Defunct Games is not the first video game website or magazine to make fun of this Bust-A-Move 2 advertisement, plenty of other people have made jokes and laughed at Acclaims terrible, terrible design. But if we're going to do a show about bad advertising we need to include everything, even if that means stuff that everybody else has talked about. When you look at this commercial it's easy to see why everybody gives Bust-A-Move a hard time and as far as I can tell, it fits here perfectly.

In case you've never played Bust-A-Move (or Puzzle Bobble as it's known in other parts of the world) it's an addictive puzzler that features one of the cute "lizard" characters from the Bubble Bobble universe shooting colored bubbles into the air and matching them up. When you look at this commercial you'll see several pictures that illustrate exactly what I'm talking about ... but I have a hunch you'll never look at them because you'll be too busy gawking at the horrible (and painful) picture of the man keeping his eyes open.

If this man reminds you of A Clockwork Orange then you're not alone, but regardless of how great that movie was this commercial is one of the worst you will ever see. I guess the idea behind the man is that there is no time to blink, but when I see it I wonder if the game is putting him to sleep. His mouth is open and it looks like he's yawning, which doesn't go a long way to explain how fun and addicting the game is. What's worse than the large picture of the man with the toothpicks? The almost twenty smaller versions that litter the background! If anything this commercial is going to scare people away, it kind of makes me sick thinking that there was somebody who needed money bad enough to put little pieces of wood around his eyes and have pictures taken.

FROM: Curb Your Bad Advertising