Sony's viral marketing wheezes its last, while Dragon's Lair comes in from the cold on DS
Another week filed on the Pocket Gamer blog
Cool products continue to migrate towards PSP, albeit to a general shrug from the gaming cognoscenti, which makes it doubly strange that Sony is employing odd viral marketing techniques to push its handheld console. And bemusing too that this once slick marketing monster appears to be getting it so wrong.
For example, this week on the Pocket Gamer blog we learned that a covert PSP graffiti campaign is being run out of town by local taggers, while a truly ill-begotten super-slick Christmas begging video entitled All I want for Christmas is a PSP and widely promoted on YouTube (for all the wrong reasons) has eventually forced Sony to recant its strategy and promise never to employ such sneaky methods again.
"From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP," said a message.
We doubt the Internet's antibodies have really seen off viral marketing forever, but we also doubt anyone would mind if it was more Banksy and less balls-up...
Anyway, games like karaoke sim P-Kara, just out in Japan, and a future version of Parappa the Rapper for PSP will be sweet music to true fans of the format. Such aficionados might also want to check out this video showing how to watch TV on PSP, and this one giving a glimpse of what happens if you get 12 of them together at once to create a PSP video wall.
Meanwhile, the most exciting blog news on DS this week (short of a limited DS power adapter recall in Japan and news of Dragon's Quest IX) concerned the homebrew scene.
Those wily hackers have now brought near 25-year old Dragon's Lair (more wrinkly than several key Pocket Gamer writers!) to Nintendo's dual-screen wonder. But before veterans complain the ancient interactive cartoon was little more than a flick book, we'll add you can now get the real thing – literature, we mean – on your DS too, thanks to the MoonBooks project.
Before we wrap, just a unnecessary reminder that there's only a week to Christmas – don't miss our Christmas ideas round-up (which we're still adding to) which includes a Super Mario towel, a PSP iTrip, your own set of Mario stamps and a DVD player with GBA support.