Sometimes entire games are product placement, with the corporate Mascot as the playable character:
The circle on a can of 7-Up has been the subject of no less than three video games:
Spot: The Video Game - which was a reskinned Ataxx for NES.
Cool Spot - for Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, which was a surprisingly good platformer. The European versions, however, changed all 7-Up elements except for Spot itself; this included recoloring a giant soda bottle red (this is because in Europe 7-Up's mascot was a character named Fido Dido, whom Americans may know best from a series of commercials for then-rival Slice sodas, ad bumpers during CBS Saturday-morning cartoons in the early '90s, or a stand alone Genesis game in 1993 that lacked product placement).
Spot Goes to Hollywood - for Genesis and the original PlayStation, was Cool Spot's underwhelming sequel.
Avoid the Noid for the Commodore 64 and Yo! Noid for the NES (Domino's Pizza). The latter happened to be a localized version of Masked Ninja Hanamaru in Japan. This explains why the abilities and mechanics don't fit in with the Domino's character.
Pepsiman is a Japan-exclusive game where you play as a Pepsi-themed superhero delivering the drink to people.
McDonaldland, a.k.a. McKids, for NES, Amiga, and Commodore 64 (McDonald's) averts this somewhat, in that Ronald McDonald is only an NPC. Even still, it's a game entirely based around Product Placement: if the title didn't give it away, the fact that the Follow the Money items are the trademark golden arches should.
But there were even more McDonald's games. There was Mick & Mack: Global Gladiators for Super NES which is actually an OK platformer, and Donald in the Magical World, a Japan exclusive for Game Gear.
Nearly every sports game, the "product" being the relevant organization. Same for licensed wrestling games.
In 2006, Burger King released their own line of three Xbox video games, each containing promotion of their own brand and costing $3.99, at the time the cheapest Xbox games available. The games were Pocket Bike Racer, a racing game, Big Bumpin' , a bumpercar game, and Sneak King, a humorously bizarre stealth game in which you play the Burger King and surprise NPCs with unexpected Whopper burgers.
The Spanish game Whopper Chase for the Commodore 64 advertised Burger King.
Every company that could afford it opened a video game division in the days of Atari, prior to The Great Video Game Crash of 1983. As mentioned on that page, it got to the point where Quaker Oats had a videogame division.
Kaneko made two games for the SNES and Genesis starring the Cheetos mascot Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest and Too Cool to Fool. Surprisingly Too Cool to Fool lacks any actual appearance of any Cheetos products.
Chex Quest. You'd probably not expect somebody to take the extremely violent computer game Doom, turn it into a family-friendly advertisement for a cereal, and then package it free with the cereal as a sales incentive, but that's exactly what happened. That being said, the game still plays like Doom, with (barring the complete thematic facelift) only some minor changes to gameplay, so it actually plays pretty well.
NERF N-Strike, by Hasbro, features their famous foam dart blasters in a First-Person Shooter on the Wii. It even comes with a fully functional N-Strike Blaster that you can detach the barrel/plunger assembly from so that you can dock a Wii Remote in it to turn it into a gun-controller!
Doritos and Mountain Dew (a chip and soft drink brand from the United States, respectively) have evolved into a joke of product placement, as many popular game franchises (such as Call of Duty and Metal Gear Solid) will advertise the foods to gamers. Admittedly it doesn't help that the real world products also come with special codes that will quickly level your character up, or give them special equipment.
Kool Aid Man for Atari 2600 and a totally different game for Intellivision. The Atari game had the player playing as Kool Aid Man and saving a large pool of Kool Aid from monsters known as Thirsties. In the Intellivision game you played as two kids running around a house to find the ingredients to make Kool Aid, also avoiding the Thirsties.
Chase The Chuckwagon for the Atari 2600, based on the series of Purina TV ads from the 70's, sold only through a special mail-in offer. You pretty much played as a dog running around a maze and collecting bits of kibble while avoiding the titular chuckwagon.
Maru-chan de Goo!, a Minigame Game which happens to be one of the few arcade-exclusive titles on the Sega Saturn-like Sega Titan-Video hardware. Yes, as in the ramen brand.
Many of the more recent Angry Birds games have powerups with an indirect for commercial products (Lunchables, Starburst, etc.).
The European 8-bit computer scene was no stranger to food-based advergaming, with games such as Weetabix Versus the Titchies, Mr. Wimpy: The Hamburger Game, Whopper Chase and The Muncher Eats Chewits. There was also The Pepsi Challenge Mad Mix Game, through this was originally released in Spain with no reference to Pepsi.
From the same people who brought you Chex Quest, and also found for free in boxes of cereal was Cap'n Cruch's Crunchling Adventure, a mediocre virtual pet with some pretty bad mini games thrown in.
UFO Kamen Yakisoban was a Japan-only beat-'em-up for Super Nintendo made by an instant noodles company, Nissin Foods. It featured the product's mascot, a humanoid alien wearing a bowl of noodles on his head. They even initially gave it away as a promotional item in their stores.
Inverted example: The 1989 film The Wizard is basically a 90 minute theatrically released commercial for Super Mario Bros. 3.
Video Game Examples:
1080° Snowboarding has characters wearing brand-name clothes while riding brand-name snowboards. The sequel even has brand-name music and a music video.
More technical racing games don't just have product placement for vehicles, but even for parts. Two excellent examples are the 4x4 Evolution and every Need for Speed franchise after Underground (see its own listing).
On that note, Al Unser Jr.'s Turbo Racing has two things to recommend it: one is that's a decent single-player racing game for the NES that was localized from a Famicom title World Grand Prix. The second is that the game is brought to you by Valvoline™, one of Unser's sponsors at the time, with almost every screen featuring the company's name or "V" logo somewhere.
He only trusts Energizer batteries to fight the forces of darkness—when he isn't answering his Verizon phone, that is.
The game actually has two real commercials that can be watched on the in-game TV.
Even more extreme, the DLC "The Signal" is basically an interactive commercial that players pay for. The titular signal is a cellphone signal, and there's one cutscene in which a Verizon spins and falls to the ground in slow motion, with the screen pointing towards the camera. When Alan answers it, the voice on the other end actually says "Can you hear me now"?
Much of the DLC involves following a GPS signal. If you watch the objective compass, you'll notice that it goes haywire every few minutes. Admittedly, this is because the Dark Presence is rearranging the dreamscape, but it doesn't exactly reassure players about the reliability of Verizon's GPS capabilities. Strangely, the battery pickups in the DLC chapters are generic instead of Energizer-branded.
Alex Kidd: High-Tech World is about Alex going to an arcade to play Sega's games, and the ending sees him sitting in an OutRun cabinet.
Battlefield 2142 has billboards on many of its maps, served with real ads like a 3D-rendered page banner. The ads were targeted, so each player would see something different in the same space. Penny Arcade makes light of it here.
Lots in Brigade E5: Faber Castell pencils in the cinematics, American Express credit cards, and those ammo boxes (Federal Classic, Brown Bear, Wolf Performance Ammunition, etc) are the real thing.
City of Heroes, in one of its later updates, introduced "optional in-game advertising" which replaced some of the fictional advertisements found throughout the city with those of real products. Only one real advertisement was ever available: a giant picture of a shoe with the words "Jeter Clutch" above and to the left of it.
Chibi-Robo!: Zip Lash has several real-world products as collectible treasures including a Tootsie Pop and even a Super Mario PEZ Dispenser.
Crackdown had prominent billboards which changed depending on which sponsor was supporting them. At the moment, since there are no sponsors, they instead display some leaderboard statistics which scroll when you look directly at them. They take a moment to load, so the placeholder image is used until the leaderboard results are ready - a billboard for the 2007 Dodge Caliber.
For a while Saints Row 2 featured these as well except for current movies instead . Eventually they were replaced with ones advertising in game stuff once the game stopped getting sponsored.
At least the first [PROTOTYPE] had similarly changing ads and billboards for the the ingame representation of New York.
Inverted in Crazy Taxi: Sega had to pay to use the logos of Pizza Hut, KFC, Levi Strauss, The GAP, etc.
One of the mobile Crazy Taxi games added a Hot Wheels vehicle in an update.
Crude Buster: In between stages in the Japanese arcade version, the characters beat up a Budweiser vending machine for drinks. "Power Cola" replaces Budweiser in all other versions.
Cruis'n USA has a billboard for Kellogg's Corn Pops in the first stage, complete with the slogan it was using at the time: "Gotta Have My Pops".
From its inception to 2006, DanceDanceRevolution is basically a game version of Dancemania, a series of albums produced by the i-DANCE label of the now-defunct EMI Music Japan (now a part of Universal Music Japan). As part of the deal, Konami was allowed to freely select any licensed song it wished to be featured in DDR (unless the artist explicitly vetoed the right). In exchange, DDR would use its Attract Mode to promote the albums and the songs' banners would display which albums the songs came from. The deal was terminated sometime between SuperNOVA and SuperNOVA 2, hence why the amount of Dancemania songs featured in the games dropped dramatically afterwards, as Konami now has to license each song for a fee.
In the original PSP version of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Monokuma would later interrupt the game during a theater segment in Chapter 5 to advertise the then-upcoming Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen for the Playstation Vita. Later ports would later replace the Shinobido 2 trailer with a fake Dynasty Warriors game featuring Sakura Ogami.
Death Stranding has Monster Energy Drink everywhere. It fills your canteen, boosts your stamina, you get gratuitous zoom-ins on the cans when in Sam's room, and it's displayed predominantly in all safe houses. It can even show up as a delivery item because, even After the End, you just gotta Unleash The Beast™! This is averted in the Director's Cut, which replaces the Monster Energy with an in-universe BRIDGES Energy drink, and done much less egregiously with the ad for AMC’s Ride with Norman Reedus, which is used as a Gag Censor when Sam takes a number two.
Dewy's Adventure features product placement for Aquapod bottled water in some of its cutscenes. Dewy is a living water droplet, so it makes sense... sort of.
Devil May Cry 2 has alternate costumes that were based on actual brand clothing designed by a company called Diesel, which helped promote the game in Japan.
Die Hard Trilogy 2 has Whoop Ass! energy drinks.
Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure has a few. The Olliewood level has a few posters for Radio Disney. Plus there's a Nokia store and a McDonald's in it too (the latter is part of a goal where you deliver food as well).
The Guitar Herospinoff, DJ Hero 2 has The Altitude stage, which is ALWAYS used when you enable Party Play, littered with Coca-Cola logos.
The music video to the Clazziquai song "Flea" has several shots of a PSP running DJMAX Portable Clazziquai Edition (or rather, a prototype as the game wasn't released yet when the video was shot). Not surprisingly, an edited version of the video was used as the intro movie for DJMPCE.
Dracs Night Out, a never-released game that used Reebok shoes as a powerup.
Dynamite Dux has a KFC restaurant at the very beginning of the first level, with the Colonel standing outside. A few other stores are shown throughout the level, but the KFC one is the most noticeable.
Eiyuu Senki: The World Conquest has a Downplayed version where resident Big Eater Sir Lancelot makes sure to lovingly and thoroughly describe a country's specialty cuisines every time the player enters a new area.
The futuristic racer Extreme-G 2 featured billboards for Diesel clothing in the city track.
Enter the Matrix had a deal with Powerade. As such, there are Powerade vending machines all over the game. The trend continued in The Matrix Revolutions, leading to a visually bizarre chase scene through a grimy, run-down subway station peppered with bright-neon-green Powerade billboards.
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel includes rather inexplicable product placement for BAWLS Guarana energy drink. BAWLs bottlecaps are worth 50 regular bottle caps.
Along with crappy non-branded cars and trucks, Far Cry 2 had the Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Liberty(?) as drivable cars. Which creates a weird scenario where soldiers in a war-torn (and UN Arms Embargoed) African nation are driving brand new Jeeps. You even get a nice good look at the 3.7L engine when they break down.
In the case of Fatal Fury, the left side background for both Terry and Rick's stages in Real Bout Fatal Fury 2*Each of their stages are just Palette Swaps of the same area feature a billboard advertising Chicken of the Sea, a former US-owned brand known for their canned tuna. What's notable about this is that despite RBFF2 being developed in Japan by SNK, CotS wasn't a foreign brand that was sold in said country, unlike McDonald's and Kit Kat. It also wasn't a sponsorship. It's just... there in the background. Even so, the aforementioned stages take place in the US and such an ad doesn't look out of place. All in all, it's a Cultural Cross-Reference and it's anyone's guess if the CotS owners even know about this.
The Xbox 360 version of FIFA 2008 contains PlayStation 3 ads. Apparently, Sony is a FIFA sponsor, and you have to have ads of sponsors in a FIFA game. Oh, the irony.
Fight Night Round 3 from EA Games has quite a bit; while usually themed with the sport (boxing), it seems a bit out of place where one cutscene is an actual ad for a Dodge of some sort. And for some reason Dodge has branched out from making things like cars to things like... um, boxing gloves?. In addition to Dodge, The Burger King is an unlockable character. Yes, thatBurger King. Also unlockable is "Big E", the gigantic mascot for Under Armor. And his main rival, Goliath, a fat white guy who's a brazenly obvious Take That! at Nike.
Final Fantasy XV has a few prominent examples, but has fun with a lot of them:
The heroes use Coleman camping gear.
There's a sidequest that's essentially an extended advertisement for Cup Noodles, hitting its peak near the end, where Gladiolus talks about how great Cup Noodles are while the camera is pointed directly at his face, as if he were speaking directly to the player rather than his True Companions. Noctis even remarks that Gladio is acting really out-of-character and that it's weird for him to like instant noodles anyway, being as he's a noble who can afford actual food. The English voice actors recorded two versions of the lines - one sincere, one as eye-rolling and bored as possible - and the sarcastic take was used for the eventual game.
Product placing credit card vendor American Express in Final Fantasy XV is a strange bird. Maybe Visa should reconsider their slogan of "Everywhere you want to be" if they aren't accepted in a completely fictional world where the credit card that is accepted is named after a non-existent nation.
There is also a sidequest based around finding a Vivienne Westwood store to look at a dress designed by her. What one of the most prominent designers of the British Punk subculture and main influences on the Japanese gothic culture is doing in a fantasy planet full of daemons and magic is not explored and has caused the explosion of several heads.
The main characters' default outfits are by the Japanese alt fashion label Roen, as well as the outfits of a couple of minor characters (Cor's outfit, Regis's suit, and The Other Marty Stella Nox Fleuret who does not appear in the final game).
Noctis's car is an Audi - no, not the mainCool Car in the game that everyone loves and remembers, but the one seen very briefly in the spinoffs that it's stated Noctis is far too lazy to actually drive.
The website of Gaia Online frequently accepts sponsorships from bigger corporations to help keep their servers running, which in return get to advertise to Gaia users, usually by offering promotion items to users who watch an advertisement. A lot of Gaia, particularly the GCD, complains about this. Biggest "offenders" are:
Skittles, who did a flood of games with Skittles-based prizes (including prized heterochromia eyes), sponsored an entire dance venue at the 2009 prom event, and occasionally take over Daily Chance.
MTV, who sponsor a gold store run by an NPC who is supposedly an extra from their show The Hills, in addition to the "watch an ad for this show/movie, get an item" route. And three of the items in that store are Gaia Cash only. That's right, you have to pay real money to Gaia Online to buy their advertisements for MTV.
Verizon, who stuck a "message in a bottle" minigame into everybody's Aquariums. They're also chief sponsors of the Cinema feature.
In fact, Gaia is known for its utterly bizarre product placement at times. A female only environment dedicated to leg razors (saved primarily due to massive amounts of Mr. Fanservice), a flash environment with a stealth deodorant ad you wouldn't even notice if you weren't paying attention, a temporary shop containing only three pieces of formalwear that vanished about a month before the actual prom event began, and those ads for Monster Learning that keep popping up and bugging everyone every so often. The reasoning for the occasional oddities in sponsorships lies in the fact that Advertising Agencies decide what Gaia will advertise at any given time. When a new company starts doing business with Gaia, they typically give them a throwaway brand to advertise. As a result, users see announcements for the crappy products before they can see the good stuff. The upside to all of this sponsorship frenzy is that Gaia doesn't have to rely on parody to give users long requested cosplay items, like Hogwarts Robes, or Sparkly Vampire Skin.
Meta? One of the goals in GoldenEye (1997) is a security tape. In a box. Looking at the tape in your inventory will reveal it spinning, like many objects. The front is a promo for the GoldenEye movie. True, they did have the rights to the image... but...
The Gran Turismo series is chock-full of in-game advertising, justified because they're the racing teams' sponsors. Example include the Audi R8 (Infineon), the JGTC Loctite Skyline, the Mercedes-Benz 190E (Hugo Boss), the Audi TT-R Touring Car (Red Bull and Walkman), the McLaren F1 GTR Race Car (Petrofina), and the BMW V12 LMR (Dell). And on top of that, there's a Gran Turismo 4 ad within Gran Turismo 4: the Playstation Pescarolo C60◊.
In the original Guitar Hero, the only notable licenses in the game were the music and Gibson brand guitars. Other instruments were Brand X models (such as Synth-o-tron keyboards), and one concert advertised "Fake Skateboards".
Guitar Hero 2 expanded the instrument and music equipment licensing (which included Ernie Ball strings, Roland keyboards, and more) and even worked it into the storyline - as your band got more famous, you could "milk your sponsors" for more and more money.
Guitar Hero 3 marks the switch to Activision, where the product placements started to balloon out of control. A prominent advertisement for 5 Gum was on the song selection screen, the music video took place on the "Pontiac Stage", there were special "Axe Effect" guitars...
Likewise, Guitar Hero World Tour had a massive billboard for Subway $5 footlongs on one particular venue, one featuring a giant KFC bucket, not to mention the venue dedicated to AT&T. It wouldn't be so bad if 5 Gum, Subway, KFC and AT&T had ANYTHING to do with music.
Additionally, starting with World Tour, you can build your own in-game guitar, including real guitar string brands, which have NO effect at all and exist solely for Product Placement.
This gaming interview for the then-upcoming Halo 4 with Geoff Keighley has the speaker surrounded by Mountain Dew and Dorito products, which were also a marketing tie in for the game. It doesn't look like he'll ever live it down.
Hot Shots Tennis: Get a Grip is sponsored by Adidas (the PS2HST didn't have any sort of sponsorship deal), so there are Adidas logos all over the place - on flags, on the courts, in the locker rooms, and on some of the clothing options in the Pro Shop.
Island Saver: The bank machines have a small NatWest logo on the top and doubloons also have the logo engraved on them (or is it a depiction of the Savvy Islands?). Even the icon for the money app on your display is the NatWest logo!
James Pond 2: Robocod features penguins that you have to rescue from the clutches of Dr. Maybe. All well and good until you reach the level where everything is made of cakes and biscuits where you'll notice the chocolate bars all feature pictures of the penguins you're rescuing. Why so? McVitie's Penguin biscuit bars are very popular in the UK, and the connection is made explicitly clear in certain versions of the game where the intro features an advertisement for the biscuits!◊ To sum it up, for Pond to clear a stage, he needs to "P-P-P-P-P Pick Up a Penguin"! When the game was re-made for later consoles however, the penguins were changed to generic elves. The penguins are also in the Amiga versions of James Pond 3, and even have their own level as enemies.
A lesser known example is that some of the enemies are Bertie Bassett, a mascot for Licorice Allsorts candy in the UK. They were removed in the SNES and AGA Amiga versions of the game, but the later remake actually restored Bertie Bassett (albeit, with an updated sprite on the GBA and DS ports)
Justified and exaggerated in Jet Moto, as it's meant to appear like a sanctioned racing tournament. All riders are sponsored, all bikes are covered in livery for companies such as Butterfinger or Mountain Dew, and every course is plastered with billboards. The Mountain Dew logo even appears on the cover of the third game (as part of a bike's paint job).
Kingpin: Life of Crime had a tie-in with clothing maker Diesel. The idea was that the developers would put the Diesel logo on some character textures (there's also a big billboard in one level), and indeo return, the retail copy would be sold in Diesel stores. The textures appear in the game, but it's unknown wether the game was ever sold in a Diesel shop.
Lemmings 3D has its candy-themed levels plastered with ads for Jelly Belly, at least in the PSX version.
Life Is Strange has a moment where Max sees a giant flat screen TV and remarks that she'd like to see Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within on it. Interestingly, the game was produced by Square Enix, but it was the writer's idea to include a nod to the movie in the script. When the execs saw the shout out, they asked why that movie was the one referenced rather than being flattered by it.
The Lost Experience: Jeep, Sprite, Monster.com, and Verizon sponsored the game. Each company ran a subplot that, in one way or another, tied the company into the story. Occasionally game clues would make their way into the companies' other advertising.
Madden NFL includes a ton of product placement, including highlighting and focusing on specific branded gear to outfit your virtual avatar, introducing characters from advertising campaigns into Ultimate Team (Leon Sandcastle and Patrick Chewing being two examples), cross-promoting with Nickelodeon, and even creating an entirely virtual Pizza Hut Stadium to host the e-sports championship.
Mario Bros. had a Japan-only sequel for the Famicom Disk System called Kaettekita Mario Bros. which had in-game advertisements for Japanese food company Nagatanien and for Super Mario Bros. 3.
Mario Kart 8: With the collaboration of Nintendo and Mercedez-Benz, the game received free DLC containing kart body and wheels based on the Mercedez-Benz GLA for every region in late 2014.
Super Mario Maker got DLC of a Mercedes-Benz GLA as a mystery costume, rewarded for completing a Mercedes-Benz themed event stage.
Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters: Duo's ending posits a number of questions about him and his backstory, then outright tells the player to buy Mega Man 8 to find out the answers.
Metal Gear 2, which was set in 1999, had the MSX (the computer system the game was released on). Snake even lampshades it by complaining about the computers being everywhere, saying that the only people who still use them are "freaks". This line was removed from the slightly modernized version available on the Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence disc, since it was no longer funny.
The "Book" in Metal Gear Solid 2 was actually an issue of FHM, and the pinups were often of FHM centrefolds and in one case, an FHM cover (showing Charlie's Angels, appropriately). In Substance the license expired and the posters were replaced, but the FHM cover remained on the Book's texture itself.
A chocolate-flavored CalorieMate Block shows up as a usable item in Metal Gear Solid 3, fully restoring Naked Snake's stamina when consumed. This is amazing, considering that the game takes place in Soviet territory in 1964, two decades and half a continent before CalorieMate came to market.
All of Otacon's computers are Macs. In the first cutscene in his "office", Otacon clearly has at least one Mac Pro, an iMac (the recent version that looks like a monitor with a little base), several MacBook Pros, and an iPod. Considering that this installment is set circa 2014, it seems like a minor anachronism, but anything in service to marketing!
Also, don't you think there's something just a little bit interesting about having Snake whore out Apple products?
There's also a PlayStation 3 sitting on one of the tables in the Nomad; it's on the floor above the cargo hold where Otacon's workstation is set up. Sunny pulls a PSP out of a box, too.
Snake has an iPod, the unbranded "book" of previous games is now a Playboy, and at one point Otacon breaks the fourth wall to talk up the PS3's Blu-ray drive.
Vamp's cell phone is a Sony model.
Several other products are prominently displayed, including Sony Ericsson phones, ReGain energy drinks, and as a friendly Shout-Out to their competitor Ubisoft, you can unlock Altair's costume from Assassin's Creed for camouflage.
Somewhat subverted as in one of the MGS4 INTEGRAL podcasts in-game, they admitted that the developers didn't want a generic MP3 player. At least, according to the yanks.
There was a depressingly large fanboy wankstorm over the announcement of product placement in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, which involved Axe, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Bon Curry, Doritos, several Japanese magazines including Famitsu, WALKMAN, Uniqlo, Assassin's Creed II and VOCALOID. The last four references remained in the International versions: WALKMAN is owned by Sony, the game was originally PSP exclusive; Uniqlo is trying to peddle tie-in t-shirts in the States, too; Assassin's Creed 2 spawned an in-game "Straw Box" item too specific to bother changing, not to mention that Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood poked back at MGS the same year with a cardboard box gag and an unlockable Raiden costume; and VOCALOID was actually important to the plot) but the rest were removed and swapped with amusing Bland-Name Product versions. In particular, the replacements for the magazines (now Solid Mag, Liquid Mag, and Solidus Mag) are Take Thats at the original magazines they're based on ("Most of the stories are about men fighting Martians and were written by talentless amateurs"), and the description for the "Cologne" makes snide comments about the Axe advertising campaigns.
In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Big Boss wears an early 1980s Seiko digital watch, with the watch face prominently shown during a timeskip sequence in the E3 trailer.
Dummied Out example: one of the many things from Resident Evil1.5 that didn't make it into the final version was a for-reals Pepsi machine in one hallway of the precinct. It got changed into a Bland-Name Product for the finished game, and then that got removed from later editions for coming too close to infringing on Coca-Cola's likeness.
NBA2K1 has an advertising billboard, but gatorade is used to advertise on substitutions, complete with an icon of drinking from a bottle for the stamina meter.
NCAA Football video game series:
They have the Cadillac Game Changing Performance at the end of every game. Notably, the one replay you can't skip is the one that has the Cadillac logo plastered at the top-left of the screen, which is authentic to the actual broadcasts.
They also have the red-zone efficiency report brought to you by Old Spice Red Zone deodorant— "When performance matters the most!"
They want you to know it's sponsored by Coke Zero.
EA's Need for Speed franchise is one big exercise in car and music product placement:
In Underground 1, there are several billboards for McDonald's, AutoZone, Pringles, Axe, and others on some of the tracks.
Underground 2, just to name a few, had Snoop Dogg, Mudvayne and Xzibit (while still on his Pimp My Ride fame) in the soundtrack, had some Burger Kings and Best Buys scattered around the map, the Cingular logo at the corner of the HUD and billboards from tens of advertisers all over the place. It was so excessive that it won GameSpot's "Most Despicable Use of In Game Advertising" "award" in 2004.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (the 2005 game) also had many billboards for real-life companies, such as AutoZone and Castrol.
Every single aftermarket component you can put on your vehicles, from turbochargers to car seats, is an actual product made by an actual company.
The T-Mobile adverts in Hot Pursuit 2010.
And to note, musical placement didn't start until at least Hot Pursuit 2 with songs like "The People That We Love" by Bush, and the Hot Action Cop songs. (Although, the original, dirty lyrics were changed to car-themed ones.)
In games around the late 2000's, such as ProStreet, special cars that were either obtainable at some point in the game, obtainable via a cheat code, or purchasable via an online marketplace, had sponsor-based liveries such as for Energizer and Progressive.
Speaking of ProStreet, one of the achievements on the Xbox 360 version involved the player wrecking a car for the first time. The achievement, was, word for word, "Brought to you by Progressive Insurance!"
EA Sports's NHL franchise has hockey equipment manufacturers (CCM and Reebok, for example) and their own licensees (Honda was prominent in the recent games). Unlike the FIFA example, the NHL does not have league-wide sponsors that have to be included.
Night Trap: In the second part of the Kitchen area, some of the items on the grocery bags and boxes Ashley, Cindy and Lisa are holding include Life Cereal, Oreo Cookies, Ritz Crackers, Green Giant Vegetables, Fritos Corn Chips, and Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream. In the third part, you can even see Danny sneak in and take a bite of an Oreo cookie before attempting to open the wine cellar door.
One sidequest in Ni no Kuni has you assembling ingredients for a curry for a merchant. Unlike with most sidequests, this one ends with a fully-voiced cutscene where the main characters all rave about how delicious the curry is. This is because in Japan, you really could buy officially-licensed curry mix based on the game's recipe, in a cross between Product Placement and The Merch.
Parasite Eve 2 has Coca-Cola machines in the backgrounds of more populated areas; hell, one of the items that Aya can use to regain a lot of Mist Points is a Can of Soda, which upon closer inspection, is indeed a can of Coke. There's also a magnet you have to use to get a key and said magnet is a Coco-Cola bottle cap.
PAYDAY 2 may have an unintentional one with Kirkland Signature, a generic brand used by Costco Wholesale. In the Hoxton Breakout heist, the medical room has first-aid stations filled with medical remedies using Kirkland's images that looks like it came out of a Google search, even though everything else in the game doesn't use real life product names.
The Laptop Gun in Perfect Dark Zero is said to run Windows 20. The franchise, obviously, is owned by Microsoft.
Pikmin 2 is full of brand-name products (from Durcell batteries to containers for various Japanese food brands), athough in this case it helps add realism. On the other hand, Olimar and the ship are somewhat more likely to say something positive about a treasure that has a logo on it. The sheer number of trademarks present in the game probably contributed to its delayed Wii rerelease in North America, as Nintendo did not renew its deals with the various companies that owned the trademarks. For the same reason, the Nintendo Switch port replaced non-Nintendo brands with generic, fictional products.
One of the earliest video game examples, the original version of Pole Position had ads for Canon, Pepsi, and a number of other companies.note There were some that were even exclusive to the North American version, such as 7-Eleven (which had miniature arcades for many years), Dentyne gum (the original version has since been discontinued in the continent), and even Centipede (the game was released by [the original] Atari in North America). The Xbox 360 Namco Museum is one of the only ports that keeps the product placement in.
The protagonist of the Pokémon games has Nintendo's current home console in his/her room, including the Super NES (Gen. I), the N64 (Gen. II), the Nintendo GameCube (Gen. III), the Wii (Gens. IV and V), the Wii U (Gens. VI and Sun/Moon), and the Nintendo Switch (Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon).
Taken to impressive levels in Black and White; the main character has his/her first Pokémon battle in his/her room and everything is decimated afterwards. However, upon examination, the Wii is in the same spot and, when 'talked to', is apparently undamaged!
Pokémon X and Y also included a Pikachu 3DS XL that shows up early in the game if you choose the female trainer. So not only did the game just include product placement for the very system you need in order to play the game, but it showed a limited edition model!
Pokémon Sword and Shield features an In-Universe example. Given the Galar league's parallels with professional sports, league champion Leon wears a Badass Cape with multiple sponsorships on the back.
Pokémon GO has been sponsored by several companies that show up in PokéStops, gift balloons, time-limited events and even clothing and accessories for the player's avatar character. Sponsors have included, worldwide and in no particular order, Starbucks, Sprint, Boost Mobile, Verizon, Baskin-Robbins, 7-Eleven, Matsumoto Kiyoshi, Softbank, Yoshinoya, Grubhub, ChargeSPOT, FamilyMart, ItoEn, Tully's, Toho, Joyfull, McDonald's, and Aeon.
In [PROTOTYPE], as the game progresses billboards and signs advertising all fictional in-game corporations in Manhattan are eventually covered up by propaganda, graffiti or both. However, all the advertisements for Hollywood Video, Gold's Gym, and GameStop remain perfect and pristine, even when a total zombie apocalypse scenario is occurring in the heart of Times Square, and literally all the other signs are in some way covered up.
In Punch-Out!!, Doc Louis will urge Little Mac to "JOIN THE NINTENDO FUN CLUB TODAY, MAC!" between rounds. The Wii sequel sometimes has him correcting himself mid-sequence to reference Club Nintendo instead.note Club Nintendo has since been replaced by My Nintendo in North America...which was actually replaced by Club Nintendo in the first place.
Being an Xbox One exclusive, Quantum Break contains many product placements for other Microsoft products—specifically Windows phones and Surface tablets. Instead of exaggerated, "Hollywood OS" depictions of operating systems, characters are shown copying files and doing tasks on commodity Windows 10 installations. Nissan cars are also everywhere in the game, from Leafs to Titans to 350Zs.
In The Quest of Ki, one joke hint is a gratuitous plug for Italian Tomato, a restaurant chain that was owned by Namco when the game was made.
All of the cars in Rad Racer are real cars, presumably pulling this off due to car companies being less stringent about licensing. There are some minor irregularities based on Rule of Cool though - most notably the third stage, which takes place by the Grand Canyon, where the road is filled with Citroën BX cars (Citroën left the US market in the 1970s, and while some of their designs are in use today in America, they're badged as Mitsubishi vehicles).
Rent A Hero No.1, the Sega Dreamcast remake of Rent A Hero, has the titular hero's super suit powered by Sanyo batteries. Quite curious, since every other product in the game is a pun on actual brands or parody thereof (for example, our hero has a "Creamcast" in his home).
Rock Band basically expands where Harmonix left off in Guitar Hero 2; each game has more and more companies represented, all music-related. The guitar controllers have the Fender brand on them since Gibson was taken (up to and including the actual Fender Squier available for Rock Band 3).
Rock Band 2 did have a non-music-related sponsor in Hot Topic, though the player would lose fans if they took the sponsorship. A patch removed this effect; the claimed reason for the patch is that it was offered too often if the player rejected it each time.
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 had a sponsorship from Six Flags, which meant playable Six Flags parks (including several blank "build your own" templates) and useable, but not editable, Six Flags rides. Considering the entire point of the game is designing your own amusement park, it's not as glaring as most examples. The original game likewise features in-game recreations of Alton Towers, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, and Heide Park.
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 had a sponsorship from HERSHEY'S when the add-on pack, Soaked!, came out in June 2005, which included the Hershey Stall, as well as rides, such as the Hershey's Stormrunner Coaster, The Roller Soaker, the Kissing Tower, and a variant of a Tea Cups Ride, which is sponsored by Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Heck! You can make a Hersheypark recreation in no time!
Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA was loaded with ads for Mountain Dew. Every can that you can collect was a Mt.Dew as well as a few in-game billboards along with the fictional ones. There was even a Mt.Dew car that you could unlock! There were also billboards for some of Midway's other games such as Area 51: Site 4, Mace: The Dark Age, and Gauntlet Legends.
In Shaun White Skateboarding, you strike out against an oppressive Nineteen Eighty-Four - esque dystopian regime via the power of skateboarding, which brings color to a monochrome world... as well as Stride gum billboards and Wendy's restaurants, among others. Needless to say, the "fight government oppression via corporate advertising" aspect wasn't well received.
In fact, The Sims is a proud sponsor of European brands. Aside from the horrifyingly Saccharine Katy Perry Sweet Treats, there is the Diesel Pack which features the Italian clothing brand Diesel which is better received.
In Soldier of Fortune II, a computer on the Seaward Star displays the title screen of Doom.
Sonic Adventure has DLC events where you collect QUO cards and Reebok shoes, as well as plastering posters and billboards for either AT&T or Reebok all over Station Square and its Action Stages.
The game replaces Sonic's trademark shoes with a pair from the brand Soap. And yes, there are Soap Shoes ads in quite a few of the levels. It should be noted that Soap shoes aren't really normal shoes, they've got a sideways bite out of the sole so that you can grind on railings, which was exploited as a gameplay mechanic. Later games gave Sonic his old shoes back but kept the grinding move.
Sega's deal with the company covered the Battle rerelease. However, the company went bankrupt before the HD version of the game could be released, resulting in ads previously for Soap being replaced for ads for the fictional "Speed" brand.
In Battle, there were ads for Phantasy Star Online Ep. I & II. which was released around the time of Battle. These ads remained in the HD release, despite the game being discontinued.
Nine of the sixteen Japanese Splatfest themes in the first game were sponsored, either by food companies (Maruchan noodles sponsoring "Red Kitsune soba vs. Green Tanuki udon"), other game companies (Square Enix sponsoring "Go all out! vs. Focus on healing"), and even tourism boards (Saga Prefecture sponsoring "Mountain Food vs. Sea Food"). Other territories had far less, getting only Autobots vs. Decepticons and SpongeBob vs. Patrick as their sole sponsored Splatfests.
Japan continued to lead the pack in sponsored Splatfests in Splatoon 2, once again having nine Splatfests sponsored by other companies, including a McDonalds sponsored (Fries vs McNuggets), Japanese clothing company Uniqlo (Heattech vs Ultra Light Down), CoroCoro Magazine (Champions vs Challengers), Nike (New model vs Popular model shoes), and the Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) (Undiscovered Creatures vs Advanced Technology). Every region had a tournament-style Splatfest in June 2018 as well: in Japan, it was for Sanrio characters, while other territories got Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Nintendo isn't afraid to promote their own stuff using Splatoon either. In the first game, every region got a "Pokémon Red vs. Pokémon Blue/Green" event to coincide with the series' 25th anniversary. In Splatoon 2, there was a (Nintendo) "Hero vs. Villain" event to coincide with the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and a "Super Mushroom vs. Super Star" Splatfest to coincide with the 35th anniversary of the Super Mario Bros. franchise. Splatoon 3 does another Pokémon Splatfest with the theme "Grass vs. Fire vs. Water to concede with the release of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.
You can see Sobe Adrenaline Rush vending machines in the third mission. And in the CIA, no less.
They also use Sam Fisher's electronic organizers to place products. The first game, for example, gave him a Palm OPSAT, while the second game gave him a Sony Ericsson phone.
Nokia everythings are all over the place in Double Agent. Even as Sam is trying to deciding whether or not to detonate the Cozumel bomb and kill a cruiser full of innocent people, he's staring down at a huge NOKIA logo on his cell-phone detonator.
In addition, in Chaos Theory, he chews Airwaves gum in cutscenes.
Also in Chaos Theory, you can find a truck with the slogan "Dell: Own one, pwn all."
Another in Chaos Theory, while sneaking around a PMC office building you find two guards chatting about how awesome Prince of Persia (another Ubisoft game) is and how GOTY is certain.
Computer monitors tend to have several real-world logos on them when in sleep mode.
All normal (non-military) television sets in Chaos Theory show a trailer for the previous Splinter Cell.
dnL, a 7 Up variation, was the sponsored drink of SSX 3.
Tom Clancy games in general seem to use this quite a bit, besides the above Splinter Cell examples.
An iPad is shown and referred to by name in Rainbow 6: Patriots.
In Rainbow 6: Vegas 2 there is a level that takes place in a games convention. There is the standard easter egg of arcade machines with other Ubisoft titles on them, but you can also find giant, wall-sized banners for Far Cry 2 and some banners for Comcast.
In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The game's logo is on the energy drinks. Also, the "Cossacks" Vodka produced by "GSC Company" is a plug for the developers' (GSC Game World) earlier series, Cossacks.
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on the Nintendo 64 contains a bit of product placement to itself, of all things: during the mission inside the freighter the Suprosa, when Dash locates the supercomputer containing the new Death Star plans, it will greatly resemble an N64 with a Shadows cartridge plugged in if viewed from a sufficient distance.
Such as the billboards in Left 4 Dead and posters in Counter-Strike. However, the ads are general and not targeted and everyone will see the same thing though of course they do change from time to time depending on the Steam server, usually advertising other games on Steam. Thanks to many of a Game Mod, players can insert product placement themselves on almost anything (weapons, background scenery, character models, etc). One custom made survival map in Left 4 Dead takes place inside a McDonald's for example.
Similarly, the pre-game lobby in Killing Floor has room for a video ad under the player list. Typically it will just show ads for other Tripwire content (specifically Red Orchestra or KF's latest character pack) but on occasion they will advertise upcoming movies, such as Resident Evil: Afterlife and Devil.
At the beginning of The Suicide of Rachel Foster, you can go into Leonard McGrath's office room, where you can see one of the floppy disks on a stack of books on his desk next to a Commodore 64 (complete with monitor, keyboard, and mouse). Also during Day 2, you go into the freezer room and collect a bean soup can, labeled as "Betty Crocker'sMug-O-Lunch", no less.
Street Fighter V had an option to show "Sponsored Content" in exchange for a small amount of Fight Money. Activating it shows logos on characters' clothes, signs on certain stages, loading screens, and child-sized skulls. Capcom quickly disabled it when fans pointed the egregious use of the ad placement.
Superfrog drinks a bottle of Lucozade (a sports drink from the UK) to turn from a frog into the super amphibian of the title.
Super Monaco GP is another subversion, as Sega was sued by Philip Morris over the unauthorized use of the Marlboro logo. Most of the billboards in the game advertised Bland Name Products, but later revisions replaced half of them with Flicky anyway.
Super Monkey Ball (and its sequel, Super Monkey Ball 2) doesn't just have plain bananas like in Donkey Kong Country — they're all Dole bananas, complete with sticker.note They also appear in Monkey Ball, the original arcade version.
Tapper had a prominent Budweiser sign in the background. The ZX spectrum version replaced it with a Pepsi logo on the bonus screen and the Atari 2600 version had a Mountain Dew logo.
The later arcade version, Root Beer Tapper, uses generic "Root Beer" logos instead.
The UK version of Theme Hospital for the PC featured vending machines with a glaring Kit Kat logo plastered clearly on them. Seeing how they actually got a bank to sponsor the UK release of the original PC version of Theme Park, it wouldn't be surprising if Nestle sponsored the game.
In Tonic Trouble, you can turn into SuperEd by eating popcorn... fromNestle Crunch vending machines. (Nestle Crunch is a chocolately candy.)
Tomb Raider has dabbled with sponsoring products here and there:
Tomb Raider: Legend had name brand SUVs driven by the bad guys, and Lara riding Ducati motorcycles.
Tomb Raider II has Lara in a SOLA wetsuit, with the logo prominently displayed (on her chest, of course)
And, of course, being a skateboarding game with real-world pros offering their likenesses to the experience, actual board (Birdhouse, Flip, The Firm, etc.) and clothing (Vans, Quiksilver, Adidas, etc.) manufacturers are on-hand in virtually all Tony Hawk titles.
In The Urbz for console, the eagle-eyed player could easily spot branded Red Bull machines in certain locales. Admittedly, a coffee cart would be tough to find in a dirty subway or the equally-dirty alleyway outside a biker bar, but this is too much. Perhaps presence of The Black Eyed Peas music would also count, exacerbated/mitigated by them being CHARACTERS IN THE GAME!
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has several arcade machines for other Activision titles. Perhaps jokingly, you can find two Call of Duty pinball machines, one of which is frustrating its user.
In Viewtiful Joe 2, when Alastor appears, he refuses to introduce himself, declaring that if you (the player) wants to know who he is, you should go pick up a copy of Viewtiful Joe (complete with a pop-in image of the game box) from your nearest game store's bargain bin. This is also a case of Lampshade Hanging and No Fourth Wall.
Virtual-ON: the backs of the Virtuaroids have Sega Saturn consoles on them. The sequel, Virtual-On: Oratorio Tangram, replaces the Saturns with Dreamcasts.
Wave Race 64 was sponsored by Kawasaki Motors with their brand name plastered everywhere in the game. Their brand name was removed in the Virtual Console version, replaced with ads for the Wii.
World's End Club has moments when the script plugs in a Japanese soft drink called Lifeguard, with the characters boasting about its ingredients ("7 vitamins, 7 animo acids, honey, and royal jelly!") and how invigorating it feels to drink. It's so tasty and refreshing it's good enough to wash down Yuki's terrible cooking.
Xbox 360 avatars can be dressed up or given props that advertise particular games, events, or designer brands of clothing or headphones. Very few of these are free, which can lead to the inversion of you paying Microsoft points to advertise someone else's product.
In Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht, some of Shion's emails are ads for other Namco games.
The X-Universe games have nividium, a plot point in X2 and X3 that is clearly a Shout-Out to nVidia. Egosoft insists it isn't, probably to avoid pissing off ATI users.
Yakuza has an incredibly large amount of product placements. From more obvious ones like Suntory drinks and actual restaurants such as Sam's Maui, to more subtle examples, like billboards advertising period-appropriate Sony Walkman players in Yakuza 0. There's also plenty of famous Japanese stores such as Le Marche and Don Quijote, and for the companies which aren't taking part, there's ample stand-ins too, such as the fictional convenience store chains M-Store and Poppo, which are clearly based on 7-Eleven and Lawson. In this case, the product placement being so prominent works remarkably well for building the atmosphere of the series' inner-city locales.
Yakuza 5 has some blatant shilling for GaGa Milano wristwatches. Not only has Akiyama's regular gold watch been conspicuously replaced with one, but he also has an entire substory about hooking up one of his fashion-conscious business friends with one (instead of a "boring" [generic luxury brand] watch) to help him look "sophisticated, yet roguish and hip" for the ladies, which at one point even includes a full two-page magazine advert for the player to peruse. Very subtle.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon has multiple references, by name, to the Dragon Quest series, with Kasuga being an avid fan of the games growing up, gushing about it whenever the opportunity arises and being so inspired by it that he contextualizes the fights he gets into as being akin to the turn-based battles of Dragon Quest.
Zool: Ninja of the Nth Dimension was sponsored by Chupa Chups lollipops. The first level has a "candy land" theme. One guess as to what's advertised all over the level...
Parodies (Five Nights at Freddy's®):
American Racing has frequent advertising, though the products are in-universe. Each race is sponsored by some fictional company (like Mex Tex, Blue Cow, G2 Oil, etc.), banners of the aforementioned fictional companies show up on tracks, and your car gets a logo for the sponsor it has at that point.
Coke Is It consists of six brief excerpts from classic Interactive Fiction games presented as they might have been if Coca-Cola had sponsored them.
Deus Ex: The description for the soda is "The can is blank except for the phrase 'PRODUCT PLACEMENT HERE.' It is unclear whether this is a name or an invitation."
Grand Theft Auto: From III on, the whole series is merciless in its lampooning of product placement through satiric commercials for Brand X products.
They seem to enjoy mocking this trope, as most courses are covered with ads for fictional companies and products that allude to the Mario universe, including Bowser Oil, Shy Guy Metals (Since1987), Galaxy Air, Lemmy's Tire Service, etc.
The Japanese release of Mario Kart 64 even had Bland-Name Product ads for Marioro (Marlboro), Luigip (Agip), Yoshi 1 (Mobil 1), and Shell (with a Koopa shell).
In the Crapsack World RPG Underground, product placement has become so blatantly ubiquitous that embedded ads can be found in constitutional amendments.
In Backyard Basketball, Barry DeJay endorses 110% Juice (a fictional company), and the MVP is the 110% Juice Player of the Game. 110% Juice is even a powerup in the game.
Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden's strongest healing item is a Burger King chicken fry. Not even a whole order, but a single fry. The second strongest healing item is the greasy "dew" left behind by a chicken fry. And then there's the Hi-CEcto Cooler, which comes in two versions: "Ecto Cooler" (heals HP) and "Ecto Cooler?" (heals some HP and some MP).
Several late 90s/early 00s Electronic Arts games have absurdly fake brands where advertisements would be in real life (such as billboards in sports arenas). Examples include signs for "Chicken Pork" in Triple Play Baseball and Bobby Heenan pandering "Salsadent: The Spicy Toothpaste" in WCW Mayhem.
World of Warcraft plastered this on a quest. A group of hip, partying goblins begged you to retrieve their thirst-quenching, delicious drink from the crabs that had made off with them. After tracking down the crabs and untying the bottles that had oddly been tied to their claws, the goblins cheered and exclaimed how delicious it was.
Team Fortress 2: In addition to the two teams RED and BLU being private companies the player works for, every official map is plastered with ads for subsidiaries of the Mann Company.
Call of Dooty has ads for Pepsi and Taco Bell strewn throughout levels 2 and 3, and gives the player achievements for looking at them (and for ordering a Pepsi from a Pepsi machine.)
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED
Refreshed For Battle
Please visit www.pepsi.com
In Undertale, one major battle takes place live on television, and using MTT-brand healing items during the battle gives a boost to the ratings.
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