For two decades, people have been paid to make fun of Nintendo. These professionals are hired by big companies that either hate Nintendo or consider Nintendo to be semi-ridiculous.
(Irony: These pros never laugh last.)
Here are their finest works.
We'll start with a recent example, to put this trend in a modern context. We've got Activision, a company that supports all Nintendo platforms, but, hey, if they want to kick Mario Kart in the shins (or punch them in the balls), they will try. Here they are trying to show that their Mario-Kart-with-realistic-cars is cooler than Mario Kart:
Activision is a latecomer to attempted using and abusing of Nintendo. The pioneers in this are Sega.
Oh, Sega, you tried so hard to convince the world that Nintendo was uncool.
There was this classic 1990 ad, archived at VGMastersClub:
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And if you can't read, can you at least tap your toe to the amazing "Genesis does ... what Nintendon't" jingle?
Who can argue with former heavyweight champion of the world Buster Douglas? He told you the Genesis was great! And that was before Evander Holyfield knocked him out.
Sega was sure that you would recognize the Genesis' superiority over the Super Nintendo. But know this: They were content to have their commercials sing a happy song to you about how great the Genesis was; they felt the need to yell at you that the Sega CD was better than anything Nintendo could do.
Oh, Sega. Even its handheld gaming machines were so clearly superior to Nintendo's that that superiority had to be pointed out in a commercial. If you played Game Boy, you were just a mouth-breathing fat kid. See?
We can debate whether the Game Gear was superior to the Game Boy (remind me which one played Tetris and Pokemon better?) but did you know that the Atari Lynx was also both twice as big and twice as awesome as the Game Boy? I remember re-learning this lesson every time I reached the back of a comic book circa 1990:
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So sad, really. They mocked Nintendo, and Nintendo crushed them.
But at least Sega and Atari played nice. They didn't, you know, suggest that Nintendo should be executed. No, Square did that in this classic Final Fantasy VII ad archived at 1up.com:
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I guess Nintendo got over that. That was the late 90s. People were angry. Today, Square makes games for Nintendo again. No hard feelings.
That Square thing is kind of a trend. See, here's Crash Bandicoot, formerly the mascot for the PlayStation, having some fun with Nintendo:
That was then. Today, Crash games are on Nintendo platforms.
But, hey! There's a new Crash Bandicoot, current Sony mascot Kevin Butler. He slams Nintendo in his own way, on behalf of the PlayStation 3:
So when does history tell us Kevin Butler will begin appearing on Nintendo consoles? 2016 or so?
Look, making fun of Nintendo clearly makes people some money and Activision's got to get people talking about Blur somehow, some way. Plus, there are surely some good things to make fun of Nintendo for. Doing so is a rite of passage for these companies.
I just worry a little for Blur and Activision, because, is it me or does mocking Nintendo professionally seem to have a way of, well, not working out so well?