Sonic and Mario are gearing up to compete in the 2012 London Olympics next summer. Not sure if the Olympic committee is fully aware of it, but apparently a certain royal family is and recently hosted the mischievous duo at their palace. Or at least that’s the scenario sketched out in Duncan/Channon’s new spot for Sega’s upcoming Wii and Nintendo 3DS game “Sonic and Mario at the London 2012 Olympic Games.” Spot will run throughout North America, in Brazil and online in the EU. Both the game and commercial are aimed at the young and the young-at-heart. (But oldsters are welcome to watch, too.)
Check out the alternate Sonic ending.
Every new Sonic game offers players a new power or new characters, but what always brings the fans back is the pure, unadulterated speed of Sonic himself. Hence, the motivation behind D/C’s fourth live action spot for the venerable franchise. Using a Phantom HD high-speed camera shooting at 6,000 frames a second, the agency was able to capture an actual moving bullet, parodying the famous Edgerton strobe photos of the 1960s. Then it was composited with normal frame-rate action to complete the effect and — voila —the high-speed hedgehog is back.
It’s already being talked about as the latest “What is this world coming to???” pop cultural event. And, no, we’re not just talking about the videogame itself. We’re talking about the videogame’s commercial.
The game is “Condemned 2: Bloodshot”, the next-gen follow-up to Sega’s 2005 horror hit. And, most assuredly, it raises the bar for psychological terror and realistic hand-to-hand combat. But as the game’s launch approached, the Duncan/Channon creative team was faced with an even more terrifying challenge — how do you capture in a TV spot the demonic spirit of the scariest (arguably) game ever?
The ad’s concept is simple. Playing “Condemned 2” is so frightening it will continue to haunt your thoughts long after you’ve stopped playing. To do the game justice, the TV spot had to capture the raw, visceral brutality and gut-wrenching horror that are the game’s hallmarks. So, after an exhaustive search, D/C put its script into the capably bloodied hands of feature film director — and horror specialist — Jim Sonzero, fresh from directing Pulse.
Now, out of the perverse dedication of the production team and director, sick support from the clients at Sega and, of course, D/C’s own twisted creative prowess (hey, it’s our site, we gotta toot our horns a little) has emerged an ad that’s making gamers’ jaws’ drop — and stomachs turn — even as we speak.
Posted in Broadcast, Sega | 4 March 2008 | by D/C
This game was to be the resurrection of the then-flagging Sonic franchise, and D/C was tasked with convincing the target that these heroes were new and fresh. The TV spot did so by contrasting them with some other heroes that were decidedly neither. The commercial was featured in the annual AICP show as one of the year’s finest. Furthermore, no one died.
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