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The bonkers ads of PlayStation

PSone turns 20 tomorrow. Reminisce with fancy marketing.

The PSone turns 20 tomorrow, 3rd December 2014, and to mark the occasion Sony has re-released a raft of its PlayStation adverts.

Let's start in 1995, when PSone came to Europe. The S.A.P.S video, below, suggested the new PSone was so powerful, it would turn the player into a monkey. The ad was slightly misleading in that the only game that actually caused this to happen was WipEout.

Things got a bit more serious with Sony's 1998 ad Double Life. Cheer up, chaps, it's just a game.

Then, a year later, PlayStation took a turn for the weird with 1999's Mental Wealth ad.

But it wasn't until the launch of the PlayStation 2, and David Lynch's brilliantly bonkers The Third Place ad, that PlayStation went full-on crazy. Who cares about the games? Also, Twin Peaks is coming back.

Lynch's Third Place motif continued in 2002 with Wolfman. Turn your speakers down for this one.

A personal favourite was 2003's Mountain ad, which, when you look back on it now, brings to mind recent Brad Pitt movie World War Z.

For me, things started going downhill from there. The PlayStation 3's This Is Living campaign was just a bit boring.

And PS Vita's 2012 The World is in Play went all serious again.

We're on the PlayStation 4 now, of course. Sony's latest ad for its new console, below, shows someone asking "Dave" for video game advice through the PlayStation app, which, well, I don't know about you, but I do that every day.

There are loads more ads over on the PlayStation Blog. Which is your favourite?

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About the Author
Wesley Yin-Poole avatar

Wesley Yin-Poole

Contributor

Wesley likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

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