• by Josh Lovison , September 3, 2010

This week I saw an article that reminded me of one of my favorite game marketing examples from a half decade before the first Gaming Insider was even written. The article in question detailed the sudden discovery of a verbally abusive commentator in "Wave Race: Blue Storm," a GameCube game from nine years ago. The idea of a dormant cheat code resurfacing well after a game's release jogged my memory.

A few notable things happened in 1998. There was the ruling on Microsoft's antitrust case, the founding of Google, and the release of a quite wel- received flying game on the Nintendo 64, "Star Wars: Rogue Squadron."

The game put players in the seats of various star-ships from the "Star Wars" universe in classic battles from the original trilogy. Doing well on certain missions or completing different tasks unlocked additional ships. Some players used cheat devices that hooked up to their GameCube to unlock the ships by modifying the system memory. But no matter how good any offline game is, after time interest dies down.

Several months later, on May 19th 1999, the new "Star Wars" film "The Phantom Menace" was released in theaters. As it had been roughly 16 years since the last installment in the franchise, there was quite a bit of anticipation. This became the highest grossing "Star Wars" film to date.

Two months after the movie's release, all the gaming news sites suddenly lit up with news about a secret code for "Rogue Squadron" that unlocked one of the ships featured in "The Phantom Menace" which was not part of the original trilogy. The notion of keeping a cheat code for a popular title under wraps for six months was at the time an extremely rare thing. It got a ton of press coverage in game magazines (remember those?), rekindled interest in the "Rouge Squadron" game, and to a very small extent, made "The Phantom Menace" less lame by having been involved with something so cool.

When the game was in development, some of the team members of the development team (Factor 5), thought it would be great to put the new ship into the game. They promised LucasArts they'd hide the ship in an encrypted part of the game so even hackers looking for codes used by the cheat devices wouldn't find it. And then no one was told about it, on either the development teams or LucasArts. With no one to leak it, and hidden away in an encrypted area, the code sat dormant for six months.

Regular readers of this column know I consider virtual goods to be one of the best value exchanges that can be provided to gamers. There's a reason every game today has a virtual reward for a pre-order bonus -- it works. Years before downloadable content packs, Factor 5 created an experience that was on par with what the best practices for a film marketing synergy might be today. It was pretty epic, and one of the great stories of old-school game marketing.