Post a Comment On: The Dreamcast Junkyard

Ok, so why the hell am I posting a Janet Jackson video here? Well, let it load and skip to about 1:40 into the video and look at the fuzzy blue screens in the background. Is that Jet Set Radio? Shenmue? Samba De Amigo? Why yes, what are they doing in there then? Well, the video appears to be plugging all sorts of things, like the Nutty professor and those Sony robot dogs, so I'd go as far as to say that Sega paid them to sneak those Dreamcast snippets in there, for what good it did. Even more important: how the hell did I happen to come across this? Well, I can't really remember how for sure, but I do remember flicking through music channels once back in 2000 and spotting the Samba monkey out of the corner of my eye. I flicked back and sure enough Ryo's father is dying behind Janet Jackson wobbling her boobs about. How odd.

But this isn't the only case of subliminal advertising I've seen from Sega that very year for their console, oh no. I don't suppose anyone remembers the movie adaptation of Josie and the Pussycats do they? No, and I don't blame you either. Anyway, my sister had this on DVD, and I was sitting around as she was watching it once, and one of the themes in the film appeared to be subliminal advertising in pop music. With this in mind, the whole film was splattered with exactly that. Nearer to the end of the film, great honking big Sega logos start to pop up in the background of this over wise forgettable teen flick, and right near the end of it there's some big screens showing of Space Channel 5.

While I managed to find the Janet Jackson video, finding the scene from the Josie film has proved more difficult. The best I can find as evidence that I'm not making this all up is 3:05 into this video clip below. Sega endorsing bitch fights! Oh, and what the hell is a Sega Megarena? Is that like Sega World? Oh well. I also believe there was a horror film released that same year that had a Dreamcast logo on it's posters, for some unexplained reason. I wonder if that had anything like this in it...?