space in the title's in-game advertising real estate, and injected a branded presence that allowed players to place orders and pay without having to leave their virtual adventure for even a second.