Matthew Green’s Press The Buttons is a gaming culture blog that predates our efforts by many years. They don’t update as obsessively frequently as we do, but the find good things!
They found a couple of commercials promoting Link’s Awakening, which turns 30 years old this year, one from Japan and one from the United States. The Japanese one is light and fun and a joy to behold. The American one, well, has rap lyrics, and is poorly lit, and is mostly a guy singing to game footage. Nothing against rap, but if there was ever a Zelda game that was less befitting the approach that commercial gives it, other than maybe Wind Waker, this one is it.
Here’s the Japanese one, which at least presents characters actually in the game:
A Tale of Two Link Commercials (Press The Buttons)
I didn’t have a Gameboy at the time that American commercial aired, but it did really make me want to play it! So, it did work on some of us as advertising.
I definitely wanted the game as a kid, but I don’t remember the rap commercial, I think it was more Nintendo Power’s doing that hyped me up for it.