Nintendo

Tropes vs. Women, a video series that looks at recurring stereotypes of female characters in video games, has released its first video in the series after being funded on Kickstarter last summer (the project received $158,922 of its requested $6,000 goal). As a trope the Damsel in Distress is a plot device in which a female character is placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her own and must then be rescued by a male character, usually providing a core incentive or motivation for the protagonist’s quest.

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• 9 bizarre and disturbing videogame commercials

A sultry blonde in tight jeans dances seductively to the jukebox in an American diner. Oh yeah, baby! Why don't you turn around and come over...

Yes, Nintendo decided that the best way to advertise DK's latest jungle romp was to cause the viewer deep psychosexual trauma. Imagine if you were a young lad and the sight of that sexy woman dancing cause the first stirrings of your sexual awareness. Then she sudden turns around to reveal a face halfway between a trainyard wino and Donatella Versace, and that's the image that seeps into your subconscious and scars your romantic relationships for life. Shocking imagery from the Big N...

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• 9 bizarre and disturbing videogame commercials

Parents concerned about this new "video games" phenomenon? Want to reassure them that it's a fun, harmless pastime? Why not show a commercial that equates playing The Legend of Zelda with completely losing your fucking mind!

That's John Kassir, probably best known to most people as the voice of The Crypt Keeper. In this commercial, he portrays a man whose experiences with the digital land of Hyrule have completely shattered his mind.

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• 9 bizarre and disturbing videogame commercials

So the big picture here is that the rise of the mobile gaming market … is largely the emigration of consumers who stopped in briefly to play Nintendo’s hardware but had no long-term interest in that kind of platform.

Nintendo’s core market is still intact, and they are still growing their market. The explosive growth of gaming on mobile platforms could mostly be additive to the overall market, without threatening Nintendo.

Gamasutra's Matt Mathews, Nintendo's core handheld market is stable