There have been many bad video game trailers. From the awkwardness of the We Dare commercial through to the unintentionally hilarious Champion Jockey ad, many games have struggled when it comes to efficiently marketing themselves. However, considering its $3.8 million budget, the Mighty No. 9 trailer definitely deserves to rank among these unfortunate blips in gaming history, with it demonstrating a complete lack of awareness regarding its target audience that has led to widespread criticism online.
The long-awaited game, which has been delayed three times since its Kickstarter campaign was successfully funded back in September 2013, will finally be released on June 21, 2016. However, if this trailer is anything to go by then it may prove to be a disappointment for fans of producer Keiji Inafune’s previous work, which includes the classic Mega Man series that Mighty No. 9 clearly apes.
Unfortunately the trailer suggests that Mighty No. 9 may not prove to be a worthy spiritual successor to the famous but long stagnant Capcom property, with it featuring excruciating narration that starts with the line “Do you like awesome things that are awesome?” and doesn’t get much better from there, coupled with an over-reliance upon showing off the game’s explosions, which as hilariously pointed out by Polygon’s Nick Robinson, shares the same color palette as cheap pizza.
no offense but why do the explosions in Mighty No. 9 look like extremely cheap pizza pic.twitter.com/RkrRL19YJC
— Nick Robinson (@Babylonian) May 25, 2016
But that’s not even the worst part of the Mighty No. 9 trailer. The occasional cutaways to the game’s characters, obviously intended to grant them a semblance of personality outside of “Mega Man Placeholder #342,” don’t even have the luxury of the most rudimentary of facial animations, with them instead standing around open-mouthed as a voiceover plays in the background.
For those concerned by the many delays Mighty No. 9 has faced, its lengthy development cycle and the reported issues developer Comcept has faced in getting it off the ground, this new trailer won’t do much to help ease these fears.
We’re hoping that the game surpasses our expectations upon release and that this is just an example of very bad marketing, but it’s safe to say that we remain skeptical of Inafune’s latest work.
Check out the awful Mighty No. 9 trailer below:
