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Best Video Game Trailers?
An anonymous reader asks: "I was doing my usual site browsing, and I stumbled onto this thread about the best game trailers at PCSynapse.com. It made me really think about how important it is for a company to make a good, early impression on potential videogame buyers, and give people something to anticipate. What do you say your favorite non-interactive game trailers of all time are?"
My dad saw it and asked when the movie was coming out...
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
i like any game trailer that has some kind of tech demo so that you can play at and feel how the gmae will play, y'know? like acctaully take the carachter on a mini-quest and hook you on the game? what? oh...
halo 2. the music is perfect. master cheif is the man. halo 2. http://halo.bungie.org/misc/halo2trailermirrors.ht ml
I also remember the semi-famous "Into the Shadows" demo from a long time ago. The game was never finished but the demo was sweet, showed skeletons moving around casting multiple shadows on the floor, on a Pentium 90 with no 3d card.
I gather we are talking about intro's to games? or the actual tv commercial / promotion?
It's always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's just hilarious. -B.Hicks-
metalgear solid 2 the theme still haunts me, gets me pumped oh yes!
I remember distinctly saying "Holy shit!" on both of these. All hail Blizzard.
El riesgo vive siempre!
The non-interactive movie-style trailers to the best interactive movie / flying games ever. Wing Commander III and IV.
Mark Hamill. John Rhys Davies. Malcolm Mcdowell. Space fighters. Great special effects. Cheesy writing made cool and memorable by quality actors. These trailers are the best things ever.
Oh, did I mention that you can download them?!
If you don't download them, just look at the pretty pictures on the page there. Quality stuff.
no thanks
but being the UT junkie that I am I prefer the Unreal Tournament movies made by some of the best clans and players on the face of the planet. Good Stuff Here
Cheers.
Sig* sig = theOneSig();
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
A Ratchet and Clank video made me instantly buy it(Playstation 2) And it's probably the best game I've played so far.
3DNark 2001 non-interactive demo
:)
Bloodrayne Trailers
Brute Force
DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball
Devil May Cry 1/2
Doom III
Duality
Final Fantasy Series
F-Zero GX
GunGrave
Halo 1/2
Jet Set Radio Future
Kakuto Chojin
Killer 7
Kingdom Hearts
Max Payne
Metal Gear Solid 1/2/3
Metroid Prime
Murakumo
Ninja Gaiden
Odd World: Munch's Oddysee
Phantom Crash
PlanetSide
Primal
PN 03
Resident Evil (various)
Shenmue
Silent Hill 2/3
Soul Calibur II
*SOME* Star Wars trailers (not enough time to list 'em here)
StarCraft - Ghost
Sudeki
Tekken 3/4
Unreal 2
WarCraft III
World of WarCraft
XIII
That's all that pops out at me for now. There have been others that I've liked, but you will get a kick if you watch the above
And yes, they are all non-interactive downloadable movies somewhere...
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
... but I always prefer demos. A demo is the best way to judge a game before you actually buy it.
;)
And perhaps trailers/movies and screenshots are a good way to choose which demos not to download
I wish they made more Mac games.
...is a dead trailer ! :)
What I really really hate is when you see 'screenshots' or sequences on TV which are advertising a game, and they're things you'd NEVER see during actual gameplay.
When I see a game ad, I want to see what it's like from the perspective of playing it. Not some dumb raycasted promotional graphic that looks NOTHING like the game. Gran Turismo's screenshots are guilty of this. Nearly all of them are 'external' views. Who uses the external views while driving? I want to see what the graphics quality is like from 'inside the cab', not what the action replays are like.
mogorific carpentry experiments
It's a bit old, but when you saw the trailer ...
you wanted to play it!
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't.
I liked:
"You are in a"
Man, I was on the edge of my seat.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The Half-Life 2 preview movies. They may not be actual trailers but they sure are cool and make me want to buy the game.
[SIG] Far better to be thought a fool then to post on
Oni, a much underrated game developed by Bungie (who, of course, went on to write Halo) had a great trailer. All the scenes were from actual gameplay (or at least the engine) with hints at the plot, fight scenes, gunplay...
... An Uncertain Past ... No one left to trust
t ml
A Dark Future
Unfortunately I can't find a download link which still works in general, but FilePlanet subscribers may have luck via http://www.3dactionplanet.com/oni/files/movies.sh
Mortal Kombat 3 having TV commercials hyping it's Arcade release still stands out in my mind. Not because it was that great, just because no one else ever did it.
I just got Brute Force and I was so impressed with the HALO 2 demo in it that even though I was drunk I remember saying. Shit FU** numerous times throught the video, it was the damn cool.
American McGee's Alice. The trailer was all CG rendered FMV which didn't actually match scenes from the game -- but it was very cinematic, stylishly done and pretty exciting.
And it alone was enough to land a potential movie deal with Wes Craven, which just goes to show...
The nice thing is that even if the trailer didn't show game footage, the game maintained the atmosphere of the trailer -- you can't accuse them of lying about the experience, you just got a different experience in the same exact vein. Good stuff.
Maybe it was the years of heavy anticipation of an unofficial Wasteland sequel, but the original Fallout trailer left me near tears.
It begins with the vinyl crooning of a melancholy oldie from the Ink Spots over a scratchy black and white retro-future newsreel. An ad for an atomic-powered car, then a shot of a soldier in power armor kicking a man on the street, filling him full of lead, then waving to the camera.
The perspective pulls back to reveal a boxy old console television, and as the music starts to skip on "Maybe...Maybe...Maybe", a burnt out apartment's missing walls reveal the post-apocalyptic urban wasteland outside.
Whoa.
#19845
The trailer I always thought was best wasn't actually an "official" trailer, but a short movie put together by a fan of the Oni game (from Bungie). It's made entirely of movie captures from the game and has a very fitting soundtrack. Being made by a fan, it captures the spirit of the game like few trailers our there ever did for their rspective games.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
Probally forgotten, but the E3 trailer of Duke Nukem Forever from 2001 was great! At the time it was amazing what they did using the UT engine, looked more like how UT2003 looks now.
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
This is when Square really began to show the unelightened masses that videogames could be emotional, storytelling experiences, not just button mashing.
This is the trailer that changed the mainstream perception of RPGs forever.
It is also the first trailer I saw that looked like a cinematic movie presentation, focusing on the story/characters, instead of the gameplay.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
With the marines descending into an alien artifact, then get ambushed, then the Master Chief shows up and kicks ass. It had an interesting little storyline, showed off some cool effects, and got me interested in playing the game.
It was great! And they were like "yeah, its running on a P2 400..."
Oh man, 2000 was a great year.
skye
The Grim Fandango trailer, no questions. What a real trailer should be.
I know you were joking, but I want my Karma, so I'm going to reiterate your post in a serious tone.
The eerie operatic music combined with the glimpses of ultraviolent combat between zerg and human left a lasting impression on me.
I also remember that as one of the last big files I downloaded over the 28.8 modem before I got my cable-modem. You can still download it from Blizzard's site.
Bleh!
The problem I have with trailers for so many PC and console games is that they often don't show any actual gameplay. Usually it's just animation rendered outside of the game engine that relates to the storyline, which for me is not why I buy games.
A good storyline is great, but for any game I'm gonna buy, I've gotta be interested in the gameplay. Often you can't determine whether that's any good without a demo or a rental.
Into The Shadows ....
At least I think that was the name of the game. Back when the 486DX266 was king. And 800x600 ruled the gaming world. mmmm I remember those days.
While these are not a trailer per say, the Red vs. Blue Pseudo-Parody Screening of the Halo2 trailer as an intelligence release about the upcoming war as well as the new style of armor that Master Chief wears was probably the best trailer ever, IMO.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
Sure there are many others, but X-COM UFO intro came to my mind.. (but don't remember if it was the I or the II) simple but nice done.
Alice was nice too..
There was a teaser for Sim Mars on the SimCity3000 disc. I thought it was very cool, even though it was extremely short and didn't show much of anything. By the way, what ever happened to that game? I never saw it again, ever.
Worth mentioning since it hasn't come up yet - the trailer for Disgaea.
I cant believe no one has mentioned the trailer for Fable yet, XBox or no the game looks amazing and I, for one, and eagerly awaiting its release.
How about Command & Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun? There was a trailer that played at the end of the 1995 version of Command & Conquer (Tiberian Dawn, the original) that raised hopes so high (Westwood didn't help by hyping the game like a frenzied dog) that the game was an abject failure by the (impossible, I say) standards everyone in the community had. As a footnote, the *seen* (it was a commercial success) of C&C2 killed the C&C community, I think.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
Not that this would qualify as a classic trailer, but I just downloaded the trailer for URU: Ages of Myst and found it very impressive, especially considering the text at the beginning, which informs you that the entire trailer was made using the game engine...no pre-rendered images.