Aaron of RetroLiberty posted an interesting video called "Earthbound Convinced." The premise is that Aaron reads off the text on the Earthbound box and shows off some of the game art and then asks if that was enough to convince you to buy it. It's not quite fair as Aaron's video is well cut and is more than simply reading off the box art but it does showcase what little information we had to go off to make choices as kids. That said, I had Nintendo Power and they did a great job hyping up whatever video games Nintendo wanted us to buy at the time, Earthbound included.
Earthbound, were you convinced?
Earthbound, were you convinced?
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The intro to the video says the premise of the series is on whether or not you would rent a game, based on the box art and text alone. If that's the case, then, yes, that would be enough to convince me. I don't think there was ever any point that I would purchase a new game (any game) outright, just by reading about it and looking at the cover, unless it was less than $10. That's what makes games such a weird entertainment medium. The cost of entry is so high, and most of the time you feel like you have to take leaps of faith just to purchase a game. Movies, books, music are all cheap in comparison, and can get away one-shots or a paragraph of text to convince someone to, say, drop $10 to sit in a theater for 2 hours. One trailer for The Matrix, showing the bullet-time effect, was all I needed to see to say "I want to go to there." The games industry hasn't been fond of rentals, or used games, and barely makes room for demos, which is one reason why Let's Play is so popular now, which seems to be gaining in favor, even among devs (or, at least, console makers). In fact, most commercials/trailers for games don't show much in the way of gameplay to any great extent. This has been something gamers have been used to seeing for decades, with either live action or CG animation taking precedent, especially in the older generations of games.
So, anyway, yeah. I'd rent just about anything with as little as a "hey, you should check this out." Purchasing, on the other hand, takes a bit more convincing.
Ah good point on the rental part. There were a few times I bought a game off the shelf based on the box and sometimes it was OK but most time it was terrible, looking at you Ultraman!