A recent television commercial for Nintendo's latest home console has sparked a firestorm among 17 individual viewers who found the ad to be offensive.
The complaints were filed to the Advertising Standards Agency after viewers found the "depiction of violence in the ad offense and disturbing." Similar to other Wii commercials, the ad highlights several individuals swinging the Wii Remote as a sword. Another scene showcases the Wii Remote being used as a gun as an on-screen player kills an enemy.
One viewer claimed that the scenes were very reminiscent of recent hostage videos released by terrorists in Iraq. Other complaints said that the ad should be aired at a later time, presumably when children would be less likely to be watching.
Leo Burnett of the ASA responded, noting the unlikeliness of viewers linking the ad to events in Iraq. The clips with the sword-fighting scenes contained no blood, which were taken from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
The ASA concluded: ""We noted that the ad featured scenes from many different games, several of which were family-oriented and involved, for example, playing golf, tennis and baseball, fishing and bursting balloons. We considered that the scenes from Red Steel did not feature explicit or graphic." I am theWiiner, i am gotta got that Wii out...
The administrator has disabled public write access.
Forum 
