Weird Game Stories of the Week

Electronic Gaming Business, July 2, 2003

Acclaim Entertainment used homing pigeons as a branding vehicle at Wimbledon. The company painted logos for its Virtua Tennis 2 game on both wings of 20 birds that were trained to fly in and out of the tennis venues. Dubbed the "pigeon campaign," by Acclaim's international marketing VP Larry Sparks, the promo into a captive audience of tennis enthusiasts "is highly targeted," he says. Exactly how well targeted you want a pigeon to be in a crowd of people is another story, but Acclaim's international marketing crew seems rarely satisfied by simply nudging the envelope. Last year, it invited people to change their names to Turok as a human viral ad for their ill-fated action title. Acclaim also upset many Brits by offering reimbursement to the families of the dear departed in exchange for placing ad cards for Shadow Man 2 on their gravestones. We have no doubt the sensitive scions of Acclaim marketing are keeping a close eye on...

Urinal gaming. That's right. Two research assistants at MIT's Media Lab invented a game called You're In Control that gets its input from a urinal. Sensors at the back of the urinal detect and translate your peeing bursts into a whack a mole style game on an LCD at eye level. Girls can play, too, according to these inspired MIT minds, via a strap-on hose-like device that uses a water reservoir. No word from the ESRB on what rating to put on this title. Not coincidentally, an excellent feature in last month's Wired magazine chronicled the decline and fall of the MIT Media Lab from its former prominence. No need to wonder why and how.

[Copyright 2003 PBI Media, LLC. All rights reserved.]