Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy User Manual
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Trigger Happy
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and Alan Shearer to endorse their soccer games. In the
United States, Sega has hired spokesmen of the likes of
Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez and
Philadelphia 76er Allen Iverson, and has sponsored the
San Francisco Giants in baseball and the Tennessee
Titans and Oakland Raiders in football. Meanwhile,
Sony sponsors the Vans Triple Crown series of sports
such as snowboarding and freestyle motocross.
And videogames have gradually become a
marketing medium in their own right. My first
experience of the PlayStation, WipEout 2097, featured
neon advertisements for Diesel jeans and Red Bull
caffeine drinks that flashed by as you sped around its
virtual racecourses. Stockholm company Addgames
released Mall Maniacs in 1999, a bizarre “virtual
supermarket” game whose entire development costs
were covered by retail companies paying to have
reconstructed presences in the digital world. Meanwhile
Sega’s Dreamcast game, Crazy Taxi, in which the
player drives passengers around an imaginary
American town center, sports a suspicious number of
people asking to go to the Pizza Hut or Kentucky Fried
Chicken, restaurant franchises given their own near-
photorealistic presences in the shopping area.