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The announcement of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening remaster for Switch has had many gamers revisiting the original and rediscovering the quirkiness of Koholint Island and its inhabitants. The remaster’s new toy-town art style is a plastic-y evolution of the aesthetic we saw in A Link Between Worlds on 3DS, and while it has divided gamers, we think it looks lovely.

With the game reigniting interest in the original Game Boy release (and the DX version for Game Boy Color), reddit user onex7805 dug up a Japanese TV spot for the original game which reminds us just how peculiar Link’s Awakening was from the very start. Check it out:

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Aside from two seconds of footage on the superimposed Game Boy screen, the entire ad consists of marionettes of Link and the principal cast clowning around and acting out snippets of Link’s adventure.

Of course, Nintendo has form with using puppets to promote games – think back to the muppet versions of Iwata, Miyamoto and Reggie back at E3 2015 and the original Star Fox marionettes that inspired those.

Still, these classic ads make us pine for a little more creativity than the standard commercials we get today with the trademark Switch finger-click kicking off 30 seconds of gameplay footage.

Of course, we got some similarly bizarre and wonderful Game Boy ads featuring the inimitable Rik Mayall here in the UK:

Ah, they don’t make ‘em like they used to! Check out this feature for more on those classics.

Wish that video game adverts were a little more adventurous than a voiceover and some gameplay footage? What are your favourite examples from the past? Let us know below.

[source reddit.com, via youtube.com]